... own drive and nature, which seeks through the forms and powers of Life for that which is behind Life and sometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands on the sealed doors of the Spirit. The art, music and literature of the world, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening sub jectivism. The great objective art... than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly psychological art, music and literature, mental, intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its predecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement ...
... on of life means, in fact, a greater art of life; for the present art of life produced by ego and ignorance is something comparatively mean, crude and imperfect (like the lower forms of art, music and literature which are yet more attractive to the ordinary human mind and vital), and it is by a spiritual and psychic opening and refinement that it has to reach its true perfection. This can only be ...
... Divinisation of life means, in fact, a greater art of life; for the present art of life produced by ego and ignorance is something comparatively mean, crude and imperfect (like the lower forms of art, music and literature which are yet more attractive to the ordinary human mind and vital), and it is by a spiritual and psychic opening and refinement that it has to reach its true perfection. This can only be ...
... tion. Perfection of an object or a scene in inanimate Nature, animate perfection of strength, speed, physical beauty, courage or animal fidelity, affection, intelligence, perfection of art, music, poetry, literature,—perfection of the intellect in any kind of mental activity, the perfect statesman, warrior, artist, craftsman,—perfection in vital force and capacity, perfection in ethical qualities, ...
... Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Music and the Practice of Yoga Letters on Poetry and Art Painting, Music, Dance and Yoga Yoga and the Arts In the new creation would there not be great musicians, painters, poets, athletes etc. created from the Ashram? All kinds that are needed for the work or the... Art are not either the first or the only thing in life for her,—any more than Poetry or Literature are with me,—the Divine, the divine consciousness, the discovery of the conditions for a divine life are and must be our one concern, with Art, Poetry or Music as parts or means only of the divine life or expression of the Divine Truth and the Divine Beauty. That does not mean that they are only "tolerated"... loved music all her life and found it a key to spiritual experience, (2) that she has given all encouragement to your music in special and to the music of others also. She has also made clear the relation of Art and Beauty with Yoga. It is therefore rather extraordinary that anyone should think she only tolerates music here and considers it inconsistent with Yoga. It is perfectly true that Music or Art ...
... Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Appreciation of Poetry and the Arts Letters on Poetry and Art Appreciation of Music On Music Written words are pale and lifeless things when one has to express the feelings raised by superb music and seem hardly to mean anything—not being able to convey what is beyond word and mere mental... form—that is, at least, what I have felt and why I always find it a little difficult to write anything about music. 20 March 1933 Musical Excellence and General Culture I have not seen the remarks in question. I don't suppose all-round general culture has much to do with excelling in music. Music is a gift independent of any such thing and it can hardly be said that, given a musical gift in two people ...
... Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Appreciation of Poetry and the Arts Letters on Poetry and Art Comparison of the Arts Each Art Has Its Own Province I fear I must disappoint you. I am not going to pass the Gods through a competitive examination and assign a highest place to one and lower places to others. What an idea... ugliness and unintelligibility. From that you will perhaps deduce that the attempt of painting and poetry to do what music alone can do easily and directly without these acrobatics is futile because it is contrary to their nature—which proves your thesis that music is the highest art because most direct in its appeal to the soul and the feelings. Maybe—or maybe not; as the Jains put it, syād vā na... directness, I shall be getting myself into dangerous waters. For modern painting has become either cubist or abstract and it claims to have got rid of mental representation and established in art the very method of music; it paints not the object but the truth behind the object by the use of pure line and colour and geometrical form which is the very basis of all forms or else by figures that are not re ...
... its appropriate forms. Especially, is the movement of literature most revelatory; for while music and art reveal perhaps more absolutely the soul of a nation, literature is the whole expression of its mind and psychology,—not only of what it is in action, or what it is in essence, but its thought, character and aspiration. Draft B In literature, as in all else, we stand in India at the opening of... inevitable upheaval, change and effort at creation in the whole national life, politics, society, economical conditions, industry, commerce, as well as and more noisily than in literature. But it is perhaps in art, literature and science that the future will see what was most definitive in the creations of the present hour, the most significant thing in the Indian renascence; for these things reveal... Notes and Fragments on Various Subjects Notes and Fragments on Various Subjects India Essays Divine and Human Where We Stand in Literature Draft A Where we stand, not only in literature, but in all things, is at or near a great turning point in which the thoughts and forms of East and West, both in an immense ferment of change, are working upon each ...
... and the savour of mint... And all the rest is literature. (I would render the second line: Afloat on the crisp dawn-airs that hint...) In this stanza poetry and literature stand as contradictory terms for Verlaine just as poetry and reportage do for Mallarm6. And, since everything except the music defined here is classed as literature, Verlaine seems to put under that category even the... meant by poetic music not only a play of sound but a play of elusive meaning as in musical compositions. As to the stress on sheer sound in poetry, he was quick to observe: "The richest and most resonant harmonies of Hugo fall as music far short of Berlioz or Wagner." This inferiority to real music is, of course, no argument against the value of harmonious utterance in the poetic art, provided there... poet himself in the piece entitled Art Poetique. This manifesto lays down the fundamental principle in its opening line: De la musique avant toute chose... which may be translated a little freely, Music above all, music first... Page 323 This initial maxim is elaborated through a series of primarily technical precepts for an art of suggestion. Boase takes several of ...
... Art are not either the first or the only thing in life for her,—any more than Poetry or Literature are with me,—the Divine, the divine consciousness, the discovery of the conditions for a divine life are and must be our one concern, with Art, Poetry or Music as parts or means only of the divine life or expression of the Divine Truth and the Divine Beauty. That does not mean that they are only "tolerated"... loved music all her life and found it a key to spiritual experience, (2) that she has given all encouragement to your music in special and to the music of others also. She has also made clear the relation of Art and Beauty with Yoga. It is therefore rather extraordinary that anyone should think she only tolerates music here and considers it inconsistent with Yoga. It is perfectly true that Music or Art... be stranger than this idea of yours that Mother likes only European music and does not like or appreciate Indian music—that she only pretends to do it or that she tolerates it so as not to discourage people! Remember that it is the Mother who has always praised and supported your music and put her force behind you so that your music might develop into spiritual perfection and beauty. In your poetry ...
... applies to every other visible manifestation of our cultural life - to literature, drama, art, et al. Despite all the sparkle in appearance the absence and ignorance of the spirit and purpose of culture in any one of its manifestations (be it literature, drama or music) will inevitably contaminate the rest, for if they have emerged out of a genuine culture, there is bound to be a bondage and harmony... lead us farther and farther down time and the goal would continue to be elusive. The governments have their ministries and departments of Culture and they are devoted to promoting literature, art, music, dance and allied activities. Starting from this, where Culture has a specific scope and the term's use has an indisputable justification, to its use as a euphemism for snobbery ("Culture is... the legend - how music can unite the listener with itself in the latter's calm meditative attention, how the imperfect and the disharmonious can be made perfect and harmonious - as it happened to the Gandharvas and the Gandharvis for music is auditory representation of the secret rhythm of harmony at the core of Creation. What I said with the tradition of dance and music as examples, applies ...
... Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga On the Visual Arts Letters on Poetry and Art Painting in the Ashram A General Remark What you write about the expression of beauty through painting and the limitations of the work as yet done here, is quite accurate. The painters here have capacity and disposition, but as yet the work... knowledge of technique and careful and long assiduous practice are needed, as in art and music. Besides he cannot bear to be criticised and [to have] his mistakes shown to him. All the talent in the world will not serve, if he does not change in these two things. 11 June 1934 Someone who is learning to paint or play music or write and does not like to have his mistakes pointed out by those who already... figure. For instance in his picture of the flowers he has a put a hand in which the thumb is in an impossible position and the fingers begin at the same level as the thumb and not far below. In art a taste for the art or even a faculty for it is not sufficient; there is necessary also a training. 8 September 1932 Do you think that I shall be able to learn painting? You can learn on condition you ...
... According to Shukranīti there are number of arts but 64 are considered to be more prominent. In later literature we find that 64 arts or Kalās were expected to be cultivated by a cultured lady. These included the art of cooking, skill in the use of body ointments and paints for the teeth, etc., music, dancing, painting, garland-making, floor decoration, preparation of the bed, proper use and care of... Thereafter also there has been a vast literature on music, dance, and drama. In fact, music, dance, and drama received royal patronage throughout the ages, and even some of the great Page 102 kings of the North and the South were themselves great musicians. Closely connected with Shikshā, Chhanda and Vyākarana, there is a body of literature known as Prātishākhya. For each Veda and... classical music, the 7 tunes, namely, shadja, rishabha, gāndhara, madhyama, panchama, dhaivata, and nishāda are used in Sāma in the same way as in the classical music. In the Chhāndogyopanishad which is based upon Samaveda, 5 types of the musical renderings of Sāma have been indicated, namely, Himkāra, Prastāva, Udgitha, Pratihār, and Nidhān. It is :t noteworthy that Vedic literature refers also ...
... be said that to a great extent in the East the whole of Sanskrit literature was founded on intuition. In the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana and even in the Mahabharata, very often we find instances where the rein of knowledge has prevented the emotion and the zeal of the heart from running riot. In fact the speciality of Indian art does not lie so much in the play of colours as in the drawing of... the other dynamic. Intuition is inner seeing, inspiration inner hearing. Poetry breaks out of the former, music of the later. We find a considerable influence of inspiration in poetry where music looms large; e.g. in lyrics. Likewise a poetic form can often be found to a large extent in music – Wagner is an immortal instance. Inspiration is the fount of the lyric, intuition of the epic. Forms of... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Intuition and Inspiration in Art As intuition plays the major role in one kind of art, even so inspiration in another. Two kinds of beauty have sprung into existence from these two faculties. Why speak of the artist alone – all powerful creators, in fact all human beings, differ in their individual nature ...
... Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Appreciation of Poetry and the Arts Letters on Poetry and Art Appreciation of the Arts in General Poetic and Artistic Value and Popular Appeal I do not know why your correspondent puts so much value on general understanding and acceptance. Really it is only the few that can be trusted... l creation. 15 August 1933 Modern Art and Poetry Not only are there no boundaries left in some arts (like poetry of the ultra-modern schools or painting) but no foundations and no Art either. I am referring to the modernist painters and to the extraordinary verbal jazz which is nowadays often put forward as poetry.... Page 676 Modern Art opines that beauty is functional! that is... bhakti and Ananda. 29 October 1932 Art and Life There are artists and artists. A real artist with the spirit of artistry in his very blood will certainly be artistic in everything. But there are artists who have no taste and there are artists who are not born but made. Your example of Tagore is a different matter. A mastery in one department of art does not give mastery in another—though there ...
... great builders of religion and spirituality, of philosophy and ethics, of language and literature, science and technology, of art, of music and dance and sculpture and architecture. In addition, a brief idea of the various aspects of Indian life and of the values which are embedded in arts and crafts, in music and dance, in festivals and in the general attitude relating to the ultimate aims of life... Christianity, Islam, Sikhism. (e) Synthesis of spiritual experience. 2. Indian Literature: (a) Sanskrit and Tamil (b) Birth of modem Indian languages (c) Great literary masters: a detailed study of one of them. 3. Indian Art: (a) The aim of Indian art (b) An in-depth of one of the schools of Indian painting, dance, drama, sculpture or... Ferozshah Mehta, Ranade and Gokhale (v) The demand of the Nationalists: Swarajya as the goal (vi) Tilak and Sri Aurobindo (vii) The Mantra of Bande Matram (viii) Birth of new literature, art and science (ix) Bankim Chandra, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore (x) The Revolutionaries (xi) The coming of Gandhi (xii) The role of Annie Beasent (xiii) ...
... Signature Of Truth THE WORLD OF HARMONY Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feelings and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we come across are of this kind and at best interesting... bring the vital to play then all the strength of vibration is there. If you bring it in there, this higher origin, it becomes the music of a genius. For music it is very special, it is difficult, it needs an intermediary. It is like all other things, for literature also, for poetry, for painting, for everything that you do. The true value of one's creation depends on the origin of one's inspiration... interesting from the point of view of technique. 1 do not say that even operatic music cannot be used as a medium of higher art expressions for whatever the form it can be made to serve a deeper purpose. All depends on the thing itself, on how it is used, on what is behind it. There is nothing that cannot be used for the Divine purpose—just as anything can pretend to be the Divine and yet be of the mushroom ...
... out of existence – German music, philosophy, etc. How can anything develop where there is no freedom? I hope Mussolini has kept some sense of art. Disciple : He is very proud of Italians as a nation of artists! A friend of mine visited Italy, and found that the Italians still have a sense of beauty and art. Sri Aurobindo : Of music also; Art and music are their passion. The... story and literature? Is it independent of Truth? If it is not, what is its purpose? Sri Aurobindo : Literature exists for its own sake; it is an independent value. Its purpose is governed by the law of Ananda. If you bring in, or make it serve, some other purpose, – say, morality or philosophy – then it does not serve its highest purpose. Disciple : But literature, art, poetry all... all have to give us truth, have they not? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, in art, poetry and literature there is truth. However, it is not the discovery and the statement of truth in itself, but of the beauty of truth or truth as beauty. The Law of Ananda governs these activities. Some parts of literature have their own laws : for instance, fiction. Its law is to represent life. If the writer ...
... did they would no longer buy their wares—so their intention is to make money at the expense of those who read their literature, and so the more it sells, the better it is. It may be frightful, but it's very good if it sells well. It's the same thing with art, the same thing with music, the same thing with drama. The latest scientific discoveries, applied to life, have put within the reach of everyone... way, it's a way of saying things which is charming. Literature exists completely in the way of saying things. You catch what you can of what's behind. If you are indeed open to the literary meaning, it evokes things for you; but it cannot be explained. It is a means of evocation which corresponds also with music. Naturally, one can analyse literature and see how the sentence is constructed, but this... ideas." My children, I have to tell you to begin with that this is "literature". So you should not ask me for explanations. It is a literary way of speaking, you must understand it in a literary way; it is a literary description of the word; it is very precise, but it is literary. So I cannot produce literature on this literature. One must have the taste for forms, for a beautiful way of saying things ...
... the pure music of the words and can catch its rhythm in our inner hearing. For some time past there has come into vogue in the world of art, especially the art of painting, a phrase called "pure art". This implies an arrangement of form and line free from the burden of subject-matter, a play with pure geometrical lines. This alone is supposed to bring out the true and ultimate beauty of art, its pure... sweetness, the honeyed essence that he has lavished in unstinted measure has no parallel in literature. It is this quality of sweetness that has made the fame of Bengali language and literature, from Vidyapati and Chandidas right down to Rabindranath. But the possibilities of this language and literature, not only for sweetness or grace but also for strength and nobility have been brought out by... verse too has a considerable element of stress which has brought out a peculiar beauty of its own. This has its origin and main support in the folk-songs, the popular epigrammatic verse and in folk-literature generally. Here I am referring to metrical forms where the consonants predominate. We are all familiar with or, Satyen Dutt's But whether it be in Bengali or any other Indian ...
... abundant but simple music; here they seem to stand side by side related and harmonised, curious and complex, multiply one. The spontaneous unity of the intuitive mind is replaced by the artificial unity of the analysing and synthetising intelligence. Art and religion still continue the predominance of the spiritual and intuitive motive, but it is less to the front in literature. A division has been... within these fields and a much wider province, great beginnings, strong developments of science and art and literature, the freedom of the purely intellectual and aesthetic activities, much scope too for the hedonisms of the vital and the refinements of the emotional being, a cultivation of the art and rhythmic practice of life. There is a highly intellectualised vital stress and a many-sided interest... among the supreme poetic artists with Milton and Virgil and he has a more subtle and delicate spirit and touch in his art than the English, a greater breath of native power informing and vivifying his execution than the Latin poet. There is no more perfect and harmonious style in literature, no more inspired and careful master of the absolutely harmonious and sufficient phrase combining the minimum of word ...
