Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
I am rather shaky sometimes about philosophy in poems. My friends Niren and Annada are down on it. But how can I help it? I have to be true to myself, isn’t it? And besides, why must I agree with them about this dictum of theirs that a poem must have no philosophy? And why must philosophy be a taboo in a poem if it comes in a musical garb? Please let me have a few lines from you on this point. Isn’t this musical? By the way I am not at all depressed or anything. The poem, I hope, doesn’t suggest that? I am in a delightful mood as Mother will have told you?
It is a very beautiful poem and the poeticisation of Anatole France is very well done.
What do they mean by “philosophy” in a poem? Of course if one sets out to write a metaphysical argument or treatise 
in verse like the Greek Empedocles1 or the Roman Lucretius2, it is a risky business and is likely to land you into prosaic poetry which is a less pardonable mixture than poetic prose! And also one has to be very careful, when philosophising in a less perilous way, not to be flat or heavy. It is obviously easier to be poetic when writing about a skylark than when writing about the attributes of the Brahman! But that does not mean that there is to be no thought or no expression of truth in poetry; there is no great poet who has not tried to «philosophise». Shelley wrote about the skylark, but he also wrote about the Brahman. “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,” is as good poetry as “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit.” And there are flights of unsurpassable poetry in the Gita and the Upanishads. These rigid dicta are always excessive and there is no reason why a poet should allow the expression of his personality or the spirit within him or his whole poetic mind to be clipped, cabined or stifled by any theories or “thou shalt not”-s of that character.