Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
I have read Girija, but cannot say I understand him very well. His point seems to be that which would I suppose be urged by all who object to laghu guru1, that you have to read with an intonation which is not natural to Bengali rhythm. But I do not see how he makes the existing laghu guru poems pure Bengali in rhythm. If they are, that seems to me to give away the case against the introduction of Sanskrit laghu guru. However of these things I am no judge. (Where was your answer to him? I seem to have missed it.)
All criticism of poetry is bound to have a strong subjective element in it and that is the source of the violent differences of appreciation of any given author by equally “eminent” critics. All is relative here, Art and Beauty also, and our view of things and our appreciation of them depends on the consciousness which views and appreciates them. Some critics recognise this and go in frankly for a purely subjective appreciation – “this is why I like this and disapprove of that, I give my own appreciation”. Most however try to fit their personal likes and dislikes to some standard of criticism which they conceive to be objective; this need of objectivity, of the support of some impersonal truth independent of our personality, is the main source of theories, canons, standards of art. But the theories, canons, standards themselves vary and are set up in one age only to be broken in another. Is there then no beauty of art independent of our varying mentalities, is beauty 
a creation of our minds, a construction of our ideas and our senses, but not existent otherwise? In that case Beauty is non-existent in Nature, it is put upon Nature by our minds through adhyāropa [mental imposition]. But this contradicts the fact that it is in response to an object and not independently of it that the idea of beautiful or not beautiful originally rises within us. Beauty does exist in what we see, but there are two aspects of it, essential beauty and the forms it takes. “Eternal beauty wandering on her way” does that wandering by a multitudinous variation of forms appealing to a multitudinous variation of consciousness. There comes in the difficulty. Each individual consciousness tries to seize the eternal beauty expressed in a form (here a particular poem or work of art), but is either assisted by the form or repelled by it, wholly attracted or wholly repelled, or partially attracted and partially repelled. There may be errors in the poet’s or artist’s transcription of beauty which mar the reception, but even these have different effects on different people. But the more radical divergences arise from the variation in the constitution of the mind and its response. Moreover, there are minds, the majority indeed, who do not respond to “artistic” beauty at all – something inartistic appeals much more to what sense of beauty they have – or else they are not seeking beauty, but only vital pleasure.
A critic cannot escape altogether from these limitations. He can try to make himself catholic and objective and find the merit or special character of all he reads or sees in poetry and art, even when they do not evoke his strongest sympathy or deepest response. I have no temperamental sympathy for much of the work of Pope and Dryden, but I can see their extraordinary perfection or force in their own field, the masterly conciseness, energy, point, metallic precision into which they cut their thought or their verse, and I can see too how that can with a little infusion of another quality be the basis of a really great poetic style, as Dryden himself has shown in his best work. But there my appreciation stops; I cannot rise to the heights of admiration of those who put them on a level with or on a higher level than Wordsworth, Keats or Shelley – I cannot escape from the feeling that their work, even though more consistently perfect within their limits and in their own manner (at least Pope’s), was less great in poetic quality. These divergences rise from a conception of beauty and a feeling for beauty which belongs to the temperament. Housman’s2 exaltation of Blake rises directly from his feeling and peculiar conception of poetic beauty as appealing to an inner sensation, an appeal marred and a beauty deflowered by coherent intellectual thought. But that I shall not discuss now. This however does not mean that all criticism is without any true use. The critic can help to open the mind to the kinds of beauty he himself sees and not only to see but to appreciate at their full value certain elements that make them beautiful or give them their peculiar beauty. Housman, for instance, may help many minds to see a beauty in Blake which they did not see before. They may not agree with him in his comparison of Blake and Shakespeare, but they can follow him to a certain extent and seize better that element in poetic beauty which he overstresses but makes at the same time more vividly visible.