Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 2. The Poetry of the Spirit
The Poet and the Poem

Experience and Imagination

But is it necessary to say which is {{0}}which?[[Someone said to the correspondent, in regard to a certain poem: “This may not be an experience at all; who knows if it is not an imagination, and how are we to say which is which?” — Ed.]] It is not possible to deny that it was an experience, even if one cannot affirm it — not being in the consciousness of the writer. But even if it is an imagination, it is a powerful poetic imagination which expresses what would be the exact feeling in the real experience. It seems to me that that is quite enough. There are so many things in Wordsworth and Shelley which people say were only mental feelings and imaginations and yet they express the deeper seeings or feelings of the seer. For poetry it seems to me the point is irrelevant.

27 May 1936