Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
SABCL 26
Fragment ID: 7977
Q: Is there something definitely in the rhythm or language of a line of poetry which would prove it to be from a certain plane? Take the lines I am sending you. From what you once wrote to me I gather that my first quotation from Shakespeare has an Overmind movement as well as substance coming strongly coloured by the vital. But where and in what lies the vital colour which makes it the highest Shakespearian and not, say, the highest Wordsworthian – the line inspired by Newton? How does one catch here and elsewhere the essential differentiae?
A: It is a question of feeling, not of intellectual understanding. The second quotation from Shakespeare –
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows1 bent, none our parts so poor
But was a race of heaven –
is plainly vital in its excited thrill. Only the vital can speak with that thrill of absolute passion – the rhythm too is vital.1 I have given the instance2 of Shakespeare’s
it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
That is a “thought”, a judgment on life, so would naturally be assigned to the intellect, but as a matter of fact it is a throw-up from Macbeth’s vital, an emotional or sensational, not an intellectual judgment and its whole turn and rhythm are vital. About the first quotation, Shakespeare’s
the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
there might be some doubt, but still it is quite different in tone from Wordsworth’s line on Newton –
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone –
which is an above-head vision – and the difference comes because the vision of the “dreaming soul” is felt through the vital mind and heart before it finds expression. It is this constant vitality, vital surge in Shakespeare’s language, which makes it a sovereign expression not of mind or knowledge but of life.
27-2-1935
1 Alongside the lines themselves Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Tremendously vital.”
2 In The Future Poetry.