Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
Examples of Grades of Perfection in Poetic Style

Examples from Amal Kiran and Sri Aurobindo [1]

I should like to know whether, when you call a poem very good, very fine, very beautiful, very powerful, or magnificent, you mean that it is inevitable — at least in its total impression, whatever slight declivities there may be in one or two places.

Not necessarily.

And does the difference of epithet in the above descriptions indicate levels of excellence or merely kinds of excellence on the same level?

Rather kinds than levels.

Also, if you say that a poem or part of it is very effective, do you always have in mind that which you have termed “effectivity” in the grade of perfections, as distinct from “adequateness”, “illumination of language”, “inspiredness” and “inevitability”?

No, I am not usually thinking of that classification.

For example, what do you think of these lines?

... For I have viewed,

Astir within my clay’s engulfing sleep,

An alien astonishment of light!

Let me be merged with its unsoundable deep

And mirror in futile farness the full height

Of a heaven barred for ever to my distress,

Rather than hoard life’s happy littleness!

This is indeed an example of the effective style at its best, that is to say rising to some touch of illumination, especially in the second, fourth and sixth lines.

16 September 1934