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

Passing Thoughts [3]   Achar   Achar is a mould in which the thing itself rests and feels stable; it is not the thing itself. It is this sense of stability which is the great value of achar, it gives the thing itself the sraddha, the faith that it is meant to abide. It is a conservative force, it helps to preserve things as they are. But it is also a danger and hindrance when change becomes necessary. Conservative forces are either sattwic or tamasic. Achar with knowledge, observance full of the spirit of the thing itself, is sattwic and preserves the thing itself; achar without knowledge, looking to the le

"South Indian Bronzes" 1   THE DISCOVERY of Oriental Art by the aesthetic mind of Europe is one of the most significant intellectual phenomena of the times. It is one element of a general change which has been coming more and more rapidly over the mentality of the human race and promises to culminate in the century to which we belong. This change began with the discovery of Eastern thought and the revolt of Europe against the limitations of the Graeco-Roman and the Christian ideals which had for some centuries united in an uneasy combination to give a new form to her mentality and type of life. The change, whose real

Dayananda and the Veda   DAYANANDA accepted the Veda as his rock of firm foundation, he took it for his guiding view of life, his rule of inner existence and his inspiration for external work, but he regarded it as even more, the word of eternal Truth on which man's knowledge of God and his relations with the Divine Being and with his fellows can be rightly and securely founded. This everlasting rock of the Veda, many assert, has no existence, there is nothing there but the commonest mud and sand; it is only a hymnal of primitive barbarians, only a rude worship of personified natural phenomena, or even less than that, a liturgy of ceremonial sacrif