Letters on poetry and other forms of literature, on painting and the other arts, on beauty and aesthetics, and on their relation to the practice of yoga.
On Poetry Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Letters on poetry and other forms of literature, on painting and the other arts, on beauty and aesthetics, and on their relation to the practice of yoga. Most of these letters were written by Sri Aurobindo in the 1930 and 1940s to members of his ashram. Around one sixth of them were published during his lifetime; the rest were transcribed from his manuscripts after his passing. Many are being published for the first time in this volume.
THEME/S
I so much enjoyed Anatole France's joke about God in the mouth of the arch-scoffer Brotteaux in his book Les dieux ont soif that I must ask you to read it.
Ou Dieu veut empêcher le mal et ne le peut, ou il ne peut et ne le veut, ou il ne le peut ni ne le veut, ou il le veut et le peut. S'il le veut et ne le peut, il est impuissant; s'il le peut et ne le veut, il est pervers; s'il ne le peut ni ne le veut, il est impuissant et pervers; s'il le peut et le veut, que ne le fait-il, mon Père?1
I wonder what God might answer to it, supposing he should ever feel inclined to?
Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about that rational animal, man or Humanity (with a big H), and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France when they met in some Heaven of Irony, I suppose—it can't have been in the heaven of Karl Marx, in spite of France's conversion before his death. God is reported to have strolled up to him and said, "I say, Anatole, you know that was a good joke of yours; but there was a good cause too for my non-interference... Reason came along and told me, 'Look here, why do you pretend to exist? you know you don't exist and never existed or, if you do, you have made such a mess of your creation that we can't tolerate you any longer. Once we have got you out of the way, all will be right upon earth, tip-top, A-1: my daughter Science and I have
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arranged that between us. Man will raise his noble brow, the head of creation, dignified, free, equal, fraternal, democratic, depending upon nothing but himself, with nothing greater than himself anywhere in existence. There will be no God, no gods, no churches, no priestcraft, no religion, no kings, no oppression, no poverty, no war or discord anywhere. Industry will fill the earth with abundance, Commerce will spread her golden reconciling wings everywhere. Universal education will stamp out ignorance and leave no room for folly or unreason in any human brain; man will become cultured, disciplined, rational, scientific, well informed, arriving always at the right conclusion upon full and sufficient data. The voice of the scientist and the expert will be loud in the land and guide mankind to the earthly paradise. A perfected society; health universalised by a developed medical science and sound hygiene; everything rationalised; science evolved, infallible, omnipotent, omniscient; the riddle of existence solved; the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world; evolution, of which man, magnificent man, is the last term, completed in the noble white race, a humanitarian kindness and uplifting for our backward brown, yellow and black brothers; peace, peace, peace, reason, order, unity everywhere.' There was a lot more like that, Anatole, and I was so much impressed by the beauty of the picture and its convenience, for I would have nothing to do or to supervise, that I at once retired from business,—for, you know that I was always of a retiring disposition and inclined to keep myself behind the veil or in the background at the best of times. But what is this I hear?—it does not seem to me from reports that Reason even with the help of Science has kept her promise. And if not, why not? Is it because she would not or because she could not? or is it because she both would not and could not, or because she would and could, but somehow did not? And I say, Anatole, these children of theirs, the State, Industrialism, Capitalism, Communism and the rest have a queer look—they seem very much like Titanic monsters. Armed too with all the power of Intellect and all the weapons and organisation of Science. And it does look as if mankind were no freer under them than under the Kings and the Churches. What has happened—
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or is it possible that Reason is not supreme and infallible, even that she has made a greater mess of it than I could have done myself?" Here the report of the conversation ends; I give it for what it is worth, for I am not acquainted with this God and have to take him on trust from Anatole France.
1 August 1932
"Knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations between them; it is the production either of images or of concepts." [B. Croce, Esthetic, 1902, p. 1.] The origin of art, therefore, lies in the power of forming images. "Art is ruled uniquely by the imagination. Images are its only wealth. It does not classify objects, it does not pronounce them real or imaginary, does not qualify them, does not define them; it feels and presents them—nothing more." [In Carr, The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce, London, 1917, p. 35.] Because imagination precedes thought, and is necessary to it, the artistic, or image-forming, activity of the mind is prior to the logical, concept-forming, activity. Man is an artist as soon as he imagines, and long before he reasons.
The great artists understood the matter so. "One paints not with the hands but with the brain," said Michelangelo; and Leonardo wrote: "The minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they are doing the least external work." Everybody knows the story told of da Vinci, that when he was painting the "Last Supper", he sorely displeased the Abbot who had ordered the work, by sitting motionless for days before an untouched canvas; and revenged himself for the importunate Abbot's persistent query—When would he begin to work?—by using the gentleman as an unconscious model for the figure of Judas.
The essence of the esthetic activity lies in this motion less effort of the artist to conceive the perfect image that
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shall express the subject he has in mind; it lies in a form of intuition that involves no mystic insight, but perfect sight, complete perception, and adequate imagination. The miracle of art lies not in the externalization but in the conception of the idea; externalization is a matter of mechanical technique and manual skill.