... only saving ethical and political ideal, at least for Europe,—a salutary saving clause. At the same time he has found his highest artistic satisfaction in German music and rates the relative power of Russian literature and possibly the music above the recent artistic work of Europe, and he is perplexed by the coexistence of this superiority with Russia's social instability and with Germany's lack of... periods of Eastern art were not periods of a passive acceptance of life. In India, the cradle of these philosophies, they coincided with an active exploration of the material universe through physical science and a strong insistence on life, on its government, on the exploration of its every detail, on the call of even its most sensuous and physical attractions. The literature and art of India are not... to liberate herself from it, instinctive in her music, her philosophy too an instinctive movement, reflection never able to get outside itself or even to Page 627 feel the need to do so. As for Russia, hers is the kind of art that is an expression of the division and breaches of human society rather than of its wholeness or its peace, an art born of Nature's error and not like the French ...
... The latter are best trained by science, criticism and observation, the former by art, poetry, music, literature and the sympathetic study of man and his creations. These make the mind quick to grasp at a glance, subtle to distinguish shades, deep to reject shallow self-sufficiency, mobile, delicate, swift, intuitive. Art assists in this training by raising images in the mind which it has to understand... , poetic and artistic in Europe. It is the South German who contributes the art, poetry and music of Germany, the Celt and Norman who produce great poets and a few great artists in England without altering the characteristics of the dominant Page 446 Saxon. Music is even more powerful in this direction than Art and by the perfect expression of harmony insensibly steeps the man in it. And... gives each its separate delight. Art stills the emotions and teaches them the Page 447 delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction,—this indeed was the characteristic that the Greeks, a nation of artists far more artistic than poetic, tried to bring into their poetry. Music deepens the emotions and harmonises them with each other. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education ...
... there when one can bring into play the vital energy. If one could put all this power of vibration that belongs to that vital into the music of higher origin we would have the music of a genius. Indeed, for music and for all artistic creation, in fact, for literature, for poetry, for painting, etc. an intermediary is needed. Whatever one does in these domains depends doubtless for its intrinsic value... Music - Its Origin and Nature MUISIC, you must remember, like any other art, is a means for expressing something-some idea, some feeling, some emotion, a certain aspiration and so on. There is even a domain where all these movements exist and from where they are brought down under a musical form. A good composer with some inspiration would produce good music; he is then called... in the source of music. A whole category of music is there that comes from the higher vital, for example: it is very catching, perhaps even a little vulgar, something that twines round your nerves, as it were, and twists them. It catches you somewhere about your loins – navel centre – and charms you in its way. As there is a vital music there is also what can be called psychic music coming from quite ...
... consciousness, and from them and from the reaches between them and our ordinary mental consciousness there have descended forces and forms which have become embodied in literature, Page 109 philosophy, science, in music, drama, art, architecture, sculpture, in great and heroic deeds and in all that is wonderful and precious in the different organised or as yet unorganised aspects of life. To... by ancient Indians in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, natural scien ces, metallurgy, as also in the fields of grammar, ethics, philosophy, religion, psychic and spiritual sciences, yoga, art, music, dance, and architecture, hardly figure in our history books. Even the political account of Indian history suffers from great short comings and Indian students remain ignorant of how Indian polity... p of a subject with those subjects which are supposed to be interesting. Many may not know how much mathematics is connected with music, and how Pythagoras saw the relationship between these two subjects; and many do not know or appreciate the relationship between music and poetry. Again, mathematics is closely connected with logic,--there is even a view that mathematics and logic are one and the same ...
... his skin than pluck a flower. SRI AUROBINDO: That is the popular notion of art and artist. If you love flowers and admire the sky you are considered an artist. I saw in Prabuddha Bharata that Vivekananda was called a great master of art because he loved music. SATYENDRA: Perhaps one can be an artist by appreciating art? SRI AUROBINDO: In that case many people are artists. NIRODBARAN: If... him. He could have added Diogenes too. It seems Vinoba doesn't like literature. Only history and philosophy interest him. PURANI: Yes, I told you he is proud of not having read Shakuntala. SRI AUROBINDO: Not only Shakuntala, but literature in general doesn't interest him. PURANI: Yet he is said to be a great lover of art. Somebody told him that he is an ascetic and doesn't appreciate beauty... artist—that is my point. An artist must either create something or have an aesthetic understanding of art. Anybody can look at the moon or the sky and get an emotion. PURANI: Now they give a new definition to art. They say art must be able to transmit emotion. Otherwise it is not art or it is art that has no value. SRI AUROBINDO: What emotion? PURANI: Feeling, I suppose. SRI AUROBINDO: Feeling ...
... of poetry, music and art at lower levels at first and gradually at higher and higher levels of experience and contemplation. Even in the training of the intellectual faculty, art can play a great role. Subtlety is the soul of art, and art education makes the mind also in its movement subtle and delicate. Art is suggestive, and the intellect that is habituated to the appreciation of art is quick to... The art of painting in later India covers a long period of more than two thousand years. Long before the Christian Era began, we find the theory of the art well founded from previous times, where six essential elements, shadanga, were recognised and enumerated. Historically, reference in ancient literature also indicates a widespread practice and appreciation of the art of painting by... range of cultural activities of India centred on the quest of spiritual truth but it also promoted quest through science, philosophy, art and several other means. Intense spirituality, robust scientific and philosophical intellectuality and powerful literature, poetry, art and inexhaustible vitality have marked the essential characteristics of Indian culture. Page 7 If our educational ...
... 290 his art a service not of man or of his own ego but of the Divine. Well, that [ acting as a great musician etc. ] is an almost universal human weakness, especially with artists, poets, musicians and the whole splendid tribe—I have known even great Yogis suffer from just a touch of it! If one can see mentally the humour of it, it will fall off in the end. Literature To be a literary... literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle. A "literary man" is one who loves literature and literary activity for their own separate sake. A Yogi who writes is not a literary man for he writes only... Any activity can be taken as part of the sadhana if it is offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power. That is the important point. Literature, poetry, science and other studies can be a preparation of the consciousness for life. When one does Yoga they can become part of the sadhana only if done for the Divine or taken up by the Divine ...
... of the inner music - that is, the thrill of the inspired consciousness - creating the outer music that embodies it, the lines are some of the most perfect in literature, with a sustained exquisiteness of the mot juste and the outer music is of such a markedly euphonious Virgilian type as to leave no excuse whatever for overlooking it. And again and again in Love and Death the music rises to the... any organic adaptation to music and melody. His thought is profound, his technical devices are commendable but the music that enchants or disturbs is not there. Aurobindo is not another Tagore or Iqbal or even Sarojini Naidu." I confess the words fairly take my breath away. They deny inspiration altogether and in all its forms to Sri Aurobindo's poetry. For, evidently, music in poetry does not stand... immortal mind occur instead, is there any lack in any blank-verse narrative by Sri Aurobindo of beautiful music organically adapted to the feeling and the vision. How is it The Times Literary Supplement critic got aesthetically so obtuse? And does he not realise that blank-verse music is the hardest to produce and therefore most clinchingly proves the inspired poet? Sri Aurobindo's being very ...
... regards their contents, manner, style. I believe in European music the words are of a very minor importance, they matter only as going with the music. But I am not an expert on the subject, so I can't go farther into it. When religious songs were written in mediaeval Latin, they were very fine, but with the use of the modern languages the art was lost—the modern European hymnals are awful stuff. 13... of an art. At that rate one could be asked to go for the basic principles of musical sound to the jazz or even to the hurdy-gurdy and for the indispensable rules of line and colour to the pavement artist or to the signboard painter. Or perhaps the suggestion is that here one gets the primary unsophisticated rhythms native to the language and free from the artificial movements of mere literature. Still... with the ear listening for the needed poetic rhythm or word-music. These two rhythms are quite different. That is why a poem cannot be set to music unless it has either been written with an eye to both kinds of rhythm or else happens to have (without especially intending it) a movement which makes it easy or at least possible to set it to music. This happens often with lyrical poetry, less often with ...
... cathedrals in Mediaeval Europe had no other conception of art. In India all her architecture, her sculpture, her painting have proceeded from this source and were inspired by this ideal. The songs of Mirabai and the music of Thyagaraja, the poetic Page 101 literature built up by her devotees, saints and Rishis rank among the world's greatest artistic possessions. But does... greatest, at least one of the greatest painters,—although his art did not stop at painting alone. Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we Page 111 ... come across are of this kind and at best interesting from the point of view of technique. I do not say that even operatic music cannot be used as a medium of a higher art expression; for whatever the form, it can be made to serve a deeper purpose. All depends on the thing itself, on how it is used, on what is behind it. There is nothing that cannot be used for the Divine purpose—just as anything ...
... conception of art. In India all her architecture, her sculpture, her painting have proceeded from this source and were inspired by this ideal. The songs of Mirabai and the music of Thyagaraja, the poetic literature built up by her devotees, saints and Rishis rank among the world's greatest artistic possessions. But does the work of an artist improve if he does Yoga? The discipline of Art has at its... at least one of the greatest painters,—although his art did not stop at painting alone. Music too is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, Page 110 a mushroom art, such as is operatic music. Most of the artistic productions we come across are... are of this kind and at best interesting from the point of view of technique. I do not say that even operatic music cannot be used as a medium of a higher art expression; for whatever the form, it can be made to serve a deeper purpose. All depends on the thing itself, on how it is used, on what is behind it. There is nothing that cannot be used for the Divine purpose—just as anything can pretend to be ...
... No doubt, his music has not the rich variation, the polyphonism of his European counterpart; and yet rising on the crest of a single tune we are transported to the Elysian lap of an infinite calm leaving behind this whirl of the earth. We know European music takes pride in harmony, while Indian music is noted for its Page 256 melody. In other words, Occidental music expresses the... in the state of deep self-absorption does not represent a man in contemplation, but it is a symbol of concentration; it is meditation personified. This is the special character of Oriental Art. Oriental Art does not try to express sentiment and emotion through an exact portrayal. Its object is to give an adequate form to the idea itself. The Buddhist sculptor gives an expression to the supernatural... more light on this difference so that we may comprehend the synthetic ideal more clearly. We wilt now compare and contrast, for example, the genius of Valmiki and that of Shakespeare in the field of literature. On Page 253 reading Shakespeare a stamp of characters that are human is left on our mind, and Valmiki impresses us with characters that are superhuman. Shakespeare has depicted ...
... into play the vital energy. If Page 184 one could put all this power of vibration that belongs to the vital into the music of higher origin we would have the music of a genius. Indeed, for music and for all artistic creation, in fact, for literature, for poetry, for painting etc. an intermediary is needed. Whatever one does in these domains depends doubtless for its intrinsic value... MUSIC — ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE Music, you must remember, like any other art, is a means for expressing something—some idea, some feeling, some emotion, a certain aspiration and so on. There is even a domain where all these movements exist and from where they are brought down under a musical form. A good composer with some inspiration would produce good music; he is then called... scale in the source of music. A whole category of music is there that comes from the higher vital, for example: it is very catching, perhaps even a little vulgar, something that twines round your nerves, as it were, and twists them. It catches you somewhere about your loins—navel centre—and charms you in its way. As there is a vital music there is also what can be called psychic music coming from quite ...
... of poetry, music and art at lower levels at first and gradually at higher and higher levels of experience and contemplation. Even in the training of the intellectual faculty, art can play a great role. Subtlety is the soul of art, and art education makes the mind also in its movement subtle and delicate. Art is suggestive, and the intellect that is habituated to the appreciation of art is quick to... The art of painting in later India covers a long period of more than two thousand years. Long before the Christian Page 479 Era began, we find the theory of the art well founded from previous times, where six essential elements, shadanga, were recognised and enumerated. Historically, reference in ancient literature also indicates a widespread practice and appreciation of the art of painting... range of cultural activities of India centred on the quest of spiritual truth but it also promoted quest through science, philosophy, art and several other means. Intense spirituality, robust scientific and philosophical intellectuality and powerful literature, poetry, art and inexhaustible vitality have marked the essential characteristics of Indian culture. Page 473 If our educational system ...
... give them their proper realisation: if we mispronounce and misaccent, we shall mar the music and prevent the subtle suggestions borne on the music from filling out those of the words taken as intellectual pointers. If you go to art and do not respect form as much as what you call bhava, you fail to draw from art the specific values and powers it has to offer. By the way, your observation that... what purpose can be served by selecting a form of art for its expression? Why not just blurt out what you feel? Why cast it into image and symbol, why attend to qualities of rhythm, why resort to metre and rhyme? I am not asking you to be an art-for-art's-saker in the sense that so long as you create art it does not matter whether the art is spiritual or no. You are quite right, as a sadhak... poem is admittedly an art-medium and if an art-medium is chosen for what one has to say, artistic intensity is of paramount value. Once you grant this, it becomes pointless to speak, as you have done, of "simply an artistic value" in a spiritual poem. Perhaps you mean by "artistic value" decorativeness laid on from without or mere technical skill. But these things are not art. The former is in fact ...
... use of blessed literature after all, if the nature remains just the same ? Good heavens! Where did you get this idea that literature can transform people ? Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth. Is literature ever going to transform the nature ? I don't suppose so. Never did it yet. I didn't mean that literature can transform people... in 1922, "1 toured India, hunting for music in the heart of din, learning new styles of our classical music..." to quote Dilipda himself. At the request of the then Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, Dilipda wrote three text books—'Sangitik', 'Chhandasiki' and 'Geetashri'. (Notation books explaining in detail about Classical and Modern music.) Here he is writing about Geetashri—one... Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), English poet. George Duhamel (1844-1966), the eminent French author and critic, told Dilipda that Indian music was "indeed a novel but delightful experience with me. The music of India is without doubt one of the greatest proofs of the superiority of her civilization." Dilipda first met him in Lugana in the early twenties and again in Paris ...
... November 1934 Page 118 Art for Art's Sake Art for Art's sake? But what after all is meant by this slogan and what is the real issue behind it? Is it meant, as I think it was when the slogan first came into use, that the technique, the artistry is all in all? The contention would then be that it does not matter what you write or paint or sculpt or what music you make or about what you make... that the artistry does not become so exterior as to be no longer art and (2) that substance (in which of course I include bhāva ) is not left behind in the desert or else art and bhāva not woven into each other. Swinburne's defect is his preference of sound to sense, but I would find it difficult to find fault with his music or his rhythmical method. There is no reason why one should not use... hard saying that one must or may discover and reveal beauty in a pig or its poke or in a parish pump or an advertisement of somebody's pills, and yet something like that seems to be what modern Art and literature are trying with vigour and a conscientious labour to do. By extension one ought to be able to extract beauty equally well out of morality or social reform or a political caucus or allow at least ...
... ever. Literature essentially being Art must make us relive within ourselves wholly what it creatively embodies, - the vision and the truth, the inner hearing, inner sight, inner taste and the intense awakened vibration, as in Amal's Himalaya: The tides of gold and silver sweep the sky But bring no tremor to my countenance: How shall sun-rise or moon-ebb lure, when I... Consciousness Literature LITERATURE is the most flexible and creative self-expression of a people; for it conveys to us in varied ways the message and import of the inner self in its many manifestations. Its greatness lies in the worthiness of its substance, in the strength and value of its thought and the choice of its proper forms. In its highest form and expression, literature tries... are richly revealed in its literature. Moreover, such literature can profoundly influence and mould the vision and work of a succeeding age because of its subtle and immortal import. Even a little of its spiritual intensity can initiate posterity on ways that can promote both self-vision and world-vision. For ultimately it is an ideal and spiritual literature which expresses individual ...
