-45_Poets–Mystics–Intellectuals.htm SECTION TEN Poets – Mystics – Intellectuals THE POET, THE YOGI AND THE RISHI 1 It is quite natural for the poets to vaunt their métier as the highest reach of human capacity and themselves as the top of creation, it is also natural for the intellectuals to run down the Yogi or the Rishi who claims to reach a higher consciousness than that which they conceive to be the summit of human achievement. The poet lives still in the mind and is not yet a spiritual seer, but he repre­sents to the human intellect the highest point of mental seership where the imagination tries to figure and embody in words its in­tuition of things, though that stands fa

-18_The Poets of the Dawn – 2.htm CHAPTER XVII The Poets of the Dawn – 2             A POETRY whose task is to render truth of the Spirit by passing behind the appearances of the sense and the intellect to their spiritual reality, is in fact attempting a work for which no characteristic power of language has been discovered, —except the symbolic, but the old once established symbols will no longer entirely serve, and the method itself is not now sufficient for the need, —no traditional form of presentation native to the substance, no recognized method of treatment or approach, or none at once sufficiently wide and subtle, personal and universal for the modern mind. In the past indeed there

SECTION EIGHT Beauty and Art BEAUTY 1 Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind. Love in the heart. Power in the vital. Supra-mental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter. 19.2.1934 2 Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine — but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form. 23.8.1933 SUPRAMENTAL ACTION AND BEAUTY Yes—supermind action is direct, spontaneous and automatic like that of inframental Nature—the difference is that it is perfectly conscious. As there is no disagreement or strife wi

-17_The Poets of the Dawn – 1.htm CHAPTER   XVI The Poets of the Dawn – 1             THE superiority if the English poets who lead the way into the modern age is that sudden almost unaccountable spiritual impulse, insistent but vague in some, strong but limited in one or two, splendid and supreme in its rare moments of vision and clarity, which breaks out from their normal poetic mentality and strives constantly to lift their thought and imagination to its own heights, a spirit or Daemon who does not seem to trouble at all with his voice or his oestrus the contemporary poets of continental Europe. But they have no clearly seen or no firmly based constant idea of the greater work which thi

SECTION SIX Indo-English Poetry – Current Use of English Language ACHIEVEMENT OF INDO-ENGLISH POETRY—LITERARY DECADENCE IN EUROPE 1 The idea that Indians cannot succeed in English poetry is very much in the air just now but it cannot be taken as absolutely valid. Toru Dutt and Romesh of the same ilk prove nothing; Toru Dutt was an accomplished verse-builder with a delicate talent and some outbreaks of genius and she wrote things that were attractive and sometimes something that had a strong energy of language and a rhythmic force. Romesh was a smart imitator of English poetry of the second or third rank. What he wrote, if written by an Englishman, might not

section five Modern Poetry CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH POETRY 1 I admit I have not read as much of "modern" (contemporary) poetry as I should have — but the little I have is mostly of the same fundamental quality. It is very carefully written and versi­fied, often recherché  in thought and expression; it lacks only two things, the inspired phrase and inevitable word and the rhythm that keeps a poem for ever alive. Speech carefully studied and made as perfect as it can be without reaching to inspi­ration, verse as good as verse can be without rising to inspired rhythm — there seem to be an extraordinary number of poets writing like this in England now.... It is not

CHAPTER IV Style and Substance RHYTHM is the premier necessity of poetical expression because it is the sound-movement which carries on its wave the thought-movement in the word; and it is the musical sound-image which most helps to fill in, to extend, subtilise and deepen the thought impression or the emotional or vital impression and to carry the sense beyond itself into an expression of the intellectually inexpressible - always the peculiar power of music. This truth was better understood on the whole or at least more consistently felt by the ancients than by the modern mind and ear, perhaps because they were more in the habit of singing, chanting or intoning thei

-22_Recent English Poetry – 2.htm CHAPTER XXI Recent English Poetry – 2 THE effective stream of poetry in the English tongue has followed no such strong distinctive turn as would be able to sweep the effort of rhythmic expression along with it in one mastering direction. The poets of this age pursue much more even than their predecessors the bent of their personality, not guided by any uniting thought or standard of form, and have no other connecting link than the subtle similarities which the spirit of the age always gives to its work of creation. But the present age is so loose, fluid and many-motived that this subtler community is not easily tangible and works out in much less of an open

SECTION SEVEN Appreciation of Poetry and Art SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN CRITICISM OF POETRY AND ART All criticism of poetry is bound to have a strong subjective element in it and that is the source of the violent differences we find in the appreciation of any given author by equally "eminent" critics. All is relative here. Art and Beauty also, and our view of things and our appreciation of them depends on the conscious­ness which views and appreciates. Some critics recognise this and go in frankly for a purely subjective criticism — "this is why I like this and disapprove of that, I give my own values". Most labour to fit their personal l