"When we have mastered the internal word, when we have vividly and clearly conceived a figure or a statue, when we have found a musical theme, expression is born and is complete, nothing more is needed. If, then, we open our mouth, and speak or sing, ... what we do is to say aloud what we have already said within, to sing aloud what we have already sung within. If our hands strike the keyboard of the pianoforte, if we take up pencil or chisel, such actions are willed" (they belong to the practical, not to the aesthetic, activity), "and what we are then doing is executing in great movements what we have already executed briefly and rapidly within." [Esthetic, p. 50.]
—Will Durant, presenting the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce in The Story of Philosophy
I have not read Croce but it seems to me that Durant must have taken something of their depth out of them in his presentation. At any rate, I cannot accept the proposition that there are only two forms of knowledge, imaginative and intellectual,—still less if these two are made to coincide with the division between knowledge of the individual and that of the universal and again with image-production and concepts. Art can be conceptual as well as imaginative—it may embody ideas and not merely produce images. I do not see the relevancy of the Da Vinci story—one can sit motionless to summon up concepts as well as images or a concept and image together. Moreover what is this intuition which is perfect sight and adequate imagination, i.e., production of an image: is it empty of all "idea", of all conception? Evidently not,—for immediately it is said that the miracle of art lies in the conception of an idea. What then becomes of the division between the production of images and the production of concepts; and how can it be said that Art is ruled only by the image-producing power and images are its only
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wealth? All this seems to be very contradictory and confusing. You cannot cut up the human mind in that way—the attempt is that of the analysing intellect which is always putting things as trenchantly divided and opposite. If it had been said that in art the synthetic action of the idea is more prominent than the analytic idea which we find most prominent in logic and science and philosophical reasoning, then one could understand the statement. The integrating or direct integral conception and the image-making faculty are the two leading powers of art with intuition as the driving force behind it—that too would be a statement that is intelligible.
Still more strange is the statement that the externalisation is outside the miracle of art and is not needed; beauty, he says, is adequate expression, but how can there be expression, an expressive image without externalisation? The inner image may be the thing to be expressed, it may itself be expressive of some truth, but unless it is externalised how can the spectator contemplating beauty contemplate it at all or get into unity of vision with the artist who creates it? The difference between Shakespeare and ourselves lies only in the power of inwardly forming an image, not in the power of externalising it? But there are many people who have the power of a rich inner imaging of things, but are quite unable to put them down on paper or utter them in speech or transfer them to canvas or into clay or bronze or stone. They are then as great creative artists as Shakespeare or Michael Angelo? I should have thought that Shakespeare's power of the word and Michael Angelo's of translating his image into visible form is at least an indispensable part of the art of expression, creation or image-making. I cannot conceive of a Shakespeare or Michael Angelo without that power—the one would be a mute inglorious Shakespeare and the other a rather helpless and ineffective Angelo.
P.S. This is of course a comment on the statement as presented—I would have to read Croce myself in order to form a conception of what is behind his philosophy of Aesthetics.
19 December 1936
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We are all prone to the malady of the introvert, who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.2
I have not forgotten Russell, but I have neglected him, first, for want of time, second because for the moment I have mislaid your letter, third because of lack of understanding on my part. What is the meaning of taking interest in external things for their own sake? And what is an introvert? Both these problems baffle me.
The word introvert has come into existence only recently and sounds like a companion of pervert. Literally, it means one who is turned inwards. The Upanishad speaks of the doors of the senses that are turned outwards absorbing man in external things (for their own sake, I suppose) and of the rare man among a million who turns his vision inwards and sees the Self. Is that man an introvert? And is Russell's ideal man, interested in externals for their own sake, Cheloo the day-labourer, for instance, or Joseph the chauffeur, homo externalis Russellius, an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger, more brilliant, more creative than his external life,—the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within him an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external things by an inner standard and is interested in them not for their own sake but for their value to the soul's self-development, its psychic, religious, ethical or other self-expression? Are Tolstoy and Gandhi examples of introverts? Or in another field Goethe? Or does it mean one who cares for external things only as they touch his own mind or else concern his own ego? But that I suppose would include 999,999 men out of every million.
What are external things? Russell is a mathematician. Are mathematical formulae external things—even though they exist here only in the World-Mind and the mind of Man? If not, is
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Russell as mathematician an introvert? Again, Yajnavalkya says that one loves the wife not for the sake of the wife, but for the self's sake and so with other objects of interest or desire—whether the self be the inner self or the ego.3 Who desires external things for their own sake and not for some value to the conscious being? Even Cheloo is not interested in a two anna piece for its own sake, but for some vital satisfaction it can bring him; even with the hoarding miser it is the same. It is his vital being's passion for possession that he satisfies and that is something not external but internal, part of his inner make-up, the unseen personality that moves inside behind the veil of the body. What then is meant by Russell's for their own sake? If you will enlighten me on these points, I may still make an effort to comment on the mahāvākya of your former guru.
