Classical and Romantic

Foreword

We were doing Coleridge's Kubla Khan in the first year Poetry Class at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry. When we had recovered enough from the intoxication of reading it and could ask critical questions, the very first and the most general and fundamental that arose were apropos of the line:

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted...

They were, "What exactly does the epithet 'romantic' mean here? And how does it reflect the mind of the movement in English and Continental literature called Romanticism as distinguished from the other called Classicism - Romanticism of which Kubla Khan is itself considered one of the quintessential products?"

These two questions were immediately followed by a third, "What has Sri Aurobindo written about those movements?" The teacher gave a series of talks, taking the views of a well-known English critic as his point of departure and, in the course of his discussion, touching on the opinions of some other writers of our day. As the aim was not to exhaust the contributions of modern critical thought, several pronouncements of fair interest in themselves were bypassed, and mainly an attempt made to put together, develop and apply the leading insights of Sri Aurobindo.

An expanded version of this attempt constitutes the present book. As Sri Aurobindo is not only a scholar in. many languages, a penetrating literary critic, a far-reaching philo-sophical thinker and a profound poet but also a master of spiritual illumination, a guide to the all-round inner development which he terms the Integral Yoga, it has been felt that concentration on an approach to the subject of "Classical" and "Romantic" through him is most likely to yield what is new as well as true.

K.D.S.

1962