... inferring; 34. Carpentry, or the work of a carpenter; 35. Architecture, or the art of building; Page 324 Seventhly, a constant emphasis was laid on the study of human psychology, human history, and classical literature with a deliberate effort to provide education of the inner soul through poetry, art, and music, — all set in the atmosphere of the harmony between the human and physical... developed and imparted. Starting with grammar, prosody and astronomy, the field covered science and art of healing and longevity (ayurveda), science and art of aesthetic creativity such as drama, music and dance (gandharva shastra), science and art of warfare (dhanurveda), and science and art of prosperity, constructive and well-established infrastructure of civilisational stability (arthaveda... Kena, we have profound statements of the art and science of life as also of the distinction between ignorance and knowledge, — avidya and vidya. Upanishads also speak of apara and para vidya - the lower knowledge and the higher knowledge, of different states of consciousness and their interrelationship. In the subsequent writings in Indian literature, we have further glimpses of the systems ...
... from Calcutta to Santiniketan in November 1913 to felicitate the Poet on his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. My father, Prithwisingh, was a very fine sitarist. He was equally conversant with both Indian and European music. But it was his literary talents and appreciation of art that brought him closer to the Tagores and on more intimate terms with them. He was in the group of young talented... books aloud to him. I never went to any school. After our mother died in 1932, my father often went travelling. So as soon as I was seven, he put me in the Art section, the Kalabhavan. Acharya Nandalal Bose was its Principal. Art and culture were not abstract ideas in Santiniketan in those days; their refinement —beauty in daily living— became ingrained in us. A clean living, clean thoughts ...
... and commerce; (e) Basic details of the main periods of Indian history; (f) Detailed information regarding modem art, modem music, greatest contemporary poets; or (g) Detailed information regarding Sanskrit, Gujarati, Hindi and English literature, etc. 2. Contemporary Global World: This course may have two components (Annexure II). The first component may consist... discussion on the following topics (Annexure VI): (1) What is Culture? Distinction between Civilisation and Culture; (2) Indian Rationality; (3) Indian Aesthetics (Literature, Art, Music, Dance, Drama); Page 211 (4) Indian Ethics and Dharma; . (5) Indian Religion and Spirituality; (6) Distinctive Features of Indian Culture; (7) Indian... intelligence; 6. A bird's eye view of the world history; 7. What is Philosophy? 8. What is Religion? 9. The visual arts; Page 207 10. Music and dance; 11. Languages and Literatures; 12. Countries of the world. The second component of this course would consist of a number of alternatives, and students may be allowed to select any two or three ...
... Exercises of vision and hearing: art and music as instruments. Exercises of concentration in sense activities. Inner senses: capacities to see the invisible and to hear the inaudible. Page 42 Awareness of the body: Elementary knowledge relating to health, strength and beauty of the body. Art of relaxation and art of sleeping. The body as the temple... to practise through daily effort and exercise: Creative urge towards poetry, music, art, crafts, dance, drama, reading, writing. Capacities to feel wideness, intensity and height of consciousness and experience. Works of labour and community service with an inner motive of dedication — learning the art of sweeping rooms, courtyards, washing of dishes and clothes, and elements of first... : recitation, singing eurythmics and dramatics. Faultless deeper expressions: poetry, dance, art and craft. Elementary powers of perception. Necessity and methods of development of these powers, particularly in relation to: Refined vision and audition, appreciation of art and music. Inner yogic visions and voices. Sympathetic feeling and understanding, experience of cooperation ...
... the Rasa, through the fruit. The Rasa of literature, poetry, music is similar to the sap that flows in trees, it is the stream of universal delight that flows through everything. That is why the Upanishad says: " who would breath, who would continue to live, if this universal delight was not there. " It is this delight which finds expression in works of art and the creator enjoys the delight while... and Delight are also the very soul and origin of art and poetry." ( Future Poetry) The question may arise : what has spirituality to do with Art—with beauty and delight ? From the Indian point of view, spirituality is akin to Art. In fact, in ancient times, religion, philosophy and art were collateral activities and poetry, dance and music were allied to sculpture and painting. Religion affirms... On Art - Addresses and Writings On Art and Beauty : The Ladder of Aesthetic Experience " Art is discovery and revelation of beauty. The aim of Art is to embody beauty and give delight." Sri Aurobindo: Future Poetry. Sri Aurobindo, the great Yogi, besides being a great artist, is a great aesthete. He unhesitatingly gave a higher place to Beauty ...
... neighbors said, “Since your family left the street has died, there is no more music. No more laughter.” As I entered the “Art House” I realized that it is only yourself your Aunt Minnie and Chum remaining in this grand and stately house. As I sat waiting for you I could see all the lovely saris in the gift shop and all the works of art that continue to be created there and kept alive. I could still feel... the costumes. Everything was organized by the Mother and she would come to the “Art House” to make suggestions and changes where they were needed. In about 1960 the Government of India sent a commission to visit our Centre of Education and to observe the Ashram. Pavitra suggested that we put on a performance with music in the theatre in English and in French. He choose a long prayer from Mother’s... her Light that has sustained its glow, it is her Light that I seek through my music. If this music brings some comfort, some delight or some message to someone, I have achieved that for which she has placed her trust in me.” [Some comments made by the Mother on Sunil’s music: “Your music is, according to me, the music of the future and it opens the way to the New World.” (13.8.65) Again later ...
... Perhaps the art-form that can most adequately express the psychic influence is music, for, love, joy and beauty are more feeling than meaning. The bhakti-poets of India have always sung their poems in order to bring out more fully the psychic influence. They knew that the subtle inner melody of love could best be conveyed through music - both the pure music and the music of the poetic word.... manifest the truth of the Real: They keep God's natural breath of mightiness, His bare spontaneous swift intensities... ( Ibid .) 3. Sri Aurobindo, Letters, on Poetry, Literature and Art , SABCL,Vol. 9, p. 364. Page 346 Spiritual poetry, as distinguished from psychic poetry, has "a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a breath... el ciervo huiste habiendome herido; salt tras ti clamando, y eras ido. ("Canciones entre el Alma y el Esposo") 8. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art , SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 364 Page 350 (Where did you hide yourself, Beloved, and left me moaning? Like a stag you fled having wounded me; I went out after ...
... Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga Literature, Art, Music and the Practice of Yoga Letters on Poetry and Art Literature and Yoga Poetry and Sadhana Can one gain as much profit (I mean spiritually) from writing poems, etc. as from devoting one's time to sadhana—meditation, etc. In other words, can literary activity be... feel so different then. The whole art of Yoga is to get that contact and get from it into the inner being itself, for so one can enter directly into and remain in all that is great and luminous and beautiful. Then one can try to establish them in this troublesome and defective outer shell of oneself and in the outer world also. 10 November 1934 Literature and art are or can be first introductions... 28 March 1936 Religious and Secular Literature How is it that sometimes secular literature moves one more, and gives a greater light and illumination than religious literature? Religious literature inspires only the religious-minded,—and most religious literature, apart from the comparatively few great books, is poor stuff. Secular literature either appeals to the idealistic mind or to ...
... bestowing the wooden spoon on Hinduism. He admits his incompetence to speak about music, yet that has not prevented him from relegating Indian music to a position of hopeless inferiority. His judgment on art and architecture is of the narrowest kind; but he is generously liberal of his decisive depreciations. In drama and literature one would expect from him better things; but the astonishing superficiality... In art I shall not turn to the opinion of the average European who knows nothing of the spirit, meaning or technique of Indian architecture, painting and sculpture. For the first I shall consult some recognised authority like Fergusson; for the others if critics like Mr. Havell are to be dismissed as partisans, I can at least learn something from Okakura or Mr. Laurence Binyon. In literature I shall... arguments here leaves one wondering how in the world he got his reputation as a dramatic and literary critic: one concludes that either he must have used a very different method in dealing with European literature or else it is very easy to get a reputation of this kind in England. An ill-informed misrepresentation of facts, a light-hearted temerity of judgment on things he has not cared to study constitute ...
... into its hands the key to a new world thronged with the beautiful or profound creations of Art and Learning. From this meeting of a foreign Art and civilisation with a temperament differing from the temperament which created them, there issued, as there usually does issue from such meetings, an original Art and an original civilisation. Originality does not lie in rejecting outside influences but in... On Literature On Literature Bankim Chandra Chatterji Early Cultural Writings The Bengal He Lived In 23-July-1894 The society by which Bankim was formed, was the young Bengal of the fifties, the most extraordinary perhaps that India has yet seen,—a society electric with thought and loaded to the brim with passion. Bengal was at that time the theatre... new social spirit and a new political spirit, but these on a somewhat servilely English model. Of all its channels the released energies of the Bengali mind ran most violently into the channel of literature. And this was only natural; for although the Bengali has by centuries of Brahmanic training acquired a religious temper, a taste for law and a taste for learning, yet his peculiar sphere is language ...
... other elements have followed as best as they can. This is the one of the distinctive characters of Indian culture. Indian art Similarly, in all other fields of human activity, such as art, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature, the aim has been ultimately to discover and express the Divine. The dominant note in the Indian mind, the temperament that has been at... will notice that many of the well-known Indian classical musicians are not only Hindu but also Muslim. Thus Indian music has become one of the most powerful tools of cultural unification. Similarly in literature, the Urdu language is a beautiful language made up of different elements from the languages of India. All this has been brought beautifully in this extract from the writings... aim of life. It is on this basis that the whole of Indian life is built. Her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her philosophy formulates it; her art and literature have the same upward look; even the Indian social system is built upon this conception; her whole dharma or law of being is founded upon it. This is her conception of progress. To the Indian ...
... intolerable cacophony, and bits of classical Western music seem to an untrained Indian as mere immitigable wailing. Andersen's story of the Ugly Duckling is germane to most cavalier judgements on art and literature; alas, the duckling that is adjudged "ugly" is no duckling at all - it is a swan! Sri Aurobindo was acquainted with European art in its early classical, renaissance and recent ex... and touch in his art than the English, a greater breath of native power informing and vivifying his execution than the Latin poet"; and Abhijnana Shakuntalam is the "most perfect and captivating romantic drama in all literature". 44 The last of the five chapters unavoidably hurries through the later centuries and takes a sweeping glance at the many regional literatures. The cardinal notes... Indian art - comprising architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance and drama - being more an expression of Indian life in its true inwardness with its insistent religious commitment and reserves of the spiritual sublime, than a vivid imaginative imitation of outward reality, has been a constant invitation to Western detractors. The gravamen of the charge is that Indian art is not "realistic" ...
... bring the vital into play, then all the strength of vibration is there. If you draw into it this higher origin, it becomes the music of a genius. For music it is very special; it is difficult, it needs an intermediary. And it is like that for all other things, for literature also, for poetry, for painting, for everything one does. The true value of one's creation depends on the origin of one's inspiration... speak of an impossibility). Human beings may withdraw from the Divine and they do it very often. But the Divine withdrawing from human beings, that's an impossibility. By following the way of music or art or any other thing, why can't one arrive at the divine realisation and the transformation? Who has told you that? Do you know all that is happening in you? Don't you think that there are many... all you observe, even the most indifferent books or the most uninteresting things. You can hear poor music, even music from which one would like to run away, and yet you can, not for its outward self but because of what is behind, enjoy it. You do not lose the distinction between good music and bad music, but you pass through either into that which it expresses. For there is nothing in the world which ...
... available. Research is needed in respect of the nature of Tapovans which should be set up in the whole State of Gujarat, and the facilities which should be provided in Tapovans, including music halls, studios for art exhibition, libraries and cinema halls, as also programs of social education that need to be spread in the whole State in order to educate not only pregnant mothers but also young men and... great dearth of children's literature relevant to toddlers' education, kindergarten education and secondary education. There is also a great dearth of films for children meant for these four levels of education. We do not even make use of any museums for educating our young children. Hence, a sixth department could be conceived for conducting research in children's literature, films and museum studies... linguistic capacities. b)Synthesis of cultivation of the power of appreciation of art and of the power of scientific observation and realism. c)Relevance of Nayi Talim system for childhood education. 55 d)Relevance of home science in child education; e)Education through art and craft; f)Education through programs of demonstration, explorations and ...
... attracted to arts and literature remote from our own tradition and just because of qualities in them which these have not. Why should not an Indian feel a parallel attraction? Manmohon Ghose never forgot the Greeks and to the end his delight was in European Literature and European Art." That Sri Aurobindo (a more brilliant classical scholar) shared this appreciation of Greek Art and Poetry with his... lity became tiring. The predominant influence of Sanskrit literature has given to the poetry of Rabindranath its richness, its music as of a thousand-stringed lyre, but it has also given his poetry its non-restraint, its rhetorical and verbal excess. Rabindranath's poetry sweeps us forward on the surge of the dynamic flow of words and music, the rush and rapture of its ideas, so that poetic revelation... of time. Manmohon Ghose's poetry mainly lyrical in inspiration has an exquisite blending of the Greek and Elizabethan, but Sri Aurobindo's poetry, epic in range, is almost entirely Greek. Sanskrit literature, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, may have opened a new world of vision and taste and supplied him with new subject-matter to transmute and make his ...
... 2. Exercises of vision and hearing: art and music as instruments. 3. Exercises of concentration in sense activities. 4. Inner senses: capacities to see the invisible and to hear the inaudible. III. Awareness of the body: 1.. Elementary knowledge relating to health, strength and beauty of the body. 2. Art of relaxation and art of sleeping. 3. The body as the temple... practise through daily effort and exercise: (a) Creative urge towards poetry, music, art, crafts, dance, drama, reading, writing. (b) Capacities to feel wideness, intensity and height of consciousness and experience. 4. Works of labour and community service with an inner motive of dedication — learning the art of sweeping rooms, courtyards, washing of dishes and clothes, and elements of... recitation, singing, eurythmics and dramatics. (c) Faultless deeper expressions: poetry, dance, art and craft. 2. Elementary powers of perception. Necessity and methods of development of these powers, particularly in relation to: (a) Refined vision and audition, appreciation of art and music. (b) Inner yogic visions and voices. (c) Sympathetic feeling and understanding, experience ...
... Exercises of vision and hearing: art and music as instruments. 3. Exercises of concentration in sense activities,. 4. Inner senses: capacities to see the invisible and to hear the inaudible. III. Awareness of the body: 1. Elementary knowledge relating to health, strength and beauty of the body. 2. Art of relaxation and art of sleeping. 3. The body... h Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. Class X The curriculum of class X will be devoted to Indian Art. Special reference to: a) Indian concept of Art; illustrations in Poetry, Music, Painting, Architecture and Sculpture; b) Various stages of development in Art, particularly paintings. c) Outstanding paintings, right up to Mughal period; d) Indian ar... through daily effort and exercise: (a) Creative urge towards poetry, music, art, crafts, dance, drama, reading, writing. (b) Capacities to feel wideness, intensity and height of consciousness and experience. 4. Works of labour and community service with an inner motive of dedication learning the art of sweeping rooms, courtyards, washing of dishes and clothes, and elements ...