More important is his wonderful phrase about the emptiness within—on that at least I hope to make a comment one day or another.
27 December 1930
I write to let you know what is occupying me—Yoga meditation alternating with Lawrence's engrossing letters,4 of which I give you some lines that I liked very much.
Why are you so sad about your life? Only let go all this will to have things in your own control. We must all submit to be helpless and obliterated, quite obliterated, destroyed, cast away into nothingness. There is something will rise out of it, something new, that now is not. This which we are must cease to be, that we may come to pass in another being. Do not struggle, with your will, to dominate your conscious life—do not do it. Only drift, and let go—let go, entirely, and become dark, quite dark—like winter which mows away all the leaves and flowers, and lets only the dark underground roots remain.... Page 560 I tell this to you, I tell it to myself—to let go, to release from my will everything that my will would hold, to lapse back into darkness and unknowing. There must be deep winter before there can be spring. [pp. 285-86]
Why are you so sad about your life? Only let go all this will to have things in your own control. We must all submit to be helpless and obliterated, quite obliterated, destroyed, cast away into nothingness. There is something will rise out of it, something new, that now is not. This which we are must cease to be, that we may come to pass in another being. Do not struggle, with your will, to dominate your conscious life—do not do it. Only drift, and let go—let go, entirely, and become dark, quite dark—like winter which mows away all the leaves and flowers, and lets only the dark underground roots remain....
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I tell this to you, I tell it to myself—to let go, to release from my will everything that my will would hold, to lapse back into darkness and unknowing. There must be deep winter before there can be spring. [pp. 285-86]
I suppose Lawrence was a Yogi who had missed his way and come into a European body to work out his difficulties. "To lapse back into darkness and unknowing" sounds like the Christian mystic's passing into the "night of God", but I think Lawrence thought of a new efflorescence from the subconscient while the mystic's night of God was a stage between ordinary consciousness and the Superconscient Light.
26 June 1936
The passage you have quoted certainly shows that Lawrence had an idea of the new spiritual birth. What he has written there could be a very accurate indication of the process of the change, the putting away of the old mind, vital, physical consciousness and the emergence of a new consciousness from the now invisible Within, not an illusory periphery like the present mental, vital, physical ignorance but a truth-becoming from the true being within us. He speaks of the transition as a darkness created by the rejection of the outer mental light, a darkness intervening before the true light from the Invisible can come. Certain Christian mystics have said the same thing and the Upanishad also speaks of the luminous Being beyond the darkness. But in India the rejection of the mental light, the vital stir, the physical hard narrow concreteness leads more often, not to a darkness, but to a wide emptiness and silence which begins afterwards to fill with the light of a deeper greater truer consciousness, a consciousness full of peace, harmony, joy and freedom. I think Lawrence was held back from realising because he was seeking for the new birth in the subconscient vital and taking that for the Invisible Within—he mistook Life for Spirit; whereas Life can only be an expression of the Spirit. That too perhaps was the reason for his preoccupation with a vain and baffled sexuality.
Did you like the Ajanta frescos? I loved them: the pure
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fulfilment—the pure simplicity—the complete, almost perfect relations between the men and the women—the most perfect things I have ever seen. Botticelli is vulgar beside them. They are the zenith of a very lovely civilisation, the crest of a very perfect wave of human development.... [pp. 299-300]
His appreciation of the Ajanta paintings must have been due to the same drive that made him seek for a new poetry as well as a new truth from within. He wanted to get rid of the outward forms that for him hide the Invisible and arrive at something that would express with bare simplicity and directness some reality within. It is what made people begin to prefer the primitives to the developed art of the Renaissance. That is why he depreciates Botticelli as not giving the real thing, but only an outward grace and beauty which he considers vulgar in comparison with the less formal art of old that was satisfied with bringing out the pure emotion from within and nothing else.
It is the same thing which makes him want a stark bare rocky directness for modern poetry.5
28 June 1936
In one of his letters, Lawrence says: "You see one can only write creative stuff when it comes—otherwise it's not much good." [p. 89]
All statements are subject to qualification. What Lawrence states is true in principle, but in practice most poets have to sustain the inspiration by industry. Milton in his later days used to write every day fifty lines; Virgil nine which he corrected and recorrected till it was within half way of what he wanted. In other words he used to write under any other conditions and pull at his inspiration till it came.
To go by my own experience, the first part of the statement doesn't seem always to be true. But perhaps the best creations
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are those which come in that way.
Yes. Usually the best lines, passages etc. come like that.
10 November 1936
Every time I complain of great difficulty, no inspiration, you quote the names of Virgil, Milton, etc. Same in Yoga—you say 10 years, 12 years—pooh!
I thought you were honestly asking for the truth about inspiration according to Lawrence and effort; and I answered to that. I did not know that it was connected purely with your personal reactions. You did not put it like that. You asked whether Lawrence's ideas were correct and I was obliged to point out that they were subject to qualification since both great and second class and all kinds of poets have not waited for a fitful inspiration but tried to regularise it.
13 November 1936
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