APPENDIX III   Remarks on a Review2   [A]   Marginal Comments   The writer justly contends that Quantitative Verse has, hitherto, been misunderstood by English poets who have used it, because the constituent elements of such verse have not been correctly appreciated. These elements are accent, stress, and quantity. Accent is voice-weightage on a syllable; stress is voice-weightage on a one-syllable word (which may or may not be accented by itself) considered hic et nunc as a component part of a phrase, clause or sentence;   Not in my theory; stress occurs in English words of all lengths, not

On Some Poems Written during the 1930s   [The first five letters were published together as an appendix to Six Poems of Sri Aurobindo in 1934]   The Bird of Fire and Trance   These two poems are in the nature of metrical experiments. The first is a kind of compromise between the stress system and the foot measure. The stanza is of four lines, alternately of twelve and ten stresses. The second and fourth line in each stanza can be read as a ten-foot line of mixed iambs and anapaests, the first and third, though a similar system subject to replacement of a foot anywhere by a single-syllab

Poets of the Ashram   Some General Remarks   I fear I don't approve of any article on the "Ashram poets" ―least of all a dithyramb of this too splendiferous kind. I shall give my reasons when I have had time to look at it again ―at present I am slowly recovering from the electric shock it gave me. 11 September 1934 *   Prithwi Singh was telling me that cultivation of literature here hasn't much sense, since none will be able to get first class, or outclass Tagore. He must always remain the only brilliant star in literature. Others won't even get a chance to shine by his side, not to speak of o

Remarks on Individual Poets   The Author of the Bhagavad Gita   Sri Krishna is not supposed to have written anything. The Gita is part of the Mahabharata which is attributed to the sage Vyasa, the contemporary of Krishna. But in its present form the Mahabharata seems to be of later origin and many scholars say that the Gita was composed afterwards by someone and put into the Mahabharata. In any case whoever wrote it was a great Yogi and certainly received his inspiration from Krishna. Catullus and Horace You prefer Catullus [to Horace] because he was a philosopher? You have certainly rolled Lucretius here into Cat

Appreciation of Music   On Music   Written words are pale and lifeless things when one has to express the feelings raised by superb music and seem hardly to mean anything ―not being able to convey what is beyond word and mere mental form ―that is, at least, what I have felt and why I always find it a little difficult to write anything about music. 20 March 1933   Musical Excellence and General Culture   I have not seen the remarks in question. I don't suppose all-round general culture has much to do with excelling in music. Music is a gift independent of any such thing and it can hardly be

Remarks on English Pronunciation   Monosyllables and Dissyllables   I wonder why you find fault with the rhythm of "A vision whose God-delight embraces all." "Vision" is really a monosyllable, and I don't suppose the frequent poetic dissyllabification of it precludes the use of its original sound-length.   You use your intellect too much and with too much ingenuity where you should train your ear. Another line with the same scansion might very well make an extremely good rhythm; this one does not. Its rhythm is at once flat and jerky. How is "vision" a monosyllable? You might just as well say that "omnibus" i

Rhyme   Rhyme and Inspiration   Some rhyme with ease ―others find a difficulty. The coming of the rhyme is a part of the inspiration just like the coming of the form of the language. The rhyme often comes of itself and brings the language and connection of ideas with it. For all these things are quite ready behind somewhere and it is only a matter of reception and transmission ―it is the physical mind and brain that make the difficulty. 2 February 1934   Imperfect Rhymes   These ["life" and "cliff", "smile" and "will"] are called in English imperfect rhymes and can be freely but not too freely used. Only yo

Chapter IV   The Way of Devotion   BHAKTI in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine and as simple and straightforward as love and desire going straight towards their object. It cannot therefore be fixed down to any systematic method, cannot found itself on a psychological science like the Rajayoga, or a psycho-physical like the Hathayoga, or start from a definite intellectual process like the ordinary method of the Jnanayoga. It may employ various means or supports, and man, having in him a tendency towards order, process and system, may try to methodise his resort to these auxiliaries: but to give an account of their var

Chapter II   The Motives of Devotion   ALL RELIGION begins with the conception of some Power or existence greater and higher than our limited and mortal selves, a thought and act of worship done to that Power, and an obedience offered to its will, its laws or its demands. But Religion, in its beginnings, sets an immeasurable gulf between the Power thus conceived, worshipped and obeyed and the worshipper. Yoga in its culmination abolishes the gulf; for Yoga is union. We arrive at union with it through knowledge; for as our first obscure conceptions of it clarify, enlarge, deepen, we come to recognise it as our own highest self, the origin and sustainer

Chapter VIII   The Release from the Heart   and the Mind   BUT THE ascending soul has to separate itself not only from the life in the body but from the action of the life-energy in the mind; it has to make the mind say as the representative of the Purusha "I am not the Life; the Life is not the self of the Purusha, it is only a working and only one working of Prakriti." The characteristics of Life are action and movement, a reaching out to absorb and assimilate what is external to the individual and a principle of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what it seizes upon or what comes to it, which