... poetry must throw aside all his pet prejudices about both the matter and the manner of art. No doubt, poetry of a particular type holds a special appeal for him, but that should not debar him from distilling the last drop of enjoyment from other types of verse or lead him to label them as artistic failures. For, all art is an attempt to express the various forces of man's being in a beautifully measured... be accepted as a poetic paradise. In every department of art, what is required is not only "significant form" nor, as the modern temperament inclines to believe, a mere energy glorying in its own caprice: what is fundamental is a thrill of significant form, spontaneous energy in love with meaning and measure. And great poetry, like any other art attaining greatness, is a rapture, a peace or a pain, according... Swinburne's Anactoria, where the poet voices Sappho's yearning in a mood of cruel and morbid exultation for the body of the girl Anactoria whom she loves — perhaps the most sadistic cry in English literature: I would find grievous ways to have thee slain, Intense device and superflux of pain; Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake Life at thy lips and leave it there to ache; ...
... ant animation. Lastly, it is a speech of inexhaustible picturesqueness, the phrases are gorged with metaphor, word follows word prodigious with assimilated imagery. And by an art little short of the miraculous, this music has a ring of inevitability to suit every occasion possible. It can give us Cleopatra impatient and scornful, uttering her sense of the physical pain of death when she applies... fixed on potencies of passion and emotion. For, what he offers us is the colour and complexity of the life-movement converting spontaneously its soul of multi-form desire into word-music. And it is a music all his own — unsurpassed for its continual excellence in three respects. It comes from his characters bearing the unique breath and idiosyncrasy of each as well as the exact substance and... of genuine poetry, we shall find that the creative art which voices the intuition fills the substance with attributes beyond it, as if a supreme and ideal beauty wore a disguise and came vibrating into our consciousness under an alien form and meaning which yet are not opaque enough to dim the lustre draped by them. But though all genuine art has a touch essentially spiritual, it is more allusive ...
... massive, but there are usually no subtle echoes there, no 5. Savitri , SABCL Vol. 28, p. 1. 6. Ibid., pp. 2-3: 7. Ibid., p. 3. 8. Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art, SABCL Vol. 9, p. 347. Page 228 deep chambers: the occult things in man's being are foreign to his intelligence". 9 He may employ certain turns resembling... becoming. But the light varies in intensity. The higher mind is like a broad clear day revealing 9. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, SABCL Vol. 29, p. 807. 10. Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art, SABCL Vol. 9, p. 347. 11. Milton, op. cit., Book II, line 148. Page 229 through a spiritual rather than intellectual thought the divine substance... last line we have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is remarkable, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music by massed consonants ...
... Scripture, philosophy and seer-poetry; for even those of them that dispense with the metrical form, are prose poems of a rhythmically mystic thought. But whether as Scripture, philosophical theosophy or literature, there is nothing like them in ancient, mediaeval or modern, in Occidental or Oriental, in Egyptian, Chaldean, Semitic or Mongolian creation; they are unique in style, structure and motive, entirely... to rise into Page 434 another wave and so on till the final fall and natural ceasing of the whole sea of thought on its shore. Perhaps the development of a great and profound strain of music is the nearest thing we have to this ancient poetry of pure intuitive thought. This at least is the method of the metrical Upanishads; and even the others approximate to it, though more pliant in their... heard faultlessly the supreme word; they speak the language of the sons of Immortality. Its truth is entirely revelatory, entirely intuitive; its speech altogether a living breath of inspiration; its art sovereignly a spontaneous and unwilled discerning of perfection. The plan and structure of their thought corresponds; it has a perfection of supra-intellectual cohesion in its effortless welling of ...
... Rhythmic word, sound, music, metrical expressions, -- these are distinguishing features of poetry. But very often, these features are looked upon as mere aspects of technique of poetry and it is thought that if the technique is followed, we attain the right art of poetry. It is even thought that poetry is nothing but art of expression distinguishable from the art that is required in writing prose... remarkable that Sri Aurobindo himself wrote his great epic savitri, which is the longest poem in English literature, to embody and to give full expression to mantric poetry in which the vedic poetics is fully illustrated. It is thus opportune that we ourselves who are students of the Vedic literature turn vigorously to the study of Vedic poetics and prepare the ground for the creation once more of... if we take them at random. And, if we realise that the Vedic poets composed their poems in words that were meant to be chanted and heard, we shall come to appreciate the metric mastery and sense of music of which they were capable. Even today, when we listen to the Vedic chants, we feel ourselves surcharged merely by the act of hearing with sublimity and purity of divine presence that begins to pervade ...
... spirituality not only as the supreme occupation of Man but also as his all-integrating occupation. Similarly, the entire spectrum of Indian culture, —its religion, ethics, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, dance, music, and even its polity and social and economic organisation, — all these have been constantly influenced and moulded by the inspiring force of a multisided spirituality. Page... can be effectuated. The renascent spirituality is all-embracing and is deeply committed to undertake all activities of human life and to transform them. It has begun to influence literature and art and music, education and physical culture. Even social and economic and political fields are being taken up, not indeed to cast them once again into some rigid formula of a religious dogma but... to the Divine in the universe were attempted through the development of great religious movements, philosophies, 3 many-sided epic literature (particularly Ramayana and Mahabharata), Page 21 systems of Puranas and Tantras, 4 and even through art and science. An enlarged secular turn was given, and this was balanced by deepening of the intensities of psycho-religious experience ...
... priere." ("This load, where would it plunge us if not towards those august recesses where awaits us, where beckons us, a presence more than human? If one is to believe Walter Pater, 'all art aspires to the condition of music'. No, all the arts aspire, but each by the magic medium proper to it — words, notes, colours, lines — they all aspire to the condition of prayer.") Bremond regards the poet as one... Keats's poetic movement has communicated its prayerfulness by means of the rhythmic word-pattern constituting the music of poetry. Thus, though poetry does not aspire primarily to the condition of music but to the condition of prayer, it achieves its prayerfulness through a condition of verbal music. Of course, since, for Bremond, silence no less than thought-absence is the stuff of the authentic mystical... name as an anthropologist. Bremond is not easy to come by in even our libraries and bookshops. I remember inquiring about him at a bookseller's in Bombay. The chap had a fondness for both French literature and Persian — possibly because the Persian language is considered the French of Asia. I asked him, "Have you heard of the Abbe Bremond?" he at once replied, "Oh, I haven't heard of such a river being ...
... from an entire and thorough-going unification and uniformity. In a rigorous unification they see the only true union, a single nation with a standardised and uniform administration, language, literature, culture, art, education, — all carried on through the agency of one national tongue. How far such a conception can be carried out in the future one cannot forecast, but at present it is obviously impracticable... life of a regional people. The home of a robust and virile and energetic race, great by the part it had played in the past in the political life of India, great by its achievements in art, architecture, sculpture, music, Andhra looks back upon imperial memories, a place in the succession of empires and imperial dynasties which reigned over a large part of the country; it looks back on the more recent... g the principle of division into regional peoples but not abolishing that division. For there had grown up out of the original elements a natural system of sub-nations with different languages, literatures and other traditions of their own, the four Dravidian peoples, Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of the North, Rajputana and Bihar. British ...
... the learning of languages can have optional courses, so that those who have literary taste can have advanced or specialized courses in literature at an earlier stage, while others who wish to develop expertise in the grammatical aspects of the language, in the art of transliteration and translations and in secretarial practice (involving shorthand and stenography, and computer) can have advanced courses... create in the minds of students an overarching picture of the whole of India demands innovative thinking and innovative experimentation. (c)Study of suitable selections from the vast Indian literature will encourage appreciation of the overarching tendency towards synthesis as also appreciation of diversity in the ever-expanding largeness of comprehensiveness and unity. (d)For the study... manual work can be proposed for student, right at the beginning of the primary level in connection with: (a) Agriculture; (b) Horticulture; (c) Handicrafts; (d) Recitations and dramatics; (e) Music and dance; and (f) Experimental science and simple techniques. Page 43 All these could be made optional in innovative experiments, and depending upon student's interests, a number ...
... seize on it. Disciple : You have dwelt on sculpture, architecture and painting, but you have left music to sing itself. Sri Aurobindo : You may as well ask me to write about trigonometry! (Laughter) I can get at the spirit of the singer and catch the emotion; but in appreciating art that is not enough. (After some time) In these matters of natural predilections, we have an element... it through art. Disciple : Roger Fry does not admit Tolstoy's contention that it is the moral implications of the emotion aroused by the work of art that art important. Sri Aurobindo : That, of course, is not true. Disciple : The one good result of modern artistic movements has been that representative art and imitation of Nature are no longer considered the highest art. Now they... would help in appreciating his works. But one need not know all traditions to appreciate art. Disciple : We do not have to know Christian traditions in order to appreciate European art. This article is perhaps in answer to adverse criticism by someone who said that there is no art in the new art-school in Bengal. Sri Aurobindo : Nobody need answer ignorant criticism. In Europe itself ...
... impulses, so as to refine them and sublimate them to the highest possible degrees, and to transmit the resultant fund of experience through various modes of expression, including those of poetry, music, dance, drama, art, architecture, and craft. The basic thrust of culture and education is inevitably Value-Oriented. * Since the 18th century, and even before that, there came about the decline of intellectual... teeming millions that they ruled. Unfortunately, the scheme of education that was introduced has even now continued to persist with peripheral modifications. -It eliminated the study of poetry music and art, which constitutes perfect education of the soul; -It eliminated the study of philosophy, dharma and spiritual knowledge—three elements, which are the supreme components of the Indian heritage;... experimental institution for a new aim and mode of education where the beauty and sublimity of Nature can serve as a living partner of teaching and learning and where the values of poetry, music and art can vibrate in the rhythms of life of the development of personality and mingling of cultures of Asia and of the world that would promote internationalism and world-citizenship, and universal ...
... Beauty and Art; Appreciation of Poetry and Art; Poets, Mystics and Intellectuals; Poetic Creation and Yoga; Modern Poetry; Translation of Poetry; The Movement of Modern Literature; etc., etc. Some of Sri Aurobindo's disciples have themselves been good poets and litterateurs. In answer to their pointed questions Sri Aurobindo often threw much significant light on different aspects of literature and literary... impressed by the eminent worth and quality of his literary criticism. One of them has gone as far as to say that while going through Sri Aurobindo's The Future Poetry and his Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art she felt like marking marginal lines almost on every page of Sri Aurobindo's writings, for they Page 177 seemed to her so important for further reflection and future reference... and Troy? You want me to give the crown or apple to Music and enrage the Goddesses of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Embroidery, all the Nine Muses? Your test of precedence - universal appeal - is all wrong. I don't know that it is true, in the first place. Some kind of sound called music appeals to everybody, but has really great music a universal appeal? ... a band on the pier at a seaside ...
... spirituality not only as the supreme occupation of Man but also as his all-integrating occupation. Similarly, the entire spectrum of Indian culture, — its religion, ethics, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, dance, music, and even its polity and social and economic organisation, — all these have been constantly influenced and moulded by the inspiring force of a multisided spirituality. The d... y can be effectuated. The renascent spirituality is all-embracing and is deeply committed to undertake all activities of human life and to transform them. It has begun to influence literature and art and music, education and physical culture. Even social and economic and political fields are being taken up, not indeed to cast them once again into some rigid formula of a religious dogma but rather... mind and life to the Divine in the universe were attempted through the development of great religious movements, philosophies, 3 many-sided epic literature (particularly Ramayana and Mahabharata), systems of Puranas and Tantras, 4 and even through art and science. An enlarged secular turn was given, and this was balanced by deepening of the intensities of psycho-religious experience. New tendencies ...
... these celebrations and gave extracts from the speeches in its fortnightly reviews. Again we had a chance of arranging a music programme of Dilipkumar Roy, a well-known name in Indian music and a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Dilipkumar Roy had been giving programmes of Indian music in all big cities of India as an offering to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We arranged this programme in the Town Hall... Purani gave a series of lectures on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which created much interest in many people. Those who attended the lectures wanted some arrangements to continue their interest in the literature and teachings of Sri Aurobindo. When they approached Purani, and requested him to make some arrangement so that all of them could read together and maintain their interest in Sri Aurobindo, Purani... Sojitra. After getting the blessings of the Mother in November 1950, I performed the ceremony most prayerfully and invoked her Presence. The inauguration speech is given separately, under the title "The Art of Living". 1 Again in 1952 some friends from Barwala (Ghelasa) wanted me to inaugurate Sri Aurobindo Centre at Barwala near Bhimnath. When they got the Mother's permission and blessing, I performed ...
... e methods. The result is something as near to wordless music as word-music can get, and with the same power of soul-life, of soul-emotion, of profound supra-intellectual significance. In these higher harmonies and melodies the metrical rhythm is taken up by the spiritual; it is filled with or sometimes it seems rolled away and lost in a music that has really another unseizable and spiritual secret... expression arises. It is where the metrical movement remains as a base, but either enshrines and contains or is itself contained and floats in an element of greater music which exceeds it and yet brings out all its possibilities, that the music fit for the Mantra makes itself audible. It is the triumph of the embodied spirit over the difficulties and limitations of the physical instrument. And the listener... modulations, variations, strong to satisfy the intelligence, to seize the ear, to maintain its vigilant interest, will not bring us yet to the higher point we have in view. There are periods of literature in which this kind of skill is carried very far. The rhythms of Victorian poetry seem to me to be of this kind; they show sometimes the skill of the artist, sometimes of the classical or romantic ...
... from an entire and thoroughgoing unification and uniformity. In a rigorous unification they see the only true union, a single nation with a standardised and uniform administration, language, literature, culture, art, education,—all carried on through the agency of one national tongue. How far such a conception can be Page 500 carried out in the future one cannot forecast, but at present it... life of a regional people. The home of a robust and virile and energetic race, great by the part it had played in the past in the political life of India, great by its achievements in art, architecture, sculpture, music, Andhra looks back upon imperial memories, a place in the succession of empires and imperial dynasties which reigned over a large part of the country; it looks back on the more recent... g the principle of division into regional peoples but not abolishing that division. For there had grown up out of the original elements a natural system of sub-nations with different languages, literatures and other traditions of their own, the four Dravidian peoples, Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of the North, Rajputana and Behar. British ...
... not matter what you write or paint or sculpt or what music you make or about what you make it so long as it is beautiful writing, competent painting, good sculpture, fine music. It is very evidently true in a certain sense,—in this sense that whatever is perfectly expressed or represented or interpreted under the conditions of a given art proves itself by that very fact to be legitimate material... artificial movements of mere literature. Still, I hardly fancy that the true native spirit or bent of English metre is to be sought in "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall" and is lost in "Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight." Popular or nursery verse catches the child's ear or the common ear much more easily than the music of poetry because it relies... not likely to be helpful except perhaps for a time. All that is necessary is a total turning of the life to the Divine and it can be done by degrees without too much forcing of the nature. Literature, poetry, music can be as much a part of Yoga as anything else. One can meet the Divine in speaking as well as in silence, in action as well as in physical solitude and quietude. An entire retirement ...
... writer as a poet purely to the extent that, by means of word-music, image and suggestion, he can bring us into touch with some vividness and colour and truth our normal unpoetic perceptions miss. That is the reason why, for many in the last century who turned away from the emptiness and hypocrisy of conventional religion, the worship of Art and Beauty could fill their yearning for significance and... does not mean, however, that the aim of poetry is purely linguistic, any more than that the goal of art is purely formal. The words and the paints are means, but the end is the revelation—or at least the suggestion—of what lies beyond either sound or colour. Sri Aurobindo puts it: "It is because Art reveals what Nature hides that a small picture is worth more than all the jewels of the millionaires... whom we can imagine actually meeting and conversing with. So Sri Aurobindo, by fulfilling the Indian archetype of Kavi and Rishi, has done something quite outside the mainstream of English literature. In this sense it is true to say that what he has done is foreign to the English spirit. But in doing this he has not done violence to the English language. On the contrary: he has fulfilled something ...
