Overhead Poetry

The Divine Denier

Wanderer of hell's chimerical abyss,

Dreaming for ever of star-fragrance blown

From the efflorescent heart of the Unknown!

They knew thee not who scorned thy madnesses,

Nor plumbed the beauty of that terrible mood

Which hailed as a supreme apocalypse

The all-desiring and all-quenching lips

Of death's unfathomable solitude!

Thou wert Heaven's most God-haunted enemy.

The universe to thee was one vast tomb,

But of so tense, ineffable a gloom

That thou stoodst drunk with measureless mystery,

Ecstatic in the very shadow of doom

As though an infinite sun had blinded thee!

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Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"A really fine poem. I think 'hell' is better than 'sin' [in line I]. As there is a phrase 'goody-goody' expressing a morbid sentimentality of virtue, so there could be a phrase 'baddy-baddy' which could express a morbid sentimentality of vice-and 'sin' here would be dangerously near to that. Still it can stand, if you prefer it-though it does not give the full epic note which is sustained throughout the rest of the poem."

The poet had roughly Baudelaire in mind as his subject: hence the word "sin". Sri Aurobindo wrote of Baudelaire, "He was a good poet with a perverted imagination", but considered him quite inadequate for the role depicted in the poem. According to Sri Aurobindo, the figure of Archangel Satan would best give the type.

In connection with epic and non-epic blank verse, we may note that a blank verse other than epic but also different from the non-epic of Agni Jatavedas has been distinguished by Sri Aurobindo in commenting on the poet' s First Sight of Girnar in Part r: "No, it is not the epic kind-the rhythm is rather large, calm and reflective than epic."

Nirodbaran wrote to Sri Aurobindo: "You have stated to Nishi-kanta about his Bengali translation of Amal's Agni Jatavedas: 'It is a splendid translation rendering the full poetic force and colour and substance of the original which you have followed with a remarkable exactitude.' But Nishikanta, I understand, writes from the subtle vital plane. If a poem is from overhead, would not its spiritual value be lost in a translation from a different plane?"

Sri Aurobindo replied:

"If you mean the spiritual substance, I suppose it would be lost. I was looking at the poetic beauty of Nishikanta's rendering which is

on a par with the original. As for the subtle vital sublimated it enters largely into Amal's poem, even if it is a sort of supervital."

*

(This poem seems to have an occult air about it on the whole. But perhaps it is more surrealistic ? What would you say of its quality and value ?)

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