Sri Aurobindo's principal work of literary criticism where he outlines the history of English poetry and explores the possibility of a spiritual poetry in the future.
On Poetry
Sri Aurobindo's principal work of literary criticism. In this work, Sri Aurobindo outlines the history of English poetry and explores the possibility of a spiritual poetry in the future. It was first published in a series of essays between 1917 and 1920; parts were later revised for publication as a book.
THEME/S
If you expect matter of fact verisimilitude from X or a scientific
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ornithologically accurate swan, you are knocking at the wrong door. But I don't see exactly the point of your objection. The lake in this poem is not a lake but a symbol; the swan is not a swan but a symbol. You can't expect the lake merely to ripple and do nothing else. It is as much a symbol as the Bird of Fire or the Bird of the Vedic poet who faced the guardians of the Soma and brought the Soma to Indra (or was it to a Rishi? I have forgotten)—perhaps carrying a pot or several pots in his claws and beak!! for I don't know how else he could have done it. How is he to use the symbol if you don't make allowances for a miraculous Swan? If the Swan does nothing but what an ordinary swan does, it ceases to be a symbol and becomes only a metaphor. The animals of these symbols belong not to earth but to Wonderland.
The objection that stars do not get nata [bent] stands only if the poem describes objective phenomena or aims at using purely objective images. But if the vision behind the poem is subjective, the objection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical life which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in subtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be no improbability of a star being nata—such expressions attribute a mystical life to the stars and can appropriately express this in mystic images. I agree with you about the fineness of the line.
27.5.1936
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