... or in French literature, Voltaire, Flaubert or Anatole France. I could name others, especially in French which is the greatest store-house of fine prose among the world's languages—there is no other to match it. Matthew Arnold once wrote a line something like this: France great in all great arts, in none supreme, to which someone very aptly replied, "And what then of the art of prose-writing... y begin with the Greek Thales and Anaximander, as if human thinking began with them. That is the old style European mind. It used to be the same in Art and other matters. Now Chinese and Japanese art is recognised and to a less degree the art of India, Persia and the former Indian colonies in the Far-East, but in philosophy the old ideas still reign. "From Thales to Bergson" is their idea of the... as one of the great creators and his prose stands among the ten or twelve best prose-styles in the world's literature. December 1932 Great Prose Stylists I stand rather aghast at your summons to stand and deliver the names of the ten or twelve best prose styles in the world's literature. I had no names in mind and I used the incautious phrase only to indicate the high place I thought Bankim ...
... "Beauty and Delight are also the very soul and origin of art and poetry."² The question may arise : what has spirituality to do with Art-with beauty and delight ? From the Indian point of view, spirituality is akin to Art. In fact, in ancient times, religion, philosophy and art were collateral activities and poetry, dance and music were allied to sculpture and painting. Religion affirms... are for life. Only the question is: What is life? Art also exists for life. Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is the rhythmic voice of Life—but a voice of inner life."4 Life f not what it appears. In fact, the outer aspect of life is mask. To reach out to and express that which is behind the mask is the business of art. We have to bear in mind that art is not only expression, it can be creative, also.... Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision PART IV ON ART AND BEAUTY : THE LADDER OF AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE " Art is discovery and revelation of beauty. The aim of Art is to embody beauty and give delight."¹ Sri Aurobindo, the great Yogi, besides being a great artist, is a great aesthete. He unhesitatingly ...
... submissively echoed their new Western teachers and masters. They learned to speak with pride of their metaphysics, of their literature, of their religion, but in all else they were content to be learners and imitators. Since then Europe has discovered that there was too an Indian art of remarkable power and beauty; but the rest of what India meant it has hardly at all seen. But meanwhile the Indian mind... interesting to the mind, even, for instance, to such practical side minutiae as the breeding and training of horses and elephants, each of which had its Shastra and its art, its apparatus of technical terms, its copious literature. In each subject from the largest and most momentous to the smallest and most trivial there was expended the same Page 29 all-embracing, opulent,... s were being determined in the seed. The great classical age of Sanskrit culture was the flowering of this intellectuality into curiosity of detail in the refinements of scholarship, science, art, literature, politics, sociology, mundane life. We see at this time too the sounding not only of aesthetic, but of emotional and sensuous', even of vital and sensual experience. But the old spirituality reigned ...
... find our own music within, otherwise how could we possibly hear the music from above, which is perhaps also within, and which is perhaps one and the same Music everywhere. Years ago, as I was writing a particular book, Mother suddenly said to me, I don't know how I can help you, but I am going to send you some music. And indeed the words came like a very vast rhythm, which was perhaps music and which... great waves of music, I just have to withdraw a little and there it is; I hear it. It is always there. It is music, but without sounds—great waves of music! 5 And most curiously, these “great waves” are also linked to that "motion of wings" we spoke of earlier, which set her down so gently on the flint road in Fontainebleau—our world may be more rhythmical than we think and its music more marvelous... by the music, a secondary and inferior effect of the music; if one lost the rhythm, one also lost the thoughts. For thought—like everything else, like our architecture and painting, our gestures and revolutions—may simply be a translation of that great flow of Shakti which gives rhythm to everything—how wonderful if we always knew how to find the pure Flow! To create is to find the great Music again ...
... Farquhar. When the painting is brought down and unveiled, the English are amazed. The music flows on as anahata nada 9 as Krishna stands grace-fully surrounded by cows and cowherds and cowherdesses and even the air is still with the music, for the leaves of the trees seem to be listening carefully too. This is art that has risen from the depths of the mystic vision of the Indians. The old... lot of English books by Indians and was trying to program them as a separate discipline of Indo-Anglian literature within the larger 1. The Mahratta, 18.6.1937.i think it was published from Pune in those days, I am not sure. Page 167 framework of English literature. Reviewing V.N. Bhushan's Horizons he wrote on 31.12.1937: The future of the Indo-Anglians is... grand-son has shown interest in the art. Who knows! The genius of the past could have reincarnated in him to complete the painting! With such possibilities, the nation may yet regain its past glory. Else, the spirit will come back to reinhabit its body, but find the body missing. What a great tragedy it would be! The two foreigners decide not to take away such life-giving art from India but leave the Time ...
... their spiritualism. It was therefore the great age of formalised metaphysics, science, law, art and the sensuous luxury which accompanies the arts." — Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL), Vol. 3, pp. 217, 221-2. "The classical age of the ancient literature, the best known and appraised of all, covers a period of some ten centuries and possibly more... among the supreme poetic artists with Milton and Virgil and he has a more subtle and delicate spirit and touch in his art than the English, a greater breath of native power informing and vivifying his execution than the Latin poet. There is no more perfect and harmonious style in literature, no more inspired and careful master of the absolutely harmonious and sufficient phrase combining the minimum of word... careless, hasty or irregular workmanship. The poet is expected to be thoroughly conscious of his art, as minutely acquainted with its conditions and is fixed and certain standard and method as the painter and sculptor and to govern by his critical sense and knowledge the flight of his genius. This careful art of poetry became in the end too much of a rigid tradition, too appreciative of rhetorical device ...
... exaltation no poetry is possible and on the wings of it Atalanta in Calydon and Tristram of Lyonesse reach a sheer glory of inspiration nowhere else to be found in Victorian times. Tennyson's art and music are a pale finicky dandyism compared to this masterful exuberance: the older poet surpassed Swinburne in sense of character and in narrative skill, but in the true furor poeticus the younger was... least a fault by itself: when he failed it was not because of his style or temperament but because there happened in him pretty often a curious division between the music and the matter of his inspiration. The former, except when the art remained somehow insufficiently concealed or naturalised, left him very rarely: almost always his song was a bright flux and reflux, "a foam that the sea-winds fret"... form of character and there is form of imaginative word-music. Balzac shares with Shakespeare the vastest power known to Europe of living characterisation and is his superior in plot-weaving: a regular world criss-crossed by remarkable incidents and tense with vital genius he projects out of his multifarious being. But has he Shakespeare's word-music, Shakespeare's miraculous rhythm of metaphorical thought ...
... selfish commercialism and destructiveness. Winds of change are blowing everywhere, and there is a tempest of unrest. New philosophies are being formulated, and not all of them are idealistic. Music, literature, art and wealth are being put at the disposal of the means to provide vulgar excitements, and indulgence is sought to be propagated and justified in various ways, often extremely dangerous. A blanket ...
... aspiration was called quest in the scriptures of the West. The quest .of the Knights for the Holy Grail Page 180 inflamed the heart of Europe to a great extent for a time. Its art and literature bear abundant indication of this. I bring in the West here, for the poetic consciousness of Rabindranath is no less shaped by the West than by the Upanishads. In many cases we see that as the... Vedic sages, jyok ca Saryam drse" – "May we behold the Sun with open and undazed eyes." To some extent, perhaps, it is true that if we compare Tagore with those who stand on the peaks in world literature, we find in their creation an utmost, flawless harmony and synthesis between speech and substance, while in Tagore we find on the whole speech carrying more weight than substance and this is why... moves goes on singing To the land of abundance. Or, Farther and farther The road goes on ringing with a thin, poignant, Lengthening note. Page 183 Dance and music almost run abreast. From the viewpoint of spiritual realisation we find that aspiration and invocation have the same origin. The spontaneous utterance of the heart is but the. mounting self-revelation ...
... of Yoga? What is the relation of Yoga with Psychology, Science, Philosophy, Religion, Occultism, Art, Music, Literature, Technology and Life? How can we arrive at an artistic and creative experience? What is the essence of Music? What is the essence of Art? What is the essence of Literature? What is the indispensable utility of Technology in the human life and its perfection... Philosophy? Scientific Method Limitations of Science and Philosophy Is Mathematics Knowledge? Beauty of Nature Beauty of Poetry, Art, Music Six Limbs of Indian Art Yoga and Art The Secret Meaning of the Legends of the Veda Stories of the Upanishads and their Yogic Import Evolution and the idea of the Avatar The... for the younger student, the lofty examples of the past, given not as moral lessons but as things of supreme human interest, and for the older student, great thoughts of great souls, passage of literature, which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, records of history and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and inspiring ...
... his chill embrace, The naked spirit here. Oh my sweet flower, Art thou too whelmed in this fierce wailing flood?" Various tones of pathos and passion strike across a richly composite texture with a rhythm paced appropriately and subtle significant pauses - a tissue of art which is yet spontaneous as if the music of expressive blank verse came Page 136 naturally out of... one of my letters. But one can't quite overlook his muffing several other wonderful snatches of the great Mantuan's art. To the example I gave in my last letter I would particularly add his treatment of the line which Arnold Bennett considered the most rhythmical in all poetic literature - the phrase Virgil put in the mouth of Aeneas when that hero voiced his helplessness before Dido's request for the... mean simply music - though this too he lacks - and perhaps you also in writing of Mallarme and Yeats don't pay enough attention to the power of the sheer sound-music of their work. For example in a recent letter to me you cited a piece of Aurobindo and said (truly) that much early Yeats is also in the genre of romantic love poetry, but the difference - or one difference - lies in the music of such a ...
... own native moulds of music. The thought satisfied with its own emotion is not too insistent to elaborate the lyrical form for its more intricate purposes or to give it certainly a weightier but almost inevitably a less simply rapturous movement. The intellectual ages sing less easily. It is their care to cut and carve the lyrical form with a self-conscious and considering art and their practice arrives... phases. An intensive narrative, intensive in simplicity or in richness of significant shades, tones and colours, will be the more profound and subtle art of this kind in the future and its appropriate structures determined by the needs of this inner art motive. A first form of the intensive and spiritually significant poetic narrative has already been created and Page 285 attempts to replace... simpler structures before it works out victoriously its greater motions or ampler figures in narrative and drama. The freshest and most spontaneous liquidities of song utterance abounded in past literature at times when the direct movement of the life-spirit, whether confined to simple primary emotion and experience or deepening to the more vivid probings of its own richer but still natural self-aesthesis ...
... the art of * Adapted and expanded from an essay written in 1953 to go with a projected volume, Selected Poetry of Sri Aurobindo, and published a little later in Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, Pondicherry. Page 56 poetry. They seem to clip again and again in even the most serious, most symbol-charged compositions the wings of what Bloc calls the Spirit of Music throbbing... spiritual purposes and problems instead of getting mazed in superficial or else merely fashionable perplexities. To overlook or underrate his poetic quality would be a misfortune for the lover of literature who is not confined by specific cults. Page 59 ... age (or for all history) is not determined by any of these factors. It depends on the meaning with which his attitude is fraught and, inasmuch as the meaning is an integral part of his poetry, on the art by which his matter and manner fuse and kindle up. Sri Aurobindo the poet has undoubtedly been contemporary in the fundamental sense and, in a good deal of his output, momentous. In certain respects ...
... the heart of music in particular and art in general are here recorded. Several striking judgments are also passed on the methods of Indian and European music. In fact, a few flaws of extremism notwithstanding, a more discerning and far-reaching piece of declaration of faith by a great artist who is also a great humanist and idealist would be hard to find anywhere in literature. This is high... India, and our author's sympathy with him came all the easier for the latter's keen enjoyment of music. The "Mahatma" is shown as holding that India's music is of her very essence, and it is frequently that he asks Roy to sing to him. About painting, however, he is quite cold - and on all art that strikes him as not the heart's immediate outflow but as going in frequently for complex values... the worth of his presence in the book is not his attitude towards art: The man of action, the man of ethical askesis — that is the real Gandhi. While speaking even of music he brings us face to face with this basic substance of himself. "How well I remember," he says in one place, "the joy and comfort that music used to give me Page 100 when I was ailing ...
... go to the heart of music in particular and art in general are here recorded. Several striking judgments are also passed on the methods of Indian and European music. In fact, a few flaws of extremism notwithstanding, a more discerning and far-reaching piece of declaration of faith by a great artist who is also a great humanist and idealist would be hard to find anywhere in literature. This is high praise... symbol of India, and our author's sympathy with him came all the easier for the latter's keen enjoyment of music. The "Mahatma" is shown as holding that India's music is of her very essence, and it is frequently that he asks Roy to sing to him. About painting, however, he is quite cold - and on all art that strikes him as not the heart's immediate outflow but as going in frequently for complex values he... constitutes the worth of his presence in the book is not his attitude towards art: the man of action, the man of ethical askesis - that is the real Gandhi. While speaking even of music he brings us face to face with this basic substance of himself. "How well I remember," he says in one place, "the joy and comfort that music used to give me when I was ailing in a South African hospital. I was then recovering ...
... submissively echoed their new Western teachers and masters. They learned to speak with pride of their metaphysics, of their literature, of their religion, but in all else they were content to be learners and imitators. Since then Europe has discovered that there was too an Indian art of remarkable power and beauty; but the rest of what India meant it has hardly at all seen. But meanwhile the Indian mind... interesting to the mind, even, for instance, to such practical side minutiae as the breeding and training of horses and elephants, each of which had its Shastra and its art, its apparatus of technical terms, its copious literature. In each subject from the largest and most momentous to the smallest and most trivial there was expended the same all-embracing, opulent, minute and thorough intellectuality... s were being determined in the seed. The great classical age of Sanskrit culture was the flowering of this intellectuality into curiosity of detail in the refinements of scholarship, science, art, literature, politics, sociology, mundane life. We see at this time too the sounding not only of aesthetic, but of emotional and sensuous, even of vital and sensual experience. But the old spirituality reigned ...
... eighteen shilpas were as follows: vocal music, instrumental music, dancing, painting, mathematics, accounting, engineering, sculpture, agriculture, cattle- breeding, commerce, medicine, conveyancing and law, administrative training, archery and military art, magic, snake-charming and poison antidotes, the art of finding hidden treasures. Later literature mentions sixty-four Kalas, which a cultured... composing poems, understanding dramas, physical exercises, recreation for utilizing leisure hours, and the art of preparing toys for children. Other Good Teachers and Pupils in The Upanishads In the Upanishadic literature we come to know of a large number of good teachers and good pupils. In the selection presented in this book there are Satyakama, Jabala, Nachiketas, Shvetaketu and Narada. We... cultured lady was expected to master. These included the art of cooking, skill in the use of body ointments and paints for the teeth, etc., music, dancing, painting, garland-making, floor decoration, preparation of the bed, proper use and care of dress and ornaments, sewing, elementary carpentry, repair of household tools and articles, reading, writing and understanding different languages, composing ...
