Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Poets of the Ashram

Some General Remarks [5]

Amal is rather fond of high notes in his criticism, (an essay he sent long ago on the “Ashram poets” — what a phrase! — made me aghast with horror at its Pindaric — or rather Swinburnean — tone, it gave me an impression that Homer and Shakespeare and Valmiki had all been beaten into an insignificant jelly by our magnificent creations.) He is also sometimes too elaborately ingenious in his hunt for detail significances. But what he says is usually acute and interesting and, when he drives his pen instead of letting it gallop away with him, he can write exceedingly well.

His selection from your poems is not so surprising. Everyone reacts to poetry in his own way and except with regard to long-established favourites from the classics few would make the same choice. Give ten good critics the task of selecting the best lines of Shakespeare, avoiding stock passages, and the ten will each make a different list — and probably Shakespeare himself would disagree with all the ten. That must be still more the case with a “contemporary” poet where all is new stuff with no indications except one’s own personal reactions. I myself do not agree with your condemnation of these pieces to the W. P. B.

30 January 1935