Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 1. The Sources of Poetry
Examples of Overhead Poetry

Evaluations of 1934 – 1937 [8]

I understand your objection to “vasty region” ... though I don’t know if Milton ever used “vasty”. It is a Shakespearean word, a famous instance being in that line about calling “spirits from the vasty deep”....

I am describing, of course, the Overmind, but does the fact that the poem is only from the Higher Mind, however illumined, come in the way?

I know very well the Shakespearean line and I don’t think Milton uses “vasty”; but I did not at all mean that the choice of the word “vasty” was Miltonic. I meant that the phrase here gave a pseudo-Miltonic effect and so do “lofty region” and “myriad region” [proposed by the poet as emendations]; in some other context they might give some other impression, but that is the effect here....

I don’t think the lines express distinctively the Overmind — they would apply equally to any plane where the unity of the Self governed the diversity of its creation,— so the illumined Higher Mind is quite appropriate for the purpose.

P.S. By pseudo-Miltonic I mean a certain kind of traditional poetic eloquence which finds its roots in Milton but even when well done lacks in originality and can easily be vapid and sonantly hollow. In the last line there is inspiration but it has to be brought out by this preceding line; that must be inspired also. An expression like “lofty region”, “vasty region”, “myriad region” even expresses nothing but a bare intellectual fact with no more vision in it than would convey mere wideness without any significance in it.

13 October 1936