... eighteen shilpas were as follows: vocal music, instrumental music, dancing, painting, mathematics, accounting, engineering, sculpture, agriculture, cattle-breeding, commerce, medicine, conveyancing and law, administrative training, archery and military art, magic, snake- charming and poison antidotes, the art of finding hidden treasures. Later literature mentions sixty-four Kalas, which a cultured... poems, understanding dramas, physical exercises, recreation for utilizing leisure hours, and the art of preparing toys for children. In the Upanishadic literature we come to know of a large number of good teachers and good pupils. In the selection presented here, there are Satyakama Jabala, Nachiketas, Shvetaketu and Narada. We may also refer to the traditional story of Uddalaka Aruni, the son... cultured lady was expected to master. These included the art of cooking, skill in the use of body ointments and paints for the teeth, etc., music, dancing, painting, garland-making, floor decoration, preparation of the bed, proper use and care of dress and ornaments, sewing, elementary carpentry, repair of household tools and articles, reading, writing and understanding different languages, composing poems ...
... line, self-mastery. Its limitations at once appear, when we look back at its prominent examples. Early Rome and Sparta were barren of thought, art, poetry, literature, the larger mental life, all the amenity and pleasure of human existence; their art of life excluded or discouraged the delight of living. They were distrustful, as the exclusively ethical man is always distrustful, of free and flexible... development two distinct periods, one of art and beauty, the Athens of Phidias and Sophocles, and one of thought, the Athens of the philosophers. In the first period the sense of beauty and the need of freedom of life and the enjoyment of life are the determining forces. This Athens thought, but it thought in the terms of art and poetry, in figures of music and drama and architecture and sculpture;... hostile and destructive force fatal to her principle of living. Sparta, though a Hellenic city, admitted as almost the sole aesthetic element of her deliberate ethical training and education a martial music and poetry, and even then, when she wanted a poet of war, she had to import an Athenian. We have a curious example of the repercussion of this instinctive distrust even on a large and aesthetic Athenian ...
... possibility that there might have been no poetical literature at all. The Teutonic nations have in this field been conspicuous by their silence or the rarity of their speech. After the old rude epics, saga or Nibelungenlied, we have to wait till quite recent times for poetic utterance, nor, when it came, was it rich or abundant. In Germany, so rich in music, in philosophy, in science, the great poetic word... vision and that peculiar unseizable beauty of turn which are the highest qualities of English poetry. The varied commingling and separating of these two elements mark the whole later course of the literature and present as their effect a side of failure and defect and a side of achievement. There are evidently two opposite powers at work in the same field, often compelled to labour in the same mind at... These reversals and revolutions of the spirit are not in themselves a defect or a disability; on the contrary, they open the door to large opportunities and unforeseen achievements. English poetical literature has been a series of bold experiments less shackled by the past than in countries which have a stronger sense of cultural tradition. Revolutions are distracting things, but they are often good for ...
... of the ideal he later enunciated in the pages of his philosophical monthly, Arya, that Art can never really find what it seeks or succeed in liberating its soul in the highest perfection of speech unless it transfuses the rhythms of its exquisite moods into a sustained spiritual experience. English literature has not been utterly barren in Page 28 this kind of direct revelatory speech;... humility That Thou art God. In the same simple strain but with a greater breath of melody are these stanzas of spiritual intoxication; We will tell the whole world of His ways and His cunning: He has rapture of torture and passion and pain; He delights in our sorrow and drives us to weeping, Then lures with His joy and His beauty again. All music is only the sound... and not even in his own possession. Previous to this article, only two short notices attempting critical evaluation had come out: James Cousins' "The Philosopher as Poet" in New Ways in English Literature and a review of Sri Aurobindo's Songs to Myrtilla by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya in the Madras periodical, Sh'ama. The present article was read by Sri Aurobindo before publication and it had ...
... life and spirit. That is the error in realism,—in its theory, at least, for its practice is something other than what it intends or pretends to be. Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. What it does do, is to make an arbitrary selection of motives, forms and hues, here of dull blues and greys and browns and dingy... having got so far, it can go no Page 38 farther and there is the beginning of a decadence. Great things may be done by poetry within these limits and the limited lifetime it gives to a literature; but it is evident that the poet will have a certain difficulty in getting to a deeper vision, because he has to lean entirely on the external thought and form; he must be subservient to them because... of the later Indian tongues has for us fervours of poetic revelation which in the great classics are absent, even though no mediaeval poet can rank in power with Valmiki and Kalidasa. The modern literatures of Europe commonly fall short of the Greek perfection of harmony and form, but they give us what the greatest Greek poets had not and could not have. And Page 39 in our own days a poet ...
... Consider the word "feed". He says that at night he would feed on a certain kind of thoughts. The word he employs is at once a piece of inspired art and a disclosure of his psychology. He refers to "harmonious numbers", verbal music, issuing from his mind; and music is primarily associated with the mouth. So he suggests the mouth beforehand by the mention of feeding. That is the artistic touch. But the... in either case, for he does not omit to emphasise this nature of his poetry: he says, "thoughts that voluntary move / Harmonious numbers". Milton does not have to force his thoughts to make music: the music comes naturally from the very act of thinking, with an immediate movement that has all the look of the lyrical. No doubt, lyrical poetry is believed to spring from the act less of thinking than... solitude... 8 The fourth characteristic showing the lyricism of Milton's thoughts is the celebrated Miltonic music. Criticism, from the beginning, has stood in admiration before the wonderful rhythmic properties of Milton's blank verse. The usual term for them is "organ-music", but that covers the total effect, the massive tone of the verse-paragraph which is the unit of expression in Paradise ...
... aesthetic being grown numb can refuse to find here "the music that enchants or disturbs". From the point of view of the inner music — that is, the thrill of the inspired consciousness — creating the outer that embodies it, the lines are some of the most perfect in literature, with a sustained exquisiteness of the mot juste, and the outer music is of such a markedly euphonious Virgilian type as to leave... timed music played by changing yet harmonising voice-weights and voice-lengths. The technique, like the style, reflects a genius most sensitively complex. Except for a few inversions which smack of the century in which the poem was composed — the date being 1899 — everything in it is refreshingly modern in craftsmanship. So much modulation and change of pace connect up with the art of Lascelles... organic adaptation to music and melody. His thought is profound, his technical devices commendable, but the music that enchants or disturbs is not there. Aurobindo is not another Tagore or Iqbal or even Sarojini Naidu." The words fairly take one's breath away by their sweeping ineptitude. For, they deny inspiration completely and in all its modes to Sri Aurobindo's poetry. In poetry, music does not stand ...
... , intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed not by increased pleasures and powers in life, but by greater duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its art forms—painting, sculpture, music, literature—would be accessible to all equally, the ability to share in the joys it brings being limited solely by one's capacities and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal ...
... blossom. We have been neglecting literature and poetry, painting and music, dance and drama. The minimum that is necessary, and which should find a legitimate place in any scheme of education is the appreciation of art. It needs to be underlined that one cannot appreciate art unless one has practised one's own discipline as a creative activity or practised some art, at least, as an amateur. Mere... Mere information on creativity is not enough. What is basically required is some direct experience of painting or music or dance or drama or architecture or poetry. It has been said, and quite rightly, that cultural experience grows and develops under the sense of leisure. But our educational programmes are not designed with a view to permit the required interweaving of leisure with activities of rigorous... practise scientific method in his quest of knowledge. Sometimes a sharp contrast is drawn between creativity and scientific attitude. Often this contrast is portrayed to show a conflict between art and science. But if we look into the problem closely, we shall find that this conflict is imaginary rather than real. As a matter of fact, science itself can be conceived as a creative activity. For ...
... right-about turn. It was Bankim and Madhusudan who have placed Bengali literature on the macadamized road of modernism. Still, while walking on that road, somehow we were not able to shake off completely the touch of clay under the feet and the smell of swampy lands around. It was Tagore's mastercraft that enabled Bengali literature to drive in coachand-four through the highways. Not only so, in addition... language is that every writer has at his command a ready-made tool of which he has to know only the proper manipulation. In the literature of that language no writer falls below a particular standard or a level of tune. The writer, who imbibes the genius of a language, and literature ¹ The mendicant came to nurse the deserted woman whose allurement he had once rejected and to whom he had promised to... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Rabindranath and Modernism (I) BENGALI literature has reached the stage of modernism and even ultra-modernism. This achievement is, we may say point-blank, the contribution of Rabindranath. Not that the movement was totally absent before the advent of Rabindranath. But it is from him that the current ...
... in any case, the ideal of poetry which he himself strives after. Apparently, form is the essential element in poetry. He seems to agree with Paul Valéry who holds that poetry is an art of language - "un art du langage" - but goes deeper. Valéry had learnt from his master Mallarme that a poem Page 364 is not made with ideas but with words. Sethna too says that... the rhythm which are, Sethna tells us, the two great expressions of ananda, "beauty's mirth". ...the art where sight and sound mingle their fates By symbol and by rhythm sharing one birth Out of that deepest thrill of beauty's mirth. (Art of Arts) The poetic language is not a "transcription" of our thoughts, feelings or perceptions but an "incarnation"... Jimenez all true poets are to be distinguished from literary man. A literary man is conscious of his writing, he knows what he is up to; whereas a poet is only a mouthpiece of truth. Therefore "literature is a state of culture, poetry a state of grace, before and after culture." 5 Sri Aurobindo makes a distinction between the yogic literary man and the ordinary one. The first is what Jimenez ...
... challenged children; (6)National and international education; (7)Multi-linguistic abilities in respect of Indian and International languages; 17 (8)Children's literature and films; and (9)Development of integral personality. In addition, The University is empowered to set up and promote several Departments of Research, instruction and communication in regard... those of pre-natal education, toddlers' education, kindergarten education, primary education and secondary education and to themes relevant to stimulation for admiration for uplifting visions, sublime music, sublime forest life and beauty of nature, as also those relevant to the synthesis of powers of creativity with those of scientific realism. The University is also empowered to set up, conduct and promote... VI. Creation of Environmental and Atmospheric Beauty VII. Orientation for the first Parenthood VIII. Continuous Parenthood Education IX. Music for Young Children X. Games for the child - Games that do not hurt the child XI. Toys for Children XII. Learning Tools 24 ...
... that creates music and whose remembrance by the poet would make him a musical creator: Page 115 A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long... made this pretty clear again and again. "Never has a land of plains, however beautiful it may be, seemed beautiful to my eyes," he once wrote, bringing, as Havelock Ellis notes, a new sensation into literature, if not into life; "I need torrents, rocks, pines, dark forests, mountains, rough paths to climb by. precipices that fill me with fear." The landscape beauty that, as Ellis remarks, "appealed to... with other images from beyond the earth, com-poses a kaleidoscope of the mysticism lying in one form or another at the deepest heart of the second Romanticism. References 1.English Literature, Modern -1450-1939 (Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 90. 2. Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (Charles Scribner's Sons, London-New York, 1945), pp. 3-4. 3.Ibid., p. 5. 4.Science ...
... elusive wonder of the skies, Stand still one moment! I will lead thee and bind With music to the chambers of my mind. Behold how calm today this sea before me lies And quivering with what tremulous heart of dreams In the pale glimmer of the faint moonbeams. If thou at last art come indeed, O mystery, stay Woven by song into my heart-beats from this day. 30 Behold... quenched. I stood in Ocean's thunders washed and drenched. 33 This shore and that shore, - I am tired, they pall. Where thou art shoreless, take me from it all... Have I not sought thee on a million streams, And wheresoever the voice of music dreams, In wondrous lights and sealing shadows caught, And every night and every day have sought? Pilot eternal, friend unknown... with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams, Page 76 Cool with thy winds of delight, Dark fields waving, Mother of might, Mother free.... Thou art wisdom, thou art law, Thou our heart, our soul, our breath, Thou the love divine, the awe In our hearts that conquers death. 25 The Mother is Durga, Lady and Queen, and she is Lakshmi the ...
... West is still chiefly governed by the rationalistic idea and a materialistic preoccupation. But at the summits of thought and steadily penetrating more and more downward through art and poetry and music and general literature an immense change is in progress. A reaching towards deeper things, an increasing return of seekings which had been banished, an urge towards higher experience yet unrealised, an... more comfortable, happier, better appointed, more luxuriously enriched with the pleasures of the mind, life and body, is the only true art of life. All our philosophy, all our religion,—supposing religion has not been outgrown and rejected,—all our science, thought, art, social structure, law and institution must found itself upon this idea of existence and must serve this one aim and endeavour. This... unmistakable. Nor is it only in philosophy and the higher thinking that this turn is visible. European art has moved in certain directions far away from its old moorings; it is developing a new eye and opening in its own manner to motives which until now were held in honour only in the East. Eastern art and decoration have begun to be widely appreciated and have exercised a strong if subtle influence. ...
... education of the body: the Upaveda of Rigveda, called Ayurveda (the science and art of sustenance, protection and maintenance of long life); the Upaveda of Page 271 Yajurveda, called Dhanurveda (science dealing with weapons of war and art of warfare); and the Upaveda of Samaveda, called Gandharvaveda (science of music, singing, dancing and dramatics). When one studies Ayurveda, the real... Samaveda and it is a well known fact that the entire Samaveda is meant to be sung. Gandharvaveda was mainly concerned with the art of singing, dancing, playing instruments but it also included dramatics. Later around the 3rd century A.D, an important treatise on music, dance and drama, the Natya Shastra was written by the sage Bharata. It described in detail the different modes of dancing, the... Page 282 or recluses, the Ajivikas, who used dance and music as a means of spiritual progress. In the Mahabharata, we find that Arjuna, the great archer, was also expert in dancing and, while Bhima served King Virata as cook, he , under the pseudonym of Brhannala, offered his services as a dance-teacher. He taught the art of singing, playing of various instruments and dancing to the royal ...
... self-imprisonment of Dutch art in a strong externalism, of a fairer kind indeed, but still too physical and outward in its motive. English poetry had greater things to do and it waited for some new light and more powerful impulse to come. Still this external motive and method are native to the English mind and with many modifications have put their strong impress upon the literature. It is the ostensible... Chapter IX The Course of English Poetry - I Chaucer and the Poetry of External Life The spirit and temper that have stood behind the creative force and come to the front in a literature are the one essential thing that we must discern, for it is these that predestine the course the poetry of a people will take and the turn it gives to its forms. For if the field which poetry covers... poetic approach to the higher truths of the spirit. Yet on the other hand if this difficulty could once be overcome, then because of the profounder intensity of the power of poetical speech which this literature has developed, the very highest and most penetrating expression of these profoundest things would be possible. A nearer significant imaging of them would be close to the hand here than could easily ...
... mystical aspiration in general that is founded on what he calls "the Mystery of Being". To this Mystery he brings a concrete Page 219 approach - by music, art, drama, literature, poetry and by a philosophy of action which accepts exterior life with its myriad contacts yet springs, as he says, from a recollected interior life in communion with the supreme Ground... clarity, the justice, the care, the firmness and the ease that constitute prose an art distinct from poetry which comes with a flashing flooding force; but only French culture provides us with this art in its Page 214 most perfect as well as most cumulative form. It is a valuable art, since what is best said by way of pointed and animated conversation cannot be... the mind are not limited to a small group: even the sailor and the barman and the concierge will surprise you with intelligent interest in literature or science or the fine arts. As a charming instance of the general appreciation of serious literature in France F.L. Lucas remembers the case of one Laurent, called "Coco", accused of burglary in April, 1905, who proved an Page 215 ...
... intention of self-unfoldment in it, and surely Nature includes the thinking part of man. From its poise beyond, our art also must lay hands on the natural world and lay bare its true meaning as a progressive manifestation of the Spirit. The thinker in us has thus a role to play in art too: he must act more and more as a mind of light, something that does hot try to seize and shape in its own terms the... merely instrumental. Of course, the instrument has to be fine and forceful if it means to be art, but it does no more than clear the way for what is to be communicated. Once this work is done, it fades out of the reader's sight. Quite the reverse happens in poetry: there the form is not subdued to the content. Art in prose is exercised towards a felicitous forgetfulness of form: it is exercised in poetry... are a means to an end, and the same thoughts can be expressed by it in many different combinations of words. When it discharges its office with skill and charm and power it attains the status of literature; but its basic character remains unchanged: it is written with ideas and its verbal form does best its job as a go-between. The thought-substance, which can assume various forms, is intended to stand ...
