IV   Shivaji, Jaysingh   JAYSINGH Neither of us has prevailed. A third force has entered into the land and taken the fruits of your work, and as for mine, it is broken; the ideal I cherished has gone down into the dust.   SHIVAJI For the fruit I did not work and by the failure I am not amazed nor discouraged.   JAYSINGH Neither did I work for a reward, but to uphold the ideal of the Rajput. Unflinching courage in honourable warfare, chivalry to friend and foe, a noble loyalty to the sovereign of my choice, this seemed t

The Harmony of Virtue    Book One   Keshav Ganesh — Broome Wilson   Keshav — My dear Broome, how opportune is your arrival! You will save me from the malady of work, it may be, from the dangerous opium of solitude. How is it I have not seen you for the last fortnight? Wilson ——— Surely, Keshav, you can understand the exigencies of the Tripos? Keshav —— Ah, you are a happy man. You can do what you are told. But put off your academical aspirations until tomorrow and we will talk. The cigarettes are on the mantelpiece — pardon my indolence! — and the lucifers are probably sto

The Age of Kalidasa   VALMIKI, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development of the human soul, types and exponents also of the three great powers which dispute and clash in the imperfect and half-formed temperament and harmonise in the formed and perfect. At the same time their works are pictures at once minute and grandiose of three moods of our Aryan civilisation, of which the first was predominatingly moral, the second predominatingly intellectual, the third predominatingly material

An Answer to a Critic   ONE HAD thought that the Ravi Varma superstition in India had received its quietus. Unsupported by a single competent voice, universally condemned by critics of eminence Asiatic and European, replaced by a style of Art national, noble and suggestive, it is as hopeless to revive this grand debaser of Indian taste and artistic culture as to restore life to the slain. But even causes hopelessly lost and deserving to be lost will find their defenders and unworthy altars do not lack incense. A belated lance is lifted in the August number of the Modern Review for the fallen idol. Neither writing nor s

Characteristics of Augustan Poetry   Relation of Gray to the poetry of his times   The poetry of Gray marks the transition from the eighteenth century or Augustan style of poetry to the nineteenth-century style; i.e. to say almost all the tendencies of poetry between the death of Pope and the production of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798are to be found in Gray's writings. Of the other poets of the time, Johnson & Goldsmith mark the last development of the Augustan style, while Collins, Blake, Cowper, Burns, Chatterton each embody in their poetry the beginnings of one or more tendencies which afterwards found their full expression in the nineteen

Stray Thoughts   Flowers and trees are the poetry of Nature; the gardener is a romantic poet who has added richness, complexity of effect and symmetry to a language otherwise distinguished merely by facility, by directness and by simplicity of colour and charm.   Sound is more essential to poetry than sense. Swinburne who often conveys no meaning to the intellect, yet fills his verse with lovely & suggestive melodies, can put more poetry into one such line than Pope into a hundred couplets of accurate sense and barren music. A noble thought framed in a well-rounded sentence, will always charm by virtue of its satisfying completeness, but will never convey t

Note on the Texts   EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS consists of essays on literature, education and art, as well as dialogues, biographical and historical sketches, and other short prose pieces. Most were written between 1890 and 1910, a few between 1910 and 1920. A little more than half the pieces (comprising about three-fifths of the bulk) were published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime; the rest of the pieces have been transcribed from his manuscripts. The contents of the volume are arranged by topic in nine parts. Two appendixes, consisting mostly of material not written for publication, come at the end.   PART ONE: THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE (CAMBRIDGE 1890

Notes on the Mahabharata   by Aurobind Ghose   dealing with the authenticity of each separate canto, i.e. whether it belongs or not to the original epic of 24,000 slokas on the great catastrophe of the Bharatas.   Udyogapurva.   Canto I. 1 कुरुप्रवीराः ..स्वपक्षाः . This may mean in Vyasa's elliptic manner the great Kurus (i.e. the Pandavas) & those of their side. Otherwise "The Kuru heroes of his own side" i.e. Abhi

APPENDIX   Test Questions   The Mediaevalists   1. Describe the nature & influence on English poetry of Percy's Reliques. 2. Sketch the career of Chatterton. 3. Describe the character of Chatterton's forgeries and estimate their effects on the value of his poetry. 4. Discuss the conflicting estimates of Chatterton's poetry. 5. What is the Ossian controversy? What stage has the controversy reached at present? 6. Macpherson's work is often condemned as empty and turgid declamation. How far is this view justified? 7. State the author & nature of the following works: Ella, an Interlude; Bristow Tragedy.

Vikramorvasie   The Play   Vikram and the Nymph is the second, in order of time, of Kalidasa's three extant dramas. The steady development of the poet's genius is easy to read even for a superficial observer. Malavica and the King is a gracious and delicate trifle, full of the sweet & dainty characterisation which Kalidasa loves, almost too curiously admirable in the perfection of its structure and dramatic art but with only a few touches of that nobility of manner which raises his tender & sensuous poetry and makes it divine. In the Urvasie he is preening his wings for a mightier flight; the dramatic art is not so flawless, but the characters are far deeper an