Trance

Notes on the metres of the poems and their significance drawn from the letters of Sri Aurobindo

The Bird of Fire & Trance

These two poems are in the nature of metrical experiments. The first is a kind of compromise between the stress system and the foot measure. The stanza is of four lines, alternately of twelve and ten stresses. The second and fourth line in each stanza can be read as a ten-foot line of mixed iambs and anapaests, the first and third, though a similar system subject to replacement of afoot anywhere by a single-syllable half-foot could be applied, are still mainly readable by stresses.

The other poem is an experiment in the use of quantitative foot measures not following any existing model, but freely invented. It is a four-line stanza reading alternately

and

It could indeed be read otherwise, in several ways, but read in the ordinary way of accentual feet it would lose all lyrical quality and the soul of its rhythm.

The Bird of Fire is the living vehicle of the gold fire of the Divine Light and the white fire of the Divine Tapas and the crimson fire of Divine Love—and everything else of the Divine Consciousness.

CWSA > Collected Poems > Six Poems (1934) - Note

Replies to Questions on Trance

Were Trance and the Bird of Fire each composed at a single sitting and can the date be given?

The Bird of Fire was written on two consecutive days—and afterwards revised. The Trance at one sitting—it took only a few minutes. You may perhaps have the date as they were both completed on the same day and sent to you the next.

In the line—

Halo-moon of ecstasy unknown—

is the "o" assonance satisfactory, or does the ear feel the two sounds come too close or for some reason are too insistent?

It seems to me that there is a sufficient space between to prevent the assonance from being too prominent; it came like that and I kept it because the repetition and prolongation of the full "o" sound seemed to me to carry in it a certain unexpressed (and inexpressible) significance.

What exactly does "Halo-moon" signify? In line 2 there was the concrete physical moon ringed with a halo. Is the suggestion of line 10 that a glory or indefinable presence is imaged by a lunar halo—the moon as a distinct object now being swallowed up in the halo? My difficulty is that if it is "halo" simply it cannot be a "moon" as well. But possibly the compound "halo-moon" is elliptical for "moon with its surrounding halo".

Well, it is of course the "moon with its halo", but I wanted to give a suggestion if not of the central form being swallowed up in the halo, at least of moon and halo being one ecstatic splendour as when one is merged in ecstasy.

The last line—

Ocean self enraptured and alone—

I took as meaning "self, who art symbolised by this ocean", since otherwise you would probably have written "self-enraptured"?

Yes, that is right.

The Metre of Trance

Have you yourself invented the metre of Trance or is it adopted from some former poet?

No. I am not aware that anyone has used this metre before. It came to me just as I finished the Bird of Fire and I put it down.

23 October 1933

Is it not the case that, in the metre of Trance (quantitative trimeter) one must either keep a rather staccato movement, pausing with almost unbroken regularity at the end of each foot, or else risk the iambic pentameter approximation by the use of an easy and fluent movement? Thus it is your very beautiful line

Mute the body aureate with light,

that would seem least out of place if inserted amidst other iambic pentameters.

Possibly—though the line does not read to my ear very well as an iambic pentameter—the movement sounds then common and rather lame. It goes better as a trochaic rhythm. It is true that there is this dilemma and the whole skill will then be in avoiding the staccato effect, but that necessitates a very light movement.

I think the principle of this metre should be to say a few very clear-cut things in a little space. At least it looks so to me at present—though a more free handling of the metre might show that the restriction was not justifiable.

I had chosen this metre—or rather it came to me and I accepted it—because it seemed to me both brief and easy, so suitable for an experiment. But I find now that it was only seemingly easy and in fact very difficult. The ease with which I wrote it only came from the fact that by a happy inspiration the right rhythm for it came into my consciousness and wrote itself out by virtue of the rhythm being there. If I had consciously experimented, I might have stumbled over the same difficulties as have come in your way.

Letters on Poetry and Art > On Some Poems Written during the 1930s

How to read the color-coded changes below? 1. SABCL version : lines with any changes & specific changes 2. CWSA version : lines with any changes & specific changes

NOTES FROM EDITOR

16 October 1933. There are two handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript, which is dated “16.10.33”. In the same letter in which Sri Aurobindo wrote about the composition of “The Bird of Fire” (see above), he noted that “Trance” was written “at one sitting—it took only a few minutes”. In Six Poems “Trance” was placed after “The Bird of Fire”.