... On Literature On Literature The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings Appendix: Alternative and Unused Passages and Fragments Passages and Fragments - I [ An early fragment ] Kalidasa does best in more complicated & grandiose metres where his majesty of sound and subtle power of harmony have most opportunity; his treatment of the Anustubh... is not so readily done. No one has suffered more in this respect at the hands of European scholars than Kalidasa, about whom we have no external evidence until the artificial revival of Sanscrit literature in the later centuries of the first millennium of the Christian era. Some Kalidasa's authorship of his earliest extant poem has been first questioned in very recent times by a number of European... still farther, finding fresh possibilities, developing mightier masteries, until the encasing plasm wears away with the strain of life. The harp grows old & shabby, the strings are worn and frayed, the music deteriorates or ceases, and finally the spirit breaks & throws away its instrument and departs to assimilate its experiences and acquirements for a fresh Page 267 existence. But that the ...
... perfection of the language and there is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and beauty of sound, but there is the quality of the thing said which counts for something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves 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... in a stream of passion, beauty and force. But sometimes there comes down a supreme voice, the overmind voice and the overmind music and it is to be observed that the lines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest and most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore too much to say that overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which could surpass the... and wideness into my heart— But ever the music misses some huge star Or else some flower too small for the minstrel hand. No skill can turn all life my harmony. Perchance a tablet of magic mood will make The truth of the whole universe write itself But only when with mortal thoughts in-drawn I learn the secret time-transcending art: +Silence that, losing all, grows infinite ...
... 25) Given his eclectic theory of poem and his acquaintance with diverse types of writings in more than one literature, he may be expected to be objective and dispassionate in his estimate of any literary form or poet or period in the history of English literature. Not many critics who have undertaken to compare Shelley and Keats have been absolutely fair to both. Keats easily winning... concept with Sri Aurobindo's ideas on the nature of poetry yields interesting insights into even the classics that have been exhaustively probed: "Milton has not only song-music, he has also symphony- music." (p. 133) "He (Yeats) stands supreme in modern English poetry and is the master par excellence there of incantatory melopoeia." (p-144) "Phanopoeia rather... powerful feelings nor is it a simple product of intellectual labour: "But mere expression of emotion and imagination is not poetry; shudders and screams, fantasies and nightmares do not immediately make art. The aesthetic instinct and the intuitive sense have to work, at once intensifying and chastening emotion and imagination. Nor can we, who are not primitives, not Australian black fellows, bypass ...
... disappeared. And this is so frequent, this is so true that such stories are often told in Japan. Their literature is full of fairy-lore. They tell you a story in which the hero comes suddenly to an enchanted place: he sees fairies, he sees marvellous beings, he spends exquisite hours among flowers, music; all is splendid. The next day he is obliged to leave; it is the law of the place, he goes away. He... 12 April 1951 What is the difference between Japanese art and the art of other countries, like those of Europe, for example? The art of Japan is a kind of directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise... t is harmonious, this creates simultaneously the field of action and the actors, in the sense that at the time of the great artistic periods all the conditions were favourable to the development of art, and naturally, the fact that all the circumstances were favourable, attracted the men who could use them. There have been concrete movements like that, great ages like that of the Italian Renaissance ...
... From his window he could hear the music of the geishas. "Ah, I have it!" he proclaimed. The next evening, when his teacher asked him to illustrate the sound of one hand, Toyo began to play the music of the geishas. "No, no," said Mokurai. "That will never do. That is not the sound of one hand. You've not got it at all. " Thinking that such music might interrupt, ... find a remarkably developed art that is well worth studying. Zen is best understood as psychological exploration leading to experience that illumines what is real. Since education is a psychological cultivation of the faculties and capacities of consciousness leading to a knowledge of reality, we can appreciate how Zen can be useful to those who aim at perfecting the art and science of education... is pre-eminently practical. It avoids abstractions and dialectical subtleties. Logic.. Zen says, is self-conscious and contains a trace of effort and pain. Life, on the other hand is an art, and like perfect art it should be unself-conscious; there should be no trace of effort or pain. Life ought to be lived as simply as a bird flies through the air or a fish swims in the water. Central ...
... ability to concentrate. She studied English literature at Saint Xavier’s College in Bombay and was taught there by many of the Jesuit fathers. She obtained degrees at Bombay University. After graduation she taught literature at Sophia College in Bombay. The Parsis I have met are all highly refined people and very developed in the fields of art, music, literature, poetry, the sciences, etc. Do you attribute... in the Bulletin office, heard about this and told me about it. He asked me if I would be interested. He asked the Mother about it and she said, “Yes, she can do it.” I had done my B.A. in French literature and had read many of the major French writers in the French language. I had also translated Mother’s Entretiens into English. Tehmi’s Painting Did you have many meetings with Satprem... show, Where the crystal meaning sings a bird On the hills of truth, I’d go. I’m tired of all this trumpery, Fine phrases void of heart, Vain peacockings of majesty. The God-king’s regal art. O sweet beloved simplicity. White wisdom of the soul. Your purifying radiance free To pass across my scroll. O Word of God, immaculate. From silences deep heard, From inward pureness ...
... had for its aid the power of memory and the perishable palm-leaf. The colossal literature ex- tended to various domains - philosophy and theology, religion and yoga, logic and rhetoric, grammar and linguistics, poetry and drama, medicine and astronomy besides the sciences. It dealt also with politics and society, music and dance, architecture and painting, all the sixty-four accomplishments, and various... that even such subjects as breeding and training of horses and elephants had their own shastras. Each domain of thought and life had a systematic body of knowledge, its art, its apparatus of technical terms, its copious literature. During this period, India stood in the first rank in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, surgery and all other branches of physical knowledge which were practised... intelligence. In the epic literature of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, we find a strong and free intellectual and ethical thinking; there is an incessant criticism of life by the intelligence and ethical reason. We find in it a multisided curiosity and desire to fix the norms of truth in all and an implicit or explicit assent to the spiritual truth. In the field of art, there was insistence upon ...
... Page 90 and from the reaches intermediate between them and our ordinary mental consciousness there have descended forces and forms, which have become embodied in literature, philosophy, science, in music, dance, art, architecture, sculpture, in great and heroic deeds and in all that is wonderful and precious in the different organised or as yet unorganised aspects of life. To put the students... although three faculty of arts, science, and engineering technology were prominent, there were no artificial barriers between them, and a very special stress was laid on physical education and on art, music, dance, drama, and various kinds of manual works and crafts. Education was conceived as a free process of growth; education was also conceived as integral education. But integrality was not imposed;... present the essentials of Indian culture as also of different cultures, not merely intellectually in ideas, theories and principles, but also vitally in habits and customs, in art, under all forms such as paintings, sculptures, music, architecture, decorative arts and crafts, — and physically, through dress, games, sports, industries, food, and even reconstruction of natural scenery. Multiplicity of ...
... Virgil, what about Alcaeus, Sappho, Catallus, Horace? they did a good deal of inventing or of transferring—introducing Greek metres into Latin, for example. I can't spot a precedent in modern European literature, but there must be some. And after all, hang precedents! A good thing—I mean, combining metric invention with perfect poetry—would be still a good thing to do, even if no one had had the good sense... 14 or more syllables and when my brother Manmohan asked him to explain this discrepancy, he could merely gape—no explanation was forthcoming! How ever, when I took up seriously the study of the literature, it was explained to me by competent people, themselves poets and littérateurs —thus "The line is strictly a line of 14 syllables, no more, no less (i.e. it is a true akṣara-vṛtta ), but the... That I suppose was the position before. Originally, indeed, there was only one stream recognised,—that I remember very well, for it was the time when I was learning and assiduously reading Bengali literature; at that time what you now call svara-vṛtta was regarded as mere popular verse or an old irregular verse-form. Afterwards with the advent and development of Tagore's poetry, one began to hear of ...
... and phrases, a good teacher can induce in the child the exercises and practice of the required sound, pitch, flow and rhythm and impact and effectiveness that they can pro duce. Even the fields of art, music and poetry have their realistic and concrete measures, their meters and their proportion of com positions without which these aesthetic pursuits cannot achieve their heights and perfection. ... image and to symbolise and to arrive at figures that swing open the doors of the invisible and the inaudible reality. If science leads to the knowledge of reality of the physical world, poetry, art and music, indeed, every creative activity, also lead to the knowledge of that very world, and if they are properly pursued with the deeper aspects of the required effort, one can perceive deeper aspects... the lives of great philosophers and thinkers, of scientists and artists, of great teachers and ardent students. Page 166 Passages of great literature can also be an indispensable aid. We rightly look upon Upanishads as the supreme literature of India, and passages of Upanishads like those of Isha, Kena, Chhandogya, Brihadaranyaka and others can uplift students to very great heights of aspirations ...
... suggest a mood, or, inversely, to choose an object as a symbol and disengage from it a mood by a series of decipherments'." [p. 19] It is a very good description of the impressionist method in literature. Verlaine and others do the same, even if they do not hold the theory. I do not understand what Mallarmé means here, but it seems different from what Housman says, that the poet's mission is... for Prabodh Sen, what did you expect? Literary nature (artistic generally, or at least very often) is human nature at its most susceptible— genus irritabile vatum . And besides where is the joy of literature if you cannot use your skill of words in pummelling some opposite faction's nose? Man is a reasoning animal (perhaps), but a belligerent reasoning animal and must fight with words if he cannot do... (other than the psychic worlds) to which many poets give us some kind of access or sense of their existence behind much more than Virgil. But if when you say verse you mean his rhythm, his surge of word music, that does no doubt come from somewhere else, much more than the thoughts or the words that are carried on the surge. 31 March 1932 Page 373 Dante Somehow Dante's verse as well as ...
... wrote a little. Literature and poetry appealed to me. After hearing Mother I thought I ought to try some of the other arts as well. Taking up singing at that age was not possible but I thought I could learn instrumental music instead. I might not have been able to draw but I could always learn photography. So I told Mother: "I'd like to learn photography, isn't that an art as well?" Mother... instance of how very alert Mother always was about my welfare and safety. (40) I mentioned to you earlier that Mother took a lot of trouble to learn all kinds of fine arts - music, painting, literature, poetry, dance, recitation, flower-arrangement, etc. She acquired a mastery over everything concerning beauty and joy in order to find these qualities in life. Mother used to say it was... about my attempts at music. As I thought vocal music at my age would not be possible I decided to try learning some instrumental music. From my very childhood I had loved the clarinet. "Mother, may I learn to play the clarinet?" In 1950, when our instruments for the band were ordered, Mother got a clarinet for me. With great enthusiasm I began playing western music. Then after a few ...
... with its intense and unfathomable spiritual feeling, vision and vibration not yet evident in the current poetic literature. This entitles Mr. Sethna to the rare distinction of an innovator in the field of poetry. In his work we confront the splendour of a new age of poetic art. The poet expresses his inspiration, "overhead" or otherwise, in many veins; sometimes in a strain of subtle... exquisite mystery: O halo of hair, God's benediction on her mortal head, Across my gloom ray down your tenderness! O dream-cascade of splendour - to the quiet Music of your faint filling I would die; Upon heart-soothing spirit cadences Carry me over the dread verge of time! But his power is more characteristically revealed in lines which... core of mystery! The same idea takes another form in Evils: With you unseen, what shall my song adore ? Though waves foam-garland all the saffron shore My music cannot mingle with their tone, Because a purer worship I have known, and also in Grace: Take all my shining hours from me, But hang upon my quiet soul's ...
... to attain to a total state of concentration and even to arrive at total silence? How can we arrive at an artistic and creative experience? What is the essence of music? What is the essence of art? What is the essence of literature? Page 25 What is the indispensable utility of technology in the human life and its perfection? What is the meaning of story? Is history an... for the younger students, the lofty examples of the past, given not as moral lessons but as things of supreme human interest, and for the older students, great thoughts of great souls, passages of literature, which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, records of history and biographies which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and inspiring... can be learned and be taught by a process of discussion, swimming cannot be learned and taught by discussion. In order to learn to swim, one has to plunge and swim. Similarly, the methods of learning music or painting have to be quite different from those by which we learn mathematics or physics. And, indeed, when we come to the realm of character and values, we must recognise the necessity of a greater ...
... creation, according to certain standards,¹ it has illustrated once more that ¹". . .it cannot be said that Aurobindo shows any organic adaptation to music and melody. His thought is profound; his technical devices are commendable; but the music that enchants or disturbs is not there. Aurobindo is not another Tagore or Iqbal, or even Sarojini Naidu." – The Times Literary Supplement, July 8, 1944... of earthly life and its sweetness. And as we are passionate about the earthly life, even so Sri Aurobindo has made a passion of the spiritual life. Poetry after all has a mission; the phrase "Art for Art's sake" may be made to mean anything. Poetry is not merely what is pleasing, not even what is merely touching and moving but what is at the same time, inspiring, invigorating, elevating. Truth is... philosopher has almost succeeded being a great poet – I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neither Shakespeare nor Homer had anything ¹ James H. Cousins in his New Ways in English Literature describes Sri Aurobindo as "the philosopher as poet." Page 52 like philosophy in their poetic creation. And in spite of some inclination to philosophy and philosophical ideas ...
... truth which magnifies everything to you, no? Otherwise the rhythm and the word music aren't very striking, what? Well, have you become a disciple of Baron and the surrealists? You seem to suggest that significance does not matter and need not enter into the account in judging or feeling poetry! Rhythm and word music are indispensable, but are not the whole of poetry. For instance lines like these... and one a day of this kind is a feat. If the apparent ease covers a lot of labour, that is the lot of the poet and artist except when he is a damned phenomenon of fluency. "It is the highest art to conceal art." "The long and conscientious labour of the artist giving in the result an appearance of divine and perfect ease"—console yourself with these titbits. As for repetitions, they are almost inevitable... that I did not find. You may note that you quoted some time back [31.3.38] Dante's line: "In His will is our peace" and said that written in Italian it is one of the greatest lines in all poetic literature. Well, judging by the translation (not knowing Italian rhythm), I fear again it doesn't stir me much, but it stirs you much more because you see the profound significance behind it. How can you ...
... need make no bones about the symbolism being an old one, the metaphor familiar. If we read the Iliad in this year of grace 1945, with nearly three thousand years in-between crammed with poetic literature, we shall not find many new metaphors in it - nor, I suspect, did the ancient Greeks themselves, for all the similes were borrowed from familiar experience and were current in the unrecorded minstrelsy... be as bright and fresh to-day in poetry as they were when the first poet spoke of them, provided, of course, genuine insight catches them up into lovely and harmonious language. The whole haunting music of Yeats's early verse could be dismissed as jejune claptrap with the charge that it is chockful of mystic roses and dim dreams and pale stars. But the fact stands that no more beautiful poetry has... doubt, a certain type of poem may appeal to me more - but not for purely poetic reasons: the substance may be more in tune with my mood of the moment, my general character or my outlook on life. As art, all types are for me enjoyable and legitimate so long as those three intensities fuse and work out a harmonious whole. I should be just as hard put to it to limit my aesthetic enjoyment of the "fairness" ...
