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
For poetry one must have a special inspiration or genius. With literary capacity one can write good verse only.
Genius usually means an inborn power which develops of itself. Talent and capacity are not genius, they can be acquired.
Page 518
But that is the ordinary rule, by Yoga one can manifest what is concealed in the being.
22.9.1934
No poet feels his poetry as a "normal phenomenon"—he feels it as an inspiration—of course anybody could "make" poetry by learning the rules of prosody and a little practice. In fact many people write verse, but the poets are few. Who are the ordinary poets? There is no such thing as an ordinary poet.
30.5.1937
A born poet is usually a genius, poetry with any power or beauty in it implies genius.
Richness of image is not the whole of poetry. There are many born poets who avoid too much richness of image. There are certain fields of consciousness which express themselves naturally through image most—there are others that do it more through idea and feeling.
13.2.1936
Poetic genius—without which there cannot be any originality—is born, but it takes time to come out; the first work even of great poets is often not original. That is in ordinary life. In Yoga poetic originality can come by an opening from within, even if it was not there before in such a way as to be available in this life.
22.3.1934
You must remember that you are not a "born" poet—you are trying to bring out something from the Unmanifest inside you. You can't demand that that should be an easy job. It may come
Page 519
out suddenly and without apparent reason like the Ananda—but you can't demand it.
8.6.1934
What you say about the spontaneous development of the capacity in the metre after a silent and inactive incubation of over two years is quite true. But it is not amazing; it often happens and is perfectly natural to those who know the laws of the being by observation and experience. In the same way one suddenly finds oneself knowing more of a language or a subject after returning to it subsequent to a short interim without study, problems which had been abandoned as unsolvable solving themselves spontaneously and easily after sleep or when they are taken up again; knowledge or ideas coming up from within without reading or learning or hearing from others. Sudden efflorescences of capacity, intuitions, wellings up of all sorts of things point to the same inner power or inner working. It is what we mean when we speak of the word, knowledge or activity coming out of the silence, of a working behind the veil of which the outer mind is unconscious but which one day bears its results, of the inner manifesting itself in the outer. It makes at once true and practical what sounds only a theory to the uninitiated,—the strong distinction made by us between the inner being and the outer consciousness. It is how also unexpected Yogic capacity reveals itself, sometimes no doubt as a result of long and apparently fruitless effort, sometimes as a spontaneous out-flowering of what was concealed there all the time or else as a response to a call which had been made but at the time and for long seemed to be without an answer.
22.2.1935
Home
Sri Aurobindo
Books
SABCL
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.