TALK THIRTY-TWO We have remarked that Phanopoeia tends generally to be less a failure than Logopoeia. We may now glance at a case in which the latter surpasses the former. It is a case in which the technical device called Aposiopesis has play, though the actual determinant of the poetic quality is not this device. Aposiopesis means a sudden breaking off in speech. In Christabel Coleridge has written of a half-human half-demon creature, the outwardly fair Lady Geraldine. When describing the undressing of this woman before Christabel, he originally had the lines: Behold! her bosom and half her side Are lean and old and foul of hue. This

TALK SEVENTEEN We were speaking of musical poetry of two kinds — lyric melo-poeia and epic melopoeia. My mind now goes back to a reference I once made to musical Words — like "Coal-scuttle", according to a Russian, and "dyspepsia", according to myself. In the Sabrina-lyric we have quite a number of such words: the very name "Sabrina", then "translucent", "amber-dropping", "lillies" and "silver". But what the subject of musical words particularly sug-gests to me this morning is a word matching my old choice of "dyspepsia". The new word is "lumbago". You know what "lumbago" means? The dictionary gives it as "rheumatic pain in the lower back and

TALK THIRTY-SIX The Verlainian "pure poetry" about which we have talked should satisfy the definition offered by the Abbe Bremond. Have you heard of the Abbe Bremond? It seems very few in India know that he existed. The only Abbes known here are the Abbe Faria whom Dumas made unforgettable by his Count of Monte Cristo and the contemporary Abbe Breuil who has made his name as an anthropologist. Bremond is not easy to come by in even our libraries and bookshops. I remember inquiring about him at a bookseller's in Bombay. The chap had a fondness for both French literature and Persian — possibly because the Persian language is considered the French of

TALK THIRTY-FIVE Emphasis on the pictorial element seems to have marked many definitions of "pure poetry". This element can be overdone. And there are many modes of overdoing it. The Symbolist and the Imagist modes are rather specialised ones. A general mode is evident in George Moore's Introduction to an anthology compiled by himself of English verse. Moore defines "pure poetry" as "born of admiration of the only permanent world, the world of things": it is poetry containing no hint of subjectivity, poetry "unsicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought", as the greatest of the phanopoeists, Shakespeare, would have put it if he had had something

TALK THIRTY-EIGHT Today we may round off our discussion of Pure Poetry — with a remark of Sri Aurobindo's. Speaking of the poets of the early nineteenth century and comparing as well as contrasting these voices of the New Romanticism shot with a spiritual aspiration, particularly in alliance with a Nature-mysticism, Sri Aurobindo pairs Wordsworth and Byron on one hand and, on the other, Shelley and Keats. Then he remarks about the two latter: "They are perhaps the two most purely poetic minds that have used the English tongue; but one sings from the skies earthwards, the other looks from earth towards Olympus."1 In this matter of pure poetr

TALK FIFTEEN Like the bell that has called us to the commencement of our class, a deeply melodious ring starts the felicity of phrase in Sri Aurobindo's All can be done if the God-touch is there. Before I say anything, let me observe that it is uncertain whether Sri Aurobindo means a capital G in the seventh word. It may prove on manuscript evidence that a small g is intended. Then a generalisation would be made, pointing to the realm or plane of the many divine cosmic workers whom the one Supreme Divinity has put forth as expressions of His various powers. Not the Supreme Divinity directly but any spiritual entity that comes as a represent

TALK TWENTY-FIVE I feel I have almost lost the habit of lecturing. It is after three weeks that we meet again. You must have been wondering what could have put so long a stop to this endlessly wagging professorial tongue. One of you was curious or kind or bold enough to ask me. My reply was: "A sprain in the brain." A friendly visitor to the Ashram got the same reply. He became goggle-eyed with surprise and exclaimed: "Oh, I didn't know that such things could happen. Does one sprain the brain also?" I had no explanation to give. My phrase was not quite meant to be explained. It was a piece of mystic poetry, or at least of mystic verse, since it

TALK SEVEN I have already brought to your notice the many kinds of feet which go into a metrical line. There are also many possible lengths of such a line. We have a dimeter (a line of two feet), a trimeter (a line of three), a tetrameter (a line of four), a pentameter (a line of five), an alexandrine (a line of six), a heptameter (a line of seven), an octometer (a line of eight). You must have marked the absence of the word "hexameter" for a line of six feet. I have put an alexandrine instead, because the series I have listed is composed of the feet which are the most common in English — iamb, trochee, anapaest. The iamb is the commonest. And the usu

TALK TWENTY We have regarded Sri Aurobindo's Rose of God as a symphonic masterpiece of the highest melopoeia — the acme of Intonation or Incantation. I want now to speak a little of what Sri Aurobindo has termed undertones and overtones — "speak a little" because I do not know much about the matter and Sri Aurobindo himself has provided us with only a few hints. He has not even defined "under-tone" or "overtone". He has just given a few examples of lines with undertones, lines with overtones, lines with both together and lines with neither. The last-named can be good poetry but in them the rhythm of the outer being is insistent and what impresses us

TALK THIRTY-SEVEN It was Keats's friend Henry Stephens who, on seeing the first draft of Endymion, remarked that its opening line — A thing of beauty is a constant joy — was good but still "wanting something". Keats pondered the criticism a little, then cried out, "I have it", and wrote: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. We can see at once that here, as the Abbe Bremond says, "the current passes". Inspiration has come through. But what exactly has happened? Bremond declares that the inspiration is not due to a change of meaning, for, according to him, the meaning has not appreciably altered. I should think the correct vie