Poet, Yogi, Rishi, Prophet, Genius   The Poet, the Yogi and the Rishi    It is quite natural for the poets to vaunt their metier 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 indeed 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 far below the visi

On Early Translations and Poems   Translation of the Meghadut   I did translate the Meghadut, but it was lost by the man with whom I kept it ―so mention of it is useless. 28 January 1931   The Hero and the Nymph and Urvasie   On an old advertisement page of the Arya I find: "The Hero and the Nymph, a translation in verse of Kalidasa's Vikramorvasie."   Yes, I had forgotten the Hero and the Nymph.   Our library hasn't got this translation, nor your poem Urvasie, both of which are out of print.   I don't think I have the Urvasie, neither am I v

Sources of Inspiration   Sources of Inspiration and Variety   If there were not different sources of inspiration, every poet would write the same thing and in the same way as every other, which would be deplorable. Each draws from a different realm and therefore a different kind and manner of inspiration ―except of course those who make a school and all write on the same lines. 18 July 1936 *   Different sources of inspiration may express differently the same thing. I can't say what plane is imaged in the poem [submitted by the correspondent]. Planes are big regions of being with all sorts of things in them.  1

Comparison of the Arts Each Ar Comparison of the Arts Each Art Has Its Own Province   I fear I must disappoint you. I am not going to pass the Gods through a competitive examination and assign a highest place to one and lower places to others. What an idea! Each has his or her own province on the summits and what is the necessity of putting them in rivalry with each other? It is a sort of Judgment of Paris you want to impose on me? Well, but what became of Paris and Troy? You want me to give the crown or the apple to Music and enrage the Goddesses of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Embroidery, all the Nine Muses, so that they will kick at

Rhythm    Two Factors in Poetic Rhythm   If your purpose is to acquire not only metrical skill but the sense and the power of rhythm, to study the poets may do something, but not all. There are two factors in poetic rhythm, ―there is the technique (the variation of movement without spoiling the fundamental structure of the metre, right management of vowel and consonantal assonances and dissonances, the masterful combination of the musical element of stress with the less obvious element of quantity, etc.), and there is the secret soul of rhythm which uses but exceeds these things. The first you can ¯ learn, if you read with your ear always in a tapasyā of vigil

Appendixes Appendixes     APPENDIX I   The Problem of the Hexameter   The perfection of the hexameter is one of the unsolved problems of English prosody. Either the problem is insoluble, the noble rhythm so satisfying in Greek and Latin unsuited to the brief Saxon vocables ―or else the secret of a successful measure has not yet been discovered. Even were the solution found, there are many obstacles in the way of its acceptation. Yet a new metrical movement is felt to be a necessity and half-unconsciously strained after by the modern mind in poetry. If one could be found that, without admitting too wide a licence, without breaking down the

Examples of Overhead Poetry   Examples from Various Poets Evaluations of 1932 ­ 1935   Does Wordsworth's ode on immortality contain any trace, however vague, of the Overmind inspiration?   I don't remember, but I think not.   And what about the rhythm and substance of   solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven.   No. The substance may be overmind, but the rhythm is ordinary and the expression intellectual and imaginative.   and of   I come, O Sea, To measure my enormous self with thee.   No; the poem "To the Sea" w

Problems of the Painter Problems of the Painter   Nature and the Human Figure   The Mother had told you once that in your human figures you did not seem to be in contact with the right Influence and you had said that you felt the contact with an eternal Beauty in Nature but had not the same contact with regard to the human figure. It will be better then, now that you are practising the Yoga and to be in contact with right Influences only is very important, to avoid dealing with the human face and figure at present. In Yoga what may seem to the mind a detail may yet open the door to things that have strong effects on the consciousness, distu

Metrical Experiments   The Genesis of In Horis Aeternum   Is there some way of keeping the loose swinging gait of anapaests within bounds? If one has used them freely in one or more lines, does it sound too abrupt to close with a strict iambic line ―as in the final Alexandrine of:   The wind hush comes, the varied colours westward stream: Were they joy-tinted coral, or song-light seen-heard in a shell fitfully, Drifted ashore by the hours as a waif from the day-wide sea Of Loveliness that smites awake our sorrow-dream?   It is perhaps a pity that the rhyth

Greek and Latin Classical Metres   Acclimatisation of Classical Metres in English   In the attempt to acclimatise the classical scansions in English, everything depends on whether they are acclimatised or not. That is to say, there must be a spontaneous, natural, seemingly native-born singing or flowing or subtly moving rhythm. The lines must glide or run or walk easily or, if you like, execute a complex dance, stately or light, but not stumble, not shamble and not walk like the Commander's statue suddenly endowed with life but stiff and stony in its march. Now the last is just what happens to classical metres in English when they are