Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 20960

On the general question the truth seems to me to be very simple. It may be quite true that fine or telling rhythms without substance (substance of idea,. suggestion, feeling) are hardly poetry at all, even if they make good verse. But that is no ground for belittling beauty or excellence of form or ignoring its supreme importance for poetic perfection. Poetry is after all an art and a poet ought to be an artist of word and rhythm, even though necessarily, like other artists, he must also be something more than. that, even much more. I hold therefore that harshness and roughness are not merits but serious faults to be avoided by anyone who wants his work to be true poetry and survive. One can be strong and powerful, full of sincerity and substance without being harsh, rough or aggressive to the ear. On one aide much of Swinburne’s later poetry is a mere body of rhythmic sound without a soul, but what of Browning’s constant deliberate harshness and roughness or, let us say, excessive sturdiness (not to speak of much marshy ground and very flat levels), which deprive much of his work of the claim to be poetry,– even when it has force, it fails to be poetry of a high order. For this and other reasons much discredit has fallen upon it and it is fairly certain that posterity will carefully and with good reason forget to read a considerable part of what he has written. .Energy enough there is and abundance of matter even when he is not at his best and these carry the day for a time and give fame; but it is only writing perfect in its own kind that endures and brings a sure and self-existent immortality. Or if these cruder portions last it will be only by association with the perfection of the same poet’s work at his best. I may say also that if mere rhythmic acrobacies of the kind to which you very rightly object condemn a poet’s ‘work to inferiority and a literature deviating on to that line to decadence, the drive towards a harsh strength and rough energy of form and substance may easily lead to another kind of undesirable acrobacy, an opposite road towards individual inferiority and general decadence. Why should not Bengali poetry go on to the straight way of its progress without running either upon the rocks of roughness or into the shallows of mere melody? Austerity of course is another matter; rhythm can either be austere to bareness or sweet and subtle,. and a harmonious perfection can be attained in either of these extreme directions if the mastery is there.

As for rules – rules are necessary but they are not absolute; one of the chief tendencies of genius is to break old rules and make departures which create new ones. English poetry of today luxuriates. in movements which the mind of yesterday would have deprecated as too audaciously novel violences or as archaic license, yet it is evident that this has. led to discoveries of new rhythmic beauty with a very real charm and power, however unfortunate some of its results may be. Not the formal mind, but the ear must be the judge.

I do not think the appreciation of poetry like yours is dependent on a new technique; it is, as you say, something in the composition of the nature which responds or does not respond to the new note, that determines the rejection or the acceptance. At the same time the development of this new note the expression of a deeper yogic or mystic experience in poetry – may very well demand for its fullness new departures in technique, a new turn or turns of rhythm, but these should be, I think, subtle in their difference rather than aggressive.