Overhead Poetry

4

Out of the Unknown

Out of the unknown, like meteor-rain

Fell glimmering on my dark despair

The syllables of a prophetic tongue:

"O heart disconsolate, beauty-wrung,

Wanderer unsated, not in vain

A voice of unattainable melody

Winging in heavenly air,

Came Brindavan's immortal memory

And turned thy human happiness

Into dim longing pain.

Thy life's search is not meaningless

Though Jumuna's banks are void and bare;

Now too a spirit-flute

Conveys again so holy a calm abroad

That even on misery's lips fallen mute

In uncompanioned throes

Pale silence blossoms like a rose

Deep-rooted in the soul's eternity.

Rest not till thou find sanctuary

Where Brindavan has gone behind its God.

For there the veil shall draw aside,

Which hangs between thy in-turned gaze

And Him of the irradiant face:

His musical tranquillity

Shall once more in thy ear abide

And all the heart-beats of thy life's increase
Count but the starlike moments of His peace."

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"Poetry, or at any rate a truly poetic poetry, comes always from some

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subtle plane through the creative vital and uses the outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only. There are three elements in the production of poetry; there is the original source of inspiration, there is the vital force of creative beauty which contributes its own substance and impetus and often determines the form, except when that also comes ready made from the original sources; there is finally the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. The most genuine and perfect poetry is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less authentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks the transmission or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails or is at best a creditable mental manufacture. It is the interference of these two parts either by obstruction or by too great an activity of their own or by both together that causes the difficulty and labour of writing. There would be no difficulty if the inspiration came through without obstruction or interference in a pure transcript—that is what happens in a poet's highest or freest moments when he writes not at all out of his own external human mind but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods.

"The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind wide-nesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature that give at least some appearance or reflection of it. When the source of inspiration is in the heart or the psychic there is more easily a good will in the vital channel, the flow is spontaneous; the inspiration takes at once

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its true form and speech and is transmitted without any interference or only a minimum of interference by the brain-mind, that great spoiler of the higher or deeper splendours. It is the character of the lyrical inspiration to flow in a jet out of the being—whether it comes from the vital or the psychic, it is usually spontaneous, for these are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature; it always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come. The poet labours in anguish to get the one true word, the authentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind; but it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say then there is something fine or adequate, though it may not be great unless there is an intervention from the higher levels. But when the outer brain is at work trying to fashion out of itself or to give its own version of what the higher sources are trying to pour down, then there results a manufacture or something quite inadequate or faulty or, at the best, 'good on the whole', but not the thing that ought to have come."

Touching on the direct personal question, Sri Aurobindo wrote: "Your source is the creative (poetic) intelligence and, at your best, the illumined mind." His verdict on the first version of the poem was: "Good on the whole." The second version—the present one— had his approval. He marked off the last couplet and three other lines—

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Pale silence blossoms like a rose

Deep-rooted in the soul's eternity...

Where Brindavan has gone behind its God—

as having come "through from the illumined mind". He added:

"The lines,

A voice of unattainable melody

Winging in heavenly air,

Came Brindavan's immortal memory,

though not on the same level as the best in the poem, are yet not far below them; they are a fine expression of a psychic and mystic reality."

(What is the difference between the plane of "dynamic or creative intelligence" and that of "dynamic vision"?)

"On one the creation is by thought, by the idea-force and images constructed by the idea, mind-images; on the other one creates by sight, by direct vision either of the thing in itself or by some living significant symbol or expressive body of it. This dynamic sight is not the vision that comes by an intense reconstruction of physical seeing or through vital experience (e.g. Shakespeare's), it is a kind of occult sight which sees the things behind the veil, the forms that are more intimate and expressive than any outward appearance. It is a very vivid sight and the expression that comes with it is also extremely vivid and living but with a sort of inner super-life. To be able to write at will from this plane is sufficiently rare,—though a poet habitually writing from some other level may stumble into it from time to time."

"The plane of dynamic vision is a part of the inner Mind and perhaps should be called a province rather than a plane. There are many kinds of vision in the inner Mind and not dynamic vision only. So, to fix invariable characteristics for the poetry of the inner Mind

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is not easy or even possible. It is a thing to be felt rather than mentally definable."

(I don't know what to do with this mind of mine. As a poetic instrument it is extremely variable. Why can't it always get successfully inspired?)

"Perhaps one reason why your mind is so variable is because it has learned too much and has too many influences stamped upon it; it does not allow the real poet in you who is a little at the back to be himself—it wants to supply him with a form instead of allowing him to breathe into the instrument his own notes. It is, besides, too ingenious. What you have to learn is the art of allowing things to come through and recognising among them the one right thing—which is very much what you have to do in Yoga also. It is really this recognition that is the one important need—once you have that, things become much easier."

*

(I want to produce something Upanishadic. But I get no glimmering at all of the sovereignly transcendent. The poem below almost tells me what I should do to solve my difficulty; but the manner in which it tells seems to drive home the fact of my being so far from what I want —the sheer stupendous Mantra. "The way is long, the wind is cold", though luckily it is not true that "the minstrel is infirm and old".)

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