Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
SABCL 26
Fragment ID: 7960
Q: I have begun a poem on Parvati in blank verse quatrains. Here are the first five stanzas. If at all you think I should continue, will not the closed stanza plan adopted so far prove monotonous?
Men dreamed of her strange hair and saw it fall
A cataract of nectar through their sleep,
Crushing the soul with sweetness – and woke a-dread,
In all their limbs a speechless heaven of pain!
Her voice reached to Creations highest peak,
And though a music most delicate its rapture
Swept through the seven worlds and found the gods
Helpless like flames swaying in a huge wind!
A terror beautiful were those dark eddies,
Her fathomless vague-glimmering pure eyes,
Wherein the spirits that rashly plunged their love
Whirled through a lifetime of bewildered bliss!
But all in vain her voice and gaze and hair
Before the snowy calm immutable
Of Shiva’s meditation, a frozen fire
Of omnipotence alone with its self-splendour!
Like an immortal death his far face glowed –
Inaudible disclosure of some white
Eternity of unperturbed dream-vast
Behind the colour and passion of time’s heart-beat!
A: It looks as if you were facing the problem of blank verse by attempting it under conditions of the maximum difficulty. Not content with choosing a form which is based on the single-line blank verse (I mean, of course, each line a clear-cut entity by itself) as opposed to the flowing and freely enjambed variety you try to unite flow-lines and single-line and farther undertake a form of blank verse quatrains! I have myself tried the blank verse quatrain; even, when I attempted the single-line blank verse on a large scale in Savitri I found myself falling involuntarily into a series of four-line movement. But even though I was careful in the building, I found it led to a stiff monotony and had to make a principle of variation – one line, two line, three line, four line or longer passages (paragraphs as it were) alternating with each other; otherwise the system would be a failure.
In attempting the blank verse quatrain one has to avoid like poison all flatness of movement – a flat movement immediately creates a sense of void and sets the ear asking for the absent rhyme. The Fast line of each verse especially must be a powerful line acting as a strong close so that the rhyming close-cadence is missed no more. And, secondly, there must be a very careful building of the structure. A mixture of sculpture and architecture is indicated – there should be plenty of clear-cut single lines but they must be built into a quatrain that is itself a perfect structural whole. In your lines it is these qualities that are lacking, so that the poetic substance fails in its effect owing to rhythmic insufficiency. One closing line of yours will absolutely not do – that of the fourth stanza – its feminine ending is enough to damn it; you may have feminine endings but not in the last line of the quatrain, and its whole movement is an unfinished movement. The others would do, but they lose half their force by being continuations of clauses which look back to the previous line for their sense. They can do that sometimes, but only on condition of their still haying a clear-cut wholeness in themselves and coming in with a decisive force. In the structure you have attempted to combine the flow of the lyrical quatrain with the force of a single-line blank verse system. I suppose it can be done, but here the single-line has interfered with the flow and the flow has interfered with the single-line force.
In my version –
Men dreamed of her strange hair; they saw it fall
A cataract of nectar through their sleep,
Crushing the soul with sweetness; they woke from dread,
With all their limbs a speechless heaven of pain!
Her voice soared to Creation’s highest peak,
And that most delicate music with its rapture
Sweeping through seven worlds found out the gods
Helpless like flames swaying in a huge wind!
A beautiful terror were those dark conscious eddies,
Her pure vague-glimmering and fathomless eyes;
Therein the spirits that rashly plunged their love
Fell whirled through lifetimes of bewildering bliss!
But all in vain, her voice and gaze and hair
Before the snow-pale and immutable calm
Of Shiva’s meditation, a frozen fire
Of lone omnipotence locked in self-light!
His far face glowed like an immortal death:
The inaudible disclosure of some white
Eternity, some unperturbed dream-vast,
It slew the colour and passion of time’s heart-beat! –
I have made only minor changes for the most part, but many of them in order to secure what I feel to be the missing elements. I have indicated in the places where my reasons for change were of another kind what those reasons were1; the rest are dictated by the two considerations of rhythmic efficiency and quatrain structure. In the first verse this structure is secured by putting two pauses in the middle of lines, each clause taking up the sense from there and enlarging into amplitude and then bringing to a forceful close. In the second verse and in the fourth I have attempted a sweeping continuous quatrain movement but taken care to separate them by a different structure so as to avoid monotony. The third is made of two blank verse couplets, each complementary in sense to the other; the fifth is based on a one-line monumental phrase worked out in sense by a three-line development with a culminating close-line. The whole thing is not perhaps as perfect as it needs to be, but it is in the nature of a demonstration, to show on what principles the blank verse quatrain can be built if it has to be done at all – I have founded it on the rule of full but well-sculptured single lines and an architectural quatrain structure: others are possible, but I think would be more difficult to execute.
I had half a mind to illustrate my thesis by quotations from Savitri, but -I resist the temptation, warned by the scowling forehead of Time – this will do.
P.S. I don’t consider the proximity of the closing words “light” and “white” in the last stanzas an objection since the quatrains stand as separate entities – so I did not alter; of course in continuous blank verse an objection would be.
18-7-1933
1 Line 3: “A dread seems to me rather feeble.”
Line 5: “ “Reached” is very weak.”
Line 17: “Why this inversion? It spoils the power and directness of the line.”
Lines 18 & 19: “The double of is very awkward and spoils both force and flow.”