-003_Moods and Modes of Poetry (Two Letters) MOODS AND MODES OF POETRY   (TWO LETTERS)   1   You are right in saying that the true objective of poetry is not merely expression but also communication. A poet should not care solely to please himself or one or two of his own mind; he should try to establish rapport with the large number of cultured men who are receptive to poetry. Yet, to make easy communication his entire ideal would be unfaithfulness to his own inspiration, particularly if he happens to be a mystic. "Clarity winged with beauty" is indeed a fine thing finely stated and some of the world's greatest verse conforms to this type — but clarity is a relative term and what is clea

SHELLEY, SWINBURNE, HOUSMAN — AND MARY SHELLEY   1   The Times Literary Supplement of November 21, 1968 (pages 1318-19), discusses under the title, "Shelley, Swinburne and Housman", the famous eighth line —   Fresh spring, and summer and winter hoar —   of one of Shelley's most Shelleyan lyrics beginning, in its standard published form,   Oh, world! oh life! oh time!   The lyric consists of two stanzas, and the line in question which is in the second stanza is one foot shorter than the corresponding line in the first. The tale of the seasons is also short by one of them: namely, autumn. Critics naturally have aske

-021_Sri Aurobindo^s Savitri, the Nature of Epic and the Expression of Mysticism in English Poetry (A Letter) SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI, THE NATURE OF EPIC AND THE EXPRESSION OF  MYSTICISM IN ENGLISH POETRY   A LETTER   The script of your friend's projected lecture, incorporating your touches, on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri makes interesting reading and is surely helpful in several respects. Most of these are analytic, classificatory; but the labelling is done skilfully and catchingly. I can understand his dissatisfaction with the passages he has quoted from Sisir Ghose, Srinivasa Iyengar and myself. But I don't know whether it is right to pull out a passage from me like that, as if I have wri

The First Move From K. D. Sethna to Father John Martin 25.4.82 Your extremely friendly letter and the enclosed fine-feeling'd articles of Bede Griffiths have been lying in front of me for quite a time. Now at last I have sufficient leisure to give them the lengthy consideration they deserve. Let me at the very start tell you that I remember our meeting in the Ashram with great warmth and also that I have never wavered in my general admiration for Bede Griffiths ever since I came across a pamphlet of his on Hinduism and Christianity. Recently I went through his Return to the Centre, marking several passages of keen insight which go beyond the conventional and

A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo CORRESPONDENCE between BEDE GRIFFITHS AND K. D. SETHNA (AMAL KIRAN) The Integral Life Foundation P.O. Box 239 Waterford CT. 06385 USA First published 1996 (Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatino) © Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) Published by The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A. Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA

The Sequel Saccidananda Ashram, Shantivanam, Tannirpalli - 639 107 Kulittallai, Tiruchi Dt., Tamil Nadu February 11th 1983 Dear Mr. Sethna, I was interested to read your letter on the Aurobindonian Christian in Mother India. I do indeed owe a great deal to Sri Aurobindo and feel nearer to him than to any other Indian thinker. As regards the criticism which you make, I did not mean to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus corresponded with the transformation of the body as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother conceived it, but simply that the final transformation and transfiguration of the body which they were seeking did actually take place in the resurrec

Uttering the Unutterable Speaking of a "metaphysical" poet, Dr. Johnson laid down the law to goggling and gaping Boswell: "If Mr. X has experienced the Unutterable, Mr. X will be well advised not to try and utter it." The advice, I am afraid, is not the Doctor's wit or sanity at its best. It is a superficially brilliant play on words, taking little stock of the uses and potentialities of the art of words. Just consider the term "Unutterable". It is not mumbo-jumbo: it has a meaning. Strictly and frontally, it signifies a divine infinitude which is so marvellous and mysterious that it cannot at all be described in language. An additional background significance is cau

Sight and Insight TWO WORKINGS OF THE POET'S EYE To write poetry one must go with one's subject into one's heart and imagination and identify it with them so that what one expresses of it may come out intimately vibrant and visible. But one can express either the surface of one's subject or the depth of it, create either an outward glory or an inward splendour. The Eagles of Robinson Jeffers and D. H. Lawrence All poetry is an inward way of speaking: still, it may not always speak of the inward stuff of its subject. And this in spite of the subject being what is called "subjective": for instance, a statement about love may provide us with the delicacy or power of t

The Megalomaniac A moment's warmth and the intimacies of a handful can never be my terminus. I must either possess like a God or feel the universe alien and strive to destroy its endless multitudes by some mystical fiat of my consciousness. If I fail, I move among men like a dusky cloud, depressing them and myself losing all savour of life. Even the poet in me, whose natural being is to discover the veins of gold embedded in dull rock, keeps drifting with a listless countenance. I know that a Light dissolving every imperfection lives somewhere and that I have a home in it which on occasion I attain. But the sense of not having attained it for good is often the verge of lunacy for

Literary Leaps I have been busy the last half hour at the game of turning the pages of a bookseller's catalogue and letting the titles serve my mind as leaping-boards. Some have landed me in memories, others in speculations. Here is an announcement that Dostoievsky is being republished in a uniform edition. The first two novels brought out are Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazhov. How well I remember reading the former! Night after night I read it, just before dropping asleep, and its picture of a murderer's mind was so overwhelmingly vivid that I would get a most uneasy sensation of being myself the culprit. As a rule, the villain of a story is not the chief character: