Aeschylus : (c.524-455 BC) Athenian poet considered inventor of Greek tragedy.
... are these, then? Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Kalidasa? And what about Aeschylus, Virgil and Milton? I suppose all the names you mention except Goethe can be included; or if you like you can put them all including Goethe in three rows—e.g.: 1st row Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki 2nd row Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Virgil, Milton 3rd row Goethe and there you are! To speak less flippantly... of his own. Dante's triple world beyond is more constructed by the poetic seeing mind than by this kind of elemental demiurgic power—otherwise he would rank by their side; the same with Kalidasa. Aeschylus is a seer and creator but on a much smaller scale. Virgil and Milton have a less spontaneous breath of creative genius; one or two typal figures excepted, they live rather by what they have said than... possible. And then there is Keats, whose Hyperion compelled even the sneering Byron to forget his usual condescending attitude towards "Johnny" and confess that nothing grander had been seen since Aeschylus. Racine, too, cannot be left out—can he? Voltaire adored him, Voltaire who called Shakespeare a drunken barbarian. Finally, what of Wordsworth, whose Immortality Ode was hailed by Mark Pattison as ...
... smiling control and a shaping propriety over the elan of assertive individuality. The chief names usually listed in Graeco-Roman Classicism are Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil and Lucretius. These six, all things considered, are indeed greater than the brilliant sextet: Pindar, Simonides, Sappho, Horace, ... perceives and understands life. As a result, his effect on the cultural consciousness of ancient Greece through his two epics was different from that of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides through their dramas. To quote Sri Aurobindo again: "The epic poems revealed the Hellenic people to itself in the lucid and clear nobility and... the realism of Homer's humbler folk. Not that the later mind of Greece was divorced from laughter or from depiction of low life; the Greeks of the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles "staged a burlesque after each tragic trilogy", 25 but they never mixed the genres. What, however, akins Homer to them is that nothing in his ...
... mere bareness anywhere." 16 It is a sort of inner tavasyā or discipline, an ā tmasaṁyama or self-possession that renders Milton, like Aeschylus and Dante, austere although outwardly he is lavish of splendour and strength and sweep, even as Aeschylus is audacious in colour and image, Dante burdened with beauty and significance in the midst of his forcefully cut conciseness. We may add, with... can be felt in the spirit of the writing, "as a something constant, self-gathered, grave and severe; it is the quality that one at once is aware of in Milton, Wordsworth, Page 76 Aeschylus and which even their most fervent admirers would hardly attribute to Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Euripides...." 15 "There can be a very real spirit and power of underlying austerity... an accident, was found beneath the sumptuousness, next to the skin, an under-robe of sack-cloth. If that is admitted, then Milton can keep his claim to austerity in spite of his epic fulness and Aeschylus in spite of the exultant daring of his images and the rich colour of his language. Dante is, I think, the perfect type of austerity in poetry, standing between the two extremes and combining the most ...
... the dozen in every land, Sophocles makes a woman declare as if in retort that husbands too are to be had in plenty. (3) Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the three supreme creators of drama in ancient Greece, each of them is different from the others. Aeschylus the senior most of the three has vision and spirit and strength. He throws out the spark and lustre of inner knowledge, there is... whole, both as a story and a play. Such for example was the Theben trilogy of Sophocles based on the story of the Theben king, Oedipus, and his daughter Antigone, or else, the Orestenian trilogy of Aeschylus dealing with the story of king Agamemnon and his son Orestes – Orestes was the Hamlet of Greek tragedy. The fourth piece in a tetralogy used to be something amusing, like a farce that rounded off... attain its supreme point of greatness in all manner of achievement and creative ability. In every field there appeared in that age men of outstanding gifts. In the realm of tragic drama there were Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; in comedy there was Aristophanes. Herodotus the father of History was there and the master sculptor Phidias. Above all, there was Socrates with his band of young disciples ...
... perhaps,—but I have here perforce to put a dash and finish— 8 October 1932 I said that Aeschylus like Milton was austere au fond —there is as in Dante a high serious restrained power behind all they write; but the outward form in Milton is grandiose, copious, lavish of strength and sweep, in Aeschylus bold, high-imaged, strong in colour, in Dante full of concise, packed and significantly forceful... effort and artifice, even if a powerful and inspired artifice. It is why Yeats finds your sonnets stiff and laboured, I suppose. Yet very great poets and writers have used them, so great a poet as Aeschylus or so great a prose stylist as Tacitus. Then there are the famous "knots" in the Mahabharata, the recurrence of lines so compressed in thought and speech (although the normal style of the poem is... lose the spirit altogether. In the spirit of the writing you can feel it as something constant,—self-gathered, grave and severe; it is the quality that one at once is aware of in Milton, Wordsworth, Aeschylus and which even their most fervent admirers would hardly attribute to Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Euripides. But there is also an austerity in the poetic manner and that is more difficult ...
... seven of the estimated 70 plays written by Aeschylus have survived into modem times. Many of Aeschylus' works were influenced by the Persian invasion of Greece, which took place during his lifetime. His play The Persians remains an important primary source of information about this period in Greek history. The war was so important to Greeks and to Aeschylus himself that, upon his death around 456 BC... manifested in the highest degree, beauty, grace, self-contained dignity and grandeur, which we associate with the highest genius. Cultural events such as public performances of the great plays of Aeschylus, 15 Sophocles 16 and Euripides 17 formed part of the developing Page 14 GREECE 362 BC Page 15 urban lifestyle. All citizens, rich or poor, could enjoy these... pro (before or in front of) plus the plural of the Greek pylon or pylaion (gate), meaning literally 'that which is before the gates', but the word has come to mean simply gate building. 15. Aeschylus (525-456 Be) was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being ...
... an English writer and poet. Page 252 October 9, 1932 I said that Aeschylus like Milton was austere au fond [at bottom]—there is as in Dante a high serious restrained power behind all they write; but the outward form in Milton is grandiose, copious, lavish of strength and sweep, in Aeschylus bold, high-imaged, strong in colour, in Dante full of concise, packed and significantly... the spirit of the writing you can feel it as a something constant, self-restrained, grave and severe; Page 250 it is the quality that one at once is aware of in Milton, Words worth, Aeschylus and which even their most fervent admirers would hardly attribute to Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Euripides. But there is also an austerity in the poetic manner and that is more difficult... in an accident, was found beneath the sumptuousness, next to the skin, an under-robe of sackcloth. If that is admitted, then Milton can keep his claim to austeity in spite of his epic fullness and Aeschylus in spite of the exultant daring of his images and the rich colour of his language. Dante is, I think, the perfect type of austerity in poetry, standing between the two extremes and combining the most ...
... ; for Homer and Aeschylus never sound the extreme Romantic note that is heard in Spenser and Marlowe, while Catullus in even his "Romantic frenzy" is still "Classically clear". Could we argue that impulses and fantasies were not as much at work? Should we put Aeschylus, for instance, below any Elizabethan in sheer imaginative fury? Lucas 24 writes: "The rumour went that Aeschylus dipped his pen in... It is even older." He considers the legends of Greek mythology highly Romantic, nor does Greek Romanticism end for him with the fabulous and the fantastic in Homer: imagination breaks bounds in Aeschylus, passion snaps the leash in Euripides and strange as well as violent themes are found in much Greek drama. Touches of the Romantic occur in Latin literature too - in Ovid "with his love-lorn heroines"... something of the nectar quaffed by the immortals flows through Classical poetry no less than Romantic, and if the intoxication shows less flush in the former and if the enthou-siasmos even of an Aeschylus or of a Milton works with a hand that never trembles, the world of true Classicism cannot yet be described as "strictly sober". The more tempered look, the less agitated gesture, the suggestion of ...
... Sri Aurobindo: Which two, Great Heavens, O Aeschylus? R&Z?orX&Y?I suppose the latter. And the elliptical "Hence those two" - Hence I asked about those two? I shall become quite a skilful Aeschylean scholar at this rate. 45 2.NB: S is suffering from neuralgia, no doubt but 2 ry to the joint trouble. Sri Aurobindo: This is worse than Aeschylus. Is it an Page 100 Egyptian ... hieroglyph? English? Bengali? Shorthand? 46 NB: Now all symptoms are subsiding. Pt. will soon become all right. Sri Aurobindo: What the deuce is pt., O Aeschylus? 47 NB: D better; pain. Sri Aurobindo: Is it that he has a better pain? or that the fact that he has a pain shows that he is better or that he is better, but still has pain? An aphoristic style lends itself to many joyfully ...
... curiosity. No doubt, the qualities mentioned are there, but in isolation from several others they look somewhat hap-hazard. Thus it is a mistake to confine energy to Romanticism. If Homer and Aeschylus, Lucretius and Milton are not energetic, then one does not know what energy can mean. Only, theirs is an energy more contained, more organised than in the Roman-tics. Again, to give spirituality to... has the observation: "There is much, then, that is 'romantic' in classical Greek literature; yet it would Page 53 be easy to exaggerate. Homer is never unreal as Spenser is; Aeschylus never outrages common sense or common taste like Marlowe." 32 It is evident that Lucas is not unaware of Roman-ticism in Elizabethan poetry. Still, no whole-hearted and clear-eyed acknowledgment ...
... poems, if they have beauty, are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet's work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only 7 plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets. He says that "Mallarmé's verse is acquired and intricate" i.e. a thing not of spontaneity, but of intellec... refuse beauty to Mallarmés poetry would be itself an acrobacy of the intellect. For what then is beauty? Simplicity and beauty are not convertible terms. There can be a difficult beauty. What about Aeschylus then? or Blake? I tried to break that nut of his (no. 199) 65 —an exposition of it is also attached. But, pardi ! It was a hard nut, Guru. Really what a tortuous trend and how he has turned ...
... even less to one's deliberate imaginings, - yet it had worn a familiar look. Where had one seen the Master before? Was it the face of Zeus as it had appeared in an old book of mythology - or that of Aeschylus? Rishi Vasishtha had, perhaps, worn such radiance when he blessed King Dasharatha's son; perhaps Valmiki had sat even like that when the Ramayana in its entirety shaped itself before his wise and... it were to giving a beautifully phrased reply redolent of wisdom and learning and wit and humour. What a diversity of themes, and what a variety of approaches! The twelve great masters of style: Aeschylus and Dante: Dante and Shakespeare: Shakespeare and Blake: the poetry of the school of Dryden and Pope: Shelley's Skylark: Baudelaire's "vulgarity": Anatole France's "ironising": Walter de la Mare's ...
... elliptical, but always strenuous diction of the Upanishads in which the mind of the poet was trained & his personality tempered. At the same time like the Upanishads themselves or like the enigmatic Aeschylus, he can be perfectly clear, precise & full whenever he chooses; and he more often chooses than not. His expression of thought is usually strong and abrupt; his expression of fact and of emotion strong... individuality & yet would impose it on the world as the sole individuality; he is thus blown along on the hurricane of his desires & ambitions until he stumbles & is broken, in the great phrase of Aeschylus, against the throne of Eternal Law. The Deva on the contrary stands firm in the luminous heaven of self-knowledge; his actions flow not inward towards himself but outwards toward the world. The d ...
... Lifting the hammers of titanic toil The demiurges of the universe work; They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire. A new Aeschylus seems to find tongue in this grandiose vision. But Sri Aurobindo does not always pitch his note so high. He can "pactise", as a neologism of his own would put it, with common things and borrow... a poet inclined to philosophy and interested in science, and here she felt was an apt example, with the additional merit of a humour that, like "the innumerable laughter of the waves" heard by Aeschylus, had depths under it. She appears to have thought Sri Aurobindo's directly Yogic work not suitable for a popular book even though it obviously was contributory to his being "a considerable poet" ...
... But now Age unkind Has shrunken her so feeble and so small - Weak as a babe. And she who gave the Lion's kiss Has now all Time's gap for her piteous mouth. Aeschylus might have had a hand in them - Aeschylus of the grandiose and compact audacities. Marlowe might have moulded them - Marlowe with his sublime violence. Here is not only the technical mastery of a Major Poet - a felicitous ...
... poems if they have beauty are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet's work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only seven plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets. He says that "Mallarmé's verse is acquired and intricate" i.e. a thing not of spontaneity, but of intellec... refuse beauty to Mallarmé's poetry would be itself an acrobacy of the intellect. For what then is beauty? Simplicity and beauty are not convertible terms, there can be a difficult beauty. What about Aeschylus then? or Blake? "According to Mallarmé's own definition, the poet's mission is either 'to evoke gradually an object in order to suggest a mood, or, inversely, to choose an object as a symbol and ...
... And the roads of the world that lead to Rome Were filled with faces that moved like foam, Like faces in a dream. The stanza about "Caesar's sun" is almost worthy, I think, of Aeschylus, for the imaginative tension reached there in a style that just falls short of the true epic. Here the falling short is in consequence more of the ballad-form than the poet's inspiration... makes not a third but a star. It is not the grotesque running riot: the grotesque has been illumined and sublimated, even if the "star" Chesterton gives us is an asteroid and not quite a planet. Aeschylus who called Helen "a lion's whelp" would have relished it; Marlowe who spoke of "Cassandra sprawling in the streets" would have gloried in it.... Chesterton, however, has more than one string to his ...
... poets for the sheer first class, but even these he distributes into three rows. In the top row he puts Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer and Shakespeare as equals. In the middle' row come Dante, Kalidasa; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton. In the third stands in solitary grandeui:Goethe.1 Those in the first- row have supreme imaginative originality and expressive power and creative genius, the widest... poetic works in the original. Page 42 characterised its occupants. They have instead built their worlds and peopled them by an energetic constructiveness of the personal poetic mind. Aeschylus is a seer and creator but his scale of creation is much smaller: the same may be said of Sophocles. Virgil and Milton command a still less spontaneous breath of creative genius, though their expressive ...
... large mass-movements. They have no propaganda value either: they cannot be used as a stick to beat Capitalism or Imperialism. Nor can one wholly summon Aeschylus and Dante to prop up by their work this modernist thesis. Aeschylus may show us Athenian patriotism, the struggle against tyranny and the place of the individual in society in some parts of his plays, but he expresses many other ...
... else indicated by an Aeschylean ellipsis? I asked also Rishabhchand but he has no time. Hence those two, thinking that they understand at least better than I. Which two, Great Heavens, O Aeschylus? R & Z? or X and Y? I suppose the latter. And the elliptical "Hence those two" = Hence I asked about those two? I shall become quite a skilful Aeschylean scholar at this rate. I shall have to... Micawber (Talukdar no more). That is a good idea. October 21, 1935 S is suffering from neuralgia, no doubt but 2ry to the joint trouble. [Underlining "2ry"]: This is worse than Aeschylus. Is it an Egyptian hieroglyph? English? Bengali? Shorthand? I intend to give him salicylate, iodine or arsenic one after the other. It looks like throwing stones at a dog in the hope that ...
... Pericles or Lorenzo di Medici; the personalities of her famed poets emerge more dimly through the mist of time, but with indications which point to a lofty spirit or a humanity as great as that of Aeschylus or Euripides or a life-story as human and interesting as that of the famous Italian poets. And if, comparing this one country with all Europe as Mr. Archer insists,—mainly on the ground that Indians ...
... and rhythm, but on the contrary Shakespeare is universally considered greater, standing among the few who are supreme. Theocritus is always perfect in what he writes, but he cannot be ranked with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Why not, if art is the only thing? Obviously, because what the others write has an ampler range, a much more considerable height, breadth, depth, largeness. There are some who say that ...
... & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. “A herded & fooded or wealthy fame” to express “a fame for wealth of cattle & food” is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian ...
... they evoke, we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of the elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot then enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of us at any ...
... Plutarch, Life of Numa, 4: 'The Egyptians believe, not implausibly, that it is not impossible for the Spirit of a god to approach a woman and procure in her certain beginnings of parturition... (b) Aeschylus, Suppliants, w. 17-19, speaks of Zeus making Io a mother 'with a mystic breath' (which could be interpreted as spirit)... (c) Plutarch, Table-Talk, VIII: 1, 2-3 (Loeb. Moralia, 9, 114-19) ...
... masters of the Spirit's Delight. Kalidasa charac-terises the whiteness of Mount Kailasa as the eternal laughter of a God. And Homer's Gods are constantly breaking into laughter over the follies of men. Aeschylus, one of the greatest of the Greek poets, saw Neptune laughing in that immortal line: The innumerable laughter of the waves. Sri Aurobindo's vision of the Kingdom of God does not banish laughter ...
... more impressively than any other eminent poet, carried the soul of past music mingled with a spirit that makes all things new. In fact, he had the avowed ambition to gather up in his Paradise Lost Aeschylus and Sophocles, Virgil, Lucretius and Dante into a mature mastery of style animated by his own genius and character. A consummate scholar in various literatures, deeply saturated with the great traditions ...
... single consciousness in diverse states. Any given state is, of course, experienced by Page 53 the poet not in its utter purity but in association with his own temperament and mood: Aeschylus, viewing the foam-flecked shine and leap of the Aegean, heard unlike Arnold and Yeats The innumerable laughter of the waves. All the same, the flash of knowledge and the shock of feeling ...
... day" ? 3 Thus "Pindar says that 'the soul slumbers while the body is active; but, when the body slumbers, she shows forth in many a vision the approaching issues of woe and weal.' And the poet Aeschylus declares that 'in slumber the eye of soul waxes bright'." 4 But the situation is not as simple as we have painted it to be. For, we must not forget that our ordinary untransformed sleep ...
... Dante a very high rank: Dante figured for him among the giants of poetry. But Sri Aurobindo certainly did not put him at the sheer top. Dante stood on a slightly lower level, along with Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton - just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the elite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki ...
... On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri Index A absolute Self 99 adesh 212 A.E., AE 33,197,367 Aeschylus 205 Agni 298 ahan 303 Akash 174 Amal Kiran first article about Savitri 1 first contact with Savitri 50,316 lines of poetry 262 Sri Aurobindo - the Poet 316 The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo ...
... they evoke, we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of the elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty Page 40 of the thing said cannot then enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does ...
... displayed but severely concealed - Summa ars est celare artem. Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton whenever he chooses." 3 Quoting from Milton as well as Shakespeare, Sri Aurobindo says: "Such lines... are not subtle or restrained, or careful to conceal their elements ...
... elliptical, but always strenuous diction of the Upanishads in which the mind of the poet was trained and his personality tempered. At the same time, like the Upanishads themselves or like the enigmatic Aeschylus, he can be perfectly clear, precise and full whenever he chooses; and he more often chooses than not. His expression of thought is usually strong and abrupt, his expression of fact and of emotion ...
... Greek sense, a mystery was a secret ceremony in which sacred symbols were revealed, symbolic rites were performed, and only initiates could participate. 9. Orpheus: The great Greek dramatist Aeschylus, 525-456 BC, describes Orpheus as he who "haled all things by the rapture of his voice." Vase painting shows him playing the lyre, surrounded by birds, wild . beasts or his Thracian disciples. He ...
... process emeralds and lapis-lazulis of, rare value were the reward extracted from his supramental quarry, though at the cost of being dubbed a "wooden head" and many other complimentary epithets. Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Napoleon, Virgil, Shaw, Joyce, Hitler, Mussolini, Negus, Spanish Civil War, General Miaja, romping in, oh, the world-theatre seen at a glance exhibiting many-coloured ...
... er. After so careful an examination and with his long experience he was not likely to be wrong. Now all symptoms are subsiding, pt will soon become all right. What the deuce is pt, O Aeschylus? If you could induce the "big Force" to come down once more, we shall see S safely landed on the shore of convalescence. Shall try, but that kind of Force comes when it wants. To stimulate ...
... the latest poems don't seem to come to much, do they? What the big h do you mean? Don't come to much? What did you expect more than the praise that has been given? Want to be told that Homer, Aeschylus and Shakespeare all rolled into one were not a patch on you? What's the idea? The poem which you have marked throughout with single and double marginal lines, is only a fine sonnet?... Not that ...
... digested and transmuted into human energy, into imaginative tissue", 20 bearing the same relation to dialectical discourse or philosophical Page 263 statement as a tragedy by Aeschylus bears to an exposition by Socrates. 21 Max Muller asserted that, "There is mythology now as there was in the time of Homer, only we do not perceive it, because we ourselves live in the very shadow ...
... element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture – that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in ...
... always create a sense either of obscurity or, if not that, then of effort and artifice, even if a powerful and inspired artifice. Yet very great poets and writers have used them, so great a poet as Aeschylus or so great a prose stylist as Tacitus. Then there are the famous "knots" in the Mahabharata. I think one can say that these condensations are justified when they say something with more power and ...
... it must be noted, bears the stamp of its creator. Even in the same field of work each great artist leaves his own stamp on his work. For example, take the Greek dramatist Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus or the French trio. Voltaire, Racine, Corneille —you will find the distinguishing stamp of each on his work. A soul expressing the eternal spirit of Truth and Beauty through some of the infinite ...
... a heap of earth above it. Because even long after doctors will have declared it to be dead, it will be conscious: its cells are conscious. So there, that’s all. 17 She is there, alive. Aeschylus and Orpheus look pale in comparison. And there is no one to really blame in that formidable tragedy, each of the actors probably did exactly what they had to. I remember, one day in 1969, Mother ...
... conjunctions in history, as in planets, through which one can seize upon great vistas of the human march, and its impasses. Near the time Socrates was born, Buddha entered into Nirvana, and Aeschylus was writing his Prometheus . Three great human seeds of whom the last one remains mysterious and unknown. One could say that, with Buddha's Nirvana, Asia took a turn – not exactly “fatal,” like ...
... genus irritabile vatum; nor does he square any better with the popular idea that melancholy, eccentricity and disease are necessary concomitants of genius. Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Goethe, the really great poets, were men of high sanity—except perhaps in the eyes of those to whom originality & strong character are in themselves madness. But to arrive at this harmony requires ...
... mind and heart have floated to this Presence and wait with the others who are on the rocks lapped by the sea — rocks that are emblems of a firm soul-stand within the "innumerable laughter" (a la Aeschylus though in a super-Aeschylean sense) of the waves of Infinity. The rock-supported Ashramites are all in the form of children because the psychic being that turns towards the Divine Mother is always ...
... even an earthly roof; and all That colour kindled for the Eternal's eye In deep Ajanta fades; no rhythms recall The two grand plays the terrible chisel-stroke Of the titan mind of Aeschylus set beside Prometheus Bound : their power Time's brute hand broke. Heaven's light passes—divine Aurobindo died. But this one death where Heaven's own self gave room For dire ...
... rather ill from Milton whose language no less than sentence-structure was far indeed from being plain and straightforward. It would come ill also because Milton was scholar enough to know that neither Aeschylus nor Pindar could be termed transparent or uncomplex. And he was too near the Elizabethan age to forget how gorged with metaphor linked to metaphor and how dazzling with picturesque piled-up epithets ...
... Page 109 — summa ars est celare artem. Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton whenever he chooses Such lines as In hideous ruin and combustion down [To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire] ...
... displayed but severely concealed - Summa ars est celare artem. Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton wherever he chooses. Such lines as With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire ...
... subtlety of art not displayed but severely concealed. .. Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton wherever he chooses. Such lines as In hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire ...
... scale which would place them among the greatest creators." Among the latter, Sri Aurobindo makes three rows: First row - Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Vyasa. Second row - Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Milton. Third row - Goethe. In Sri Aurobindo's view, Dante and Kalidasa would rank beside those in the first row except that they do not have enough of "a kind of ...
... an earthly roof; and all That colour kindled for the Eternal's eye In deep Ajanta fades; no rhythms recall The two grand plays the terrible chisel-stroke Of the titan mind of Aeschylus set beside Prometheus Bound: their power Time's brute hand broke. Heaven's light passes - divine Aurobindo died. But this one death where Heaven's own self gave room For dire ...
