-09_The Character of English Poetry – 2.htm CHAPTER VIII The Character of English Poetry – 2 WHAT kind or quality of poetry should we naturally expect from a national mind so constituted? The Anglo-Saxon strain is dominant and in that circumstance there lay just a hazardous possibility that there might have been no poetical literature at all. The Teutonic nations have in this field been conspicuous by their silence or the rarity of their speech. After the old rude epics, saga or Nibelungenlied, we have to wait till quite recent times for poetic utterance, nor, when it came, was it rich or abundant. In Germany a brief period of strong productive culture in which the great names Goethe and Hein

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE FUTURE POETRY was first published as a series of essays in the Arya from 1917 to 1920. Sri Aurobindo thought of revising it before giving it the form of a book. He wished to add even a few chapters, especially dealing with the Metaphysicals and the Modern Poets. He was not able to do more than write a few paragraphs supplementary to matter already treated. Although these have been incorporated in their proper places the book first brought but in 1953 remains for practical purposes a reprint of the original essays. LETTERS ON POETRY, LITERATURE AND ART has been added here as a separate part of the volume for the purposes of the C

-14_The Course of English Poetry – 5.htm CHAPTER XIII The Course of English Poetry – 5 A POWER of poetry in a highly evolved language which describes so low a downward curve as to reach this dry and brazen intellectualism, must either perish by a dull slow decay of its creative force and live flexibilities of expression,  -that has happened more than once in literary history, -or else be saved by a violent revulsion. But this saving revulsion, if it comes, is likely, if bold enough, to compensate for the past prone descent by an equally steep ascension to an undreamed-of novelty of illumined motive and revealing spirit. This is the economy of Nature’s lapses in the things of the mind no less th

chapter XXX The Form and the Spirit A CHANGE in the spirit of poetry must necessarily bring with it a change of its forms, and this departure may be less or greater to the eye, more inward or more outward, but always there must be at least some subtle and profound alte­ration which, whatever the apparent fidelity to old moulds, is cer­tain to amount in fact to a transmutation, since even the outward character and effect become other than they were and the soul of substance and movement a new thing. The opening of the creative mind into an intuitive and revelatory poetry need not of itself compel a revolution and total breaking up of the old forms and a creat

-11_The Course of English Poetry – 2.htm CHAPTER X The Course of English Poetry – 2 BEAUTIFUL as are many of its productions, powerful as it is in the mass, if we look at it not in detail, not merely revelling in beauty of line and phrase and image, in snatches of song and outbursts of poetic richness and power, but as a whole, as definite artistic creation, this wealthiest age of English poetry bears a certain stamp of defect and failure. It cannot be placed for a moment as a supreme force of excellence in literary culture by the side of the great ages of Greek and Roman poetry, but, besides that, it falls short too in aesthetic effect and virtue in comparison with other poetic periods les

-16_The Movement of Modern Literature – 2.htm CHAPTER  XV The Movement of Modern Literature – 2             OUT of the period of dominant objective realism what emerges with the strongest force is a movement to quite an opposite principle creation, a literature of pronounced and conscious subjectivity. There is throughout the nineteenth century and apparent contradiction between its professed literary aim and theory and the fundamental unavoidable character of much of its inspiration. In aim throughout, -though there are notable exceptions, - It professes a strong objectivity. The temper of the age has been an earnest critical and scientific curiosity, a desire to se, know and understand the w

CHAPTER VI The National Evolution of Poetry THE work of the poet depends not only on himself and his age, but on the mentality of the nation to which he belongs and the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic tradition and environment which it creates for him. It is not to be understood by this that he is or need be entirely limited by this condition or that he is to consider himself as only a voice of the national mind or bound by the past national tradition and debarred from striking out a road of his own. In nations which are returning under difficulties to a strong self-consciousness, like the Irish or the Indians at the present moment, this nationalism m

CHAPTER XXXII Conclusion             THE poetry of the future has to solve, if the suggestions I have made are sound, a problem new to the art of poetic speech, an utterance of the deepest soul of man and of the universal spirit in things, not only with another and a more complete vision, but in the very inmost language of the self-experience of the soul and the sight of the spiritual mind. The attempt to speak in poetry the inmost things of the spirit or to use a psychical and spiritual seeing other than that of the more outward imagination and intelligence has indeed been made before, but for the most part and except in rare moments of an unusually inspired speech it has us

section four Translation of Poetry TWO WAYS OF TRANSLATING POETRY There is no question of defective poetry or lines. There are two ways of rendering a poem from one language into another — one is to keep strictly to the manner and turn of the original, the other to take its spirit, sense and imagery and reproduce them freely so as to suit the new language. (A’s poem is exceedingly succinct, simply-direct and compact in word, form, rhythm, yet full of suggestion — it would perhaps not be possible to do the same thing in Bengali; it is necessary to use an ampler form, and this is what you have done. Your translation is very beautiful; only, side by side with the

CHAPTER XXXI The Word and the Spirit             A DEVELOPMENT of the kind of which we are speaking must affect not only the frames of poetry, but initiate also a subtle change of its word and rhythmic movement. The poetic word is a vehicle of the spirit, the chosen medium of the soul’s self-expression, and any profound modification of the inner habit of the soul, its thought atmosphere, its way of seeming, its type of feeling, any change of the light in which it lives and the power of the breath which it breathes, heartening of its elevations or entry into deeper chambers of its self must reflect itself in a corresponding modification, changed intensity of ligh