... Dante a very high rank: Dante figured for him among the giants of poetry. But Sri Aurobindo certainly did not put him at the sheer top. Dante stood on a slightly lower level, along with Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton — just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the e1ite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki ...
... they evoke, we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of elevation or depth or of intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of us at any rate ...
... hearts and mortal fortunes. To deal with a Greek theme is not to be antiquated or obsolete. Much depends on the inner substance of the theme. When we open Herodotus or Thucydides, Plato or Aristotle, Aeschylus or Sophocles, we often light on "modern" figures, situations and attitudes, for the world-drama has many motifs common to its several acts. Besides, we must not forget that Sri Aurobindo is no scholar ...
... the temper and texture of the poem. It is as though the oceanic sweep of Homer pulsed through Milton's arteries, the broad even river-flow of Virgil ran in his veins, the concentrated titanism of Aeschylus made his bone and marrow, the grandiose passion of Lucretius tensed his tissues, the sweetly intense severity of Dante thrilled and toned his nerves - and, in addition to these formative forces, ...
... displayed but severely concealed— summa ars est celare artem . Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton whenever he chooses. Such lines as In hideous ruin and combustion down or Page 282 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's ...
... promoted the extension and beautification of the Acropolis, and Phidias, the sculptor, created the statues of the Parthenon. 3 Cultural events such as public performances of the great plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides formed part of the developing urban lifestyle. All citizens, rich or poor, could enjoy these social events together in an atmosphere of critical appreciation. The political ...
... write a solemn choral hymn in his honour, for performance at a banquet or at some religious festival. So it came about that of the two most majestic and serious poets of the early fifth century, Aeschylus and Pindar, the latter is known to us entirely (but for some fragments of other poems) as a writer of victory-odes. A strange idea to us, that a Page 290 Wrestling contest in ...
... to box it up and throw dirt on it. Because, even after the doctors have declared it dead, it will be conscious. The cells are conscious. That's all I have to say. She is there, alive. Aeschylus and Orpheus look pale.¹ * * * Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to open up the consciousness of the cells to the supramental consciousness and power; this was accomplished; the old genetic ...
... Factual information about the poet is lacking. It is believed that his home was in Ionia in Asia. Among the front ranking poets of the world we could include Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Virgil, Kalidas, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton and Goethe. From the point of view of essential force and beauty, Homer and Shakespeare stand above all the rest, although Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharta ...
... Index A. E. (GEORGE RUSSELL), 64, 286 -"Desire",64n -"Endurance", 286n Adam, 116 Addison, 79n -"Hymn", 79n Adityas, 28-9 Aeschylus, 86 Aesop, 258 Afghanistan, 284 Agni, 16, 19-20,22-3,28, 33-5, 45, 157 61, 164, 166, 180,214 America, 198,284 Ananda, 133 Andamans, 103 Ansars, 267 Antigone, 187, 273 ...
... element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture —that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in ...
... ON ART AND LITERATURE World-Literature (I) ‘REAL poetry, the acme of poetical art,’ says Victor Hugo, ‘is characterised by immensity alone.’ That is why Aeschylus, Lucretius, Shakespeare and Corneille had conquered his heart. Had he been acquainted with Sanskrit literature he would have included Valmiki and the Vedic seers. As a matter of fact, what we want ...
... Savitri Index Abb é Bremond 316 Abercrombie, Lascelles 283,375,409,445 A.E. (George Russell) 266,306 Aeschylus 267 53,318,319,458 Aiyangar, Narayan 279 Alexander, Samuel 436 Anouilh, Jean 267 Ariosto31,383 Arnold, Sir Edwin 335 Arnold ...
... the one we had so much struggled and suffered for throughout all those ages. I had no doubt about it, we were approaching⎯but by what path? I had the impression of a poignant Performance of which Aeschylus and the medieval Mysteries were only pale copies. It was now the Performance of the earth. And She was smiling, immobile, as if draped in white light. Time is no longer the same time ... And I can't ...
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