... On Literature On Literature The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings On Translating Kalidasa Since the different tribes of the human Babel began to study each other's literatures, the problem of poetical translation has constantly defied the earnest experimenter. There have been brilliant versions, successful falsifications, honest renderings... alone lead to it. Now that nations are turning away from the study of the great classical languages to physical & practical science and resorting even to modern languages, if for literature at all then for contemporary literature, it is imperative that the ennobling influences spiritual, romantic & imaginative of the old tongues should be popularised in modern speech; otherwise the modern world, vain of... a hundred others the disabilities of the English language have been its blessings; the artistic labour & the opportunity for calling a subtler harmony out of discord have given its best poetical literature a force & power quite out of proportion to the natural abilities of the race. There are of course limits to every departure from rigidity but the degree of imperfection admissible in a rhyme is very ...
... ed had for its aid the power of memory and the perishable palm-leaf. The colossal literature extended to various domains, — philosophy and theology, religion and yoga, logic and rhetoric, grammar and linguistics, poetry and drama, medicine and astronomy and the sciences. It dealt also with politics and society, music and dancing, architecture and painting, all the sixty-four accomplishments, and various... that even such subjects as the breeding and training of horses and elephants had their own Shastras. Each domain of thought and life had a systematic body of knowledge, its art, its apparatus of technical terms, its copious literature. During this period, India stood in the first rank in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, surgery and all the branches of physical knowledge which were practised... recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge is the second; an original dealing with modem problems in the light of Indian spirit and the endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society ...
... Aurobindo has written at length on the contribution that Art can make to the integral education in his important book, "The National Value of Art". He has pointed out that the first and the lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic, the second is the intellectual and the third and the highest is the spiritual. He has even stated that music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the soul; they make... younger students, the loftiest examples of the past, given not as moral lessons but as things of supreme human interest, and for elder students, the great thoughts of great souls, the passages of literature which can set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, the records of history Page 32 and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts... . We have to recognise that different children react to various activities of education differently. There are children who feel a powerful attraction towards creative activities such as arts, music, dance, composition of poetry, drama, etc. They should, of course, be given freedom to pursue these valuable activities. But there are instances where children who do not have this natural inclination ...
... inspiration, vision and technique. 1 1 Some of the more general letters —whole or in part— have already appeared in "Letters of Sri Aurobindo" (Third Series). (Now 'Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art".) But as they are linked up with the kind of poetry that Savitri is and as they were actually written with direct or indirect reference to this poem, their most significant place is in the same... , rendering his Yoga a unique hope for the world, has lain unmanifest and mostly unseized and, until certain radical conditions are completely fulfilled, cannot find direct expression in life or literature. Even the expression of the Overmind with its massive and comprehensive yet intensely immediate vision - especially in the entire authenticity of its undertones and overtones of rhythm - is rare... awaited Introduction never got written. Nothing that anybody may pen, however acute, can replace it as an expository and illuminative document on the unusual poetic afflatus - unusual both in message and music - that blows through the twenty-five thousand and odd lines of this Legend of the past that is a Symbol of the future. But luckily we have a substantial number of letters by Sri Aurobindo on what can ...
... harmony between this rhythm and his new art of metrical building. The metrical movement he perfected—for others before him had attempted it—passed easily into the language, because he caught and lifted its native rhythm into a perfect beauty of sound captivating to the ear and moving to the inner witness and listener silent within us—the soul, to whom all art and all life should appeal and minister... been done. There have been a few exceptions like Swinburne's magnificent sapphics; but these are isolated triumphs, there has been no considerable body of such poems that could stand out in English literature as a new form perfectly accomplished and accepted. This may be perhaps because the attempt was always made as a sort of leisure exercise and no writer of great genius like Spenser, Tennyson or Swinburne... mechanically regular beat, common, uninspiring, sometimes stumbling or broken, is something quite different from the powerful sweep, the divine rush or the assured truth of tread of that greater word-music. The hexameter is a quantitative verse or nothing; losing the element of quantity, it loses also its quality. Admitting that quantity as it is ordinarily understood cannot be the sole basic element ...
... centuries not only in economics and politics but in literature and arts. This domination by the European culture has produced very tonic effect on many cultures in Asia and has given rise to renaissance in their literature and life generally. But together with much good this domination has also given * A Lecture at the J J. School of Art, Bombay 1-2-1954. Page 46 rise... had when he spoke of "the music of the 'spheres'." It belongs to a supreme spiritual plane, but its aim is to manifest itself here on our life-plane. Art is one medium through which it can express itself here in terms of material media. An artist can contact— in fact, the greatest artists have always contacted,—this plane of harmony and brought down forms from there in his art either direct or with some... forced upon India European art-ideals, methods and values. Schools of art were compelled to teach only European art and by European methods. It was only in Calcutta at the end of the last century that an English artist of exceptional calibre, Mr. E. B. Havell, introduced on his own responsibility I "Chinese art has consistent history and is even more persistent than the art of Egypt. It is more than ...
... not particularly fond of mangoes she sent for one and ate some bites of it to show her gratitude. Mother taught us to appreciate beauty in all its forms; the reading of Savitri, poetry, literature, music and art. She was such a model for all us children. She gave importance to everything. She taught us also just how important it is to take care of material objects and to treat them with respect. I... When and how was your name changed from Judy Ann to Gauri? Although I was very timid, I loved to dance and particularly loved Indian dancing. I used to go to the library and listen to music. Whenever I heard music I would begin to dance freely. I chose two people at the library to dance with me and I wore anklets with bells. I would change my name every day. One day I would be “Jasmine”, the next... isn’t there just to teach subjects, but also to help awaken the child’s psychic being and to awaken their senses to inner and outer beauty. All these years I have taught English grammar, reading, literature, creative writing, comprehensive poetry and drawing to students from eleven years up to fifteen years of age. The Mother strongly encouraged developing the child’s artistic side and appreciation ...
... human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as having found rare voice in the world's literature and art: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. A fifth and highest plane, which he named Supermind and whose realisation above on its own peaks and ultimate descent below into the physical... have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is superb, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped by massed consonants in several places to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music. The four... of their role in poetic creation. It etches memorably on our minds what the author calls the metaphysical psychology of the new art inspired by the extraordinary experiences and significances that have gone to the making of his poem and, in seeking affinities for this art, it ranges over a wide terrain of world-poetry and gives us vivid illustration, penetrating analysis, suggestive evocation - aesthetic ...
... And it is the satisfied nearness which imparts to his verse the Spirit-appeal peculiar to it. There is a more intimate, more effulgent poetry possible, but this is the first expression in English literature of a close relationship with some sovereign Splendour through a poetic yoga transfiguring both thought and image. Almost the whole mood of AE's mystical desire is summed up in his Alter... AE cherishes the wealth of inspiration scattered from the Unknown, but his soul goes inward with hands that hunger to clasp the Supreme and not to beg Page 316 of Him a boon of music or magnificence. For, the mainspring of the whole psychic process is an intuition that the lover is craving to gain consciously what he already holds somewhere in the buried places of the subliminal... again into a half-kindled style, The House of the Titans is a notable performance. There is a reflection of Keats, naturally enough since the theme is affined to that of Hyperion where also grand music is made from the falling of Titana. Especially the start, after the first five lines, is reminiscent of Keats's picture of Saturn stone- Page 322 still in the lightless woods with ...
... And it is the satisfied nearness which imparts to his verse the Spirit-appeal peculiar to it. There is a more intimate, more effulgent poetry possible, but this is the first expression in English literature of a close relationship with some sovereign Splendour through a poetic yoga transfiguring both thought and image. Almost the whole mood of AE's mystical desire is summed up in his Alter... AE cherishes the wealth of inspiration scattered from the Unknown, but his soul goes inward with hands that hunger to clasp the Supreme and not to beg Page 31 of Him a boon of music or magnificence. For, the mainspring of the whole psychic process is an intuition that the lover is craving to gain consciously what he already holds somewhere in the buried places of the subliminal... again into a half-kindled style, The House of the Titans is a notable performance. There is a reflection of Keats, naturally enough since the theme is affined to that of Hyperion where also grand music is made from the falling of Titans. Especially the start, after the first five lines, is reminiscent of Keats's picture of Saturn stone-still in the lightless woods with Thea by his side. Keatsian too ...
... constant music of the over-passing of the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds and lights of the truth of the spirit give new meanings to the finer subtleties of life." The artists were not far behind. But we owe it in the main to the Tagores, who bathed in the well-spring of Indian culture, for the revival of Indian art and giving it a new direction. The Industrial Art Society... executed. By this time revolt was brewing among the writers and the artists against this age of intense bourgeoisie and utilitarianism. So now, Europe, with its resources depleted, looked to its art and literature to show the way. In France, it was painters such as Corot, Millet and the Barbizon School who left the ravaged and overpopulated cities for the countryside. Landscape Page 20 ... determined in the seed. "The great classical age of Sanskrit culture was the flowering of this intellectuality into curiosity of detail in the refinements of scholarship, science, art, Page 30 literature, politics, sociology, mundane life." In actual fact, there is no historical parallel for such an intellectual labour and activity before the invention of printing and the facilities ...
... start this morning. MUSIC MASTER. Well, there is something in philosophy, but music, sir, music — DANCING MASTER. And dancing, music and dancing, what more can one need? MUSIC MASTER. There's nothing so valuable in the life of the nation as music. Page 186 DANCING MASTER. And nothing so necessary to mankind as dancing. MUSIC MASTER. Without music — the country couldn't go... some reason to call his reign the "Augustan Age" of French culture. As befitted such a patron, the prevailing taste was classical, insisting on form, order, balance and proportion. The ideals of literature and art were "order, neatness, precision, exactitude" — and these were presumed to be the ideals of all reasonable men of all ages. Pierre Corneille (1606-84) was the father of French classical tragedy... people who have a feeling for the fine points of one's art, who can appreciate the Page 183 beauties of a work and repay all one's trouble by praise which is really discerning. There is no reward so delightful, no pleasure so exquisite, as having one's work known and acclaimed by those whose applause confers honour. MUSIC MASTER. I agree. My feelings exactly. There is nothing ...
... human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as having found rare voice in the world's literature and art: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. A fifth and highest plane, which he named Supermind and whose realisation above on its own peaks and ultimate descent below into the physical... have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is superb, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped by massed consonants in several places to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music. The four... of their role in poetic creation. It etches memorably on our minds what the author calls the metaphysical psychology of the new art inspired by the extraordinary experiences and significances that have gone to the making of his poem and, in seeking affinities for this art, it ranges over a wide terrain of world-poetry and gives us vivid illustration, penetrating analysis, suggestive evocation— aesthetic ...
... lines of life, and life, it might be contended, is of this kind, thought itself is of this kind, and the rhythm of poetry gains in sincerity by following them. But art is not of this kind, the poetic spirit is not of this kind; the nature of art is to strive after a nobler beauty and more sustained perfection than life can give, the nature of poetry is to soar on the wings of the inspiration to the highest... treatment, many notable names each with his special turn and personality, but no supreme decisive speech and no gathering up of the many threads into a great representative work. The whole of European literature at the present time is of this character; it is a fluid mass with a hundred conflicting tendencies, a multitude of experiments, many minor formations, which has not yet run into any clear universal... more multitudinously expressive rhythm than the great poets of the past were under the necessity of using; something of the same change has to be achieved as has been successfully accomplished in music. We see accordingly some attempt to break or enlarge, Page 161 deepen or subtilise the traditional moulds, to substitute others of a more delicate character or with a more varied and flexible ...
... Truth and thought and sight cast into forms of beauty cannot be banished in that cavalier way. Music and art and poetry have striven from the beginning to express the vision of the deepest and greatest things and not the things of the surface only, and it will be so as long as there are poetry and art and music. 27 February 1932 The only remedy is to extend the philosophy through the whole poem so... n with the perfection of the same poet's work at his best. I may say also that if mere rhythmic acrobacies of the kind to which you very rightly object condemn a poet's work to inferiority and a literature deviating on to that line to decadence, the drive towards a harsh strength and rough energy of form and substance may easily lead to other kind of undesirable acrobacy and an opposite road towards... the words of Antony "I am dying, Egypt, dying" (down to "A Roman by a Roman, valiantly vanquished") which stand among the noblest expressions of high, deep, yet collected and contained emotion in literature—though that is a masculine and this a feminine nobility. There is in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spense the same poignancy and restraint—something that gives a sense of universality and almost imp ...
... Apart from the vedangas, we find in the Vedic literature four other sciences and arts which have come to be known as upavedas. The Upaveda of Rig Veda is Ayurveda, the famous medical science of India; the upaveda of Yajurveda is Dhanurveda, the ancient science of archery and warfare; the upaveda of Samaveda is Gandharvaveda, the science and art of music; the upaveda of Atharvaveda is Arthaveda, which... knowledge of the Vedas I have referred to the Vedic and Upanishadic systems interchangeably.) As I studied the Upanishads, I found them not to be easily comprehensible. After I studied some literature about the Vedic and Upanishadic texts and consulted some scholars, I realised that there are certain aspects of the language, style and symbolism of the Vedic and Upanishadic texts which make them... intimate direct contact, a knowledge by separative direct contact, a wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact" (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 525). There is in the Vedic and Upanishadic literature, a good deal of reference to the theme of knowledge, and there are words like vidyā and avidyā or knowledge and ignorance, citti and acitti or consciousness and unconsciousness and samudra ...
... aesthetic sensation, but can only be described as creative insight: the rhythm and the language, though not superior as art to what is done elsewhere, are then of a kind eminently desirable by one who seeks to utter the Spirit from increasingly authentic sources, for the word-music bears upon its surge an experience, or at least the reflection of an experience, proper to occult planes not easy of access... Yoga gave birth. His later life having been out of tune with mysticism, he might not have cared for so masterful an expression of spiritual truths. But what has art to do with the man's phases? Each phase can be, for art, of paramount value; art is any substance caught up in an insightful perfection of form; if Chattopadhyaya was still an artist at heart, no matter with what communistic or hedonistic... Chattopadhyaya and realises how grievous the loss might be if he were to find no entrance to the heart of this God-drunk music. There is an early poem Page 165 which very well represents his exoticism in a certain aspect of the mystic mood: You flood my music with your autumn silence And burn me in the flame-burst of your spring. Lo! through my beggar-being's tattered ...
... The Inspiration of Paradise Lost VII Milton's Art ~ His Plane of Inspiration and Shakespeare's His "Plane" of Inspiration and Shakespeare's Now we may note a few examples of Milton's art. On the more obvious yet none the less genuinely expressive level we have the four rivers of Hell conjured up, each by the appropriate phrase elaborating... "combustion". The art of controlled vehemence could go no further than in this whole passage. Parts of the passage, lines 3-5, figure in a discussion by Sri Aurobindo of the use of epithets. "According to certain canons, epithets should be used sparingly, free use of them is rhetorical, an 'obvious' device, a crowding of images is bad taste, there should be subtlety of art not displayed but... downfall, and it is the tremendous force of the words that makes us see as well as hear." 5 But what is most notable about Milton is not only his capacity for such art: it is also his capacity to meet a similar situation with an art equally controlled at the opposite of vehement. We can imagine him producing a delicate effect in a different kind of scene, but we are quite unprepared to find not long ...
... ness or world-worthlessness. In India we find during every period when her civilisation bloomed, an intense joy in fife and nature, a pleasure in the act of living, the development of art and music and literature and song and dancing and painting and the theatre, and even a highly sophisticated inquiry into the sex relation. It is inconceivable that a culture or view of life based on other-worldliness... though without wings; for, if Nehru is no poet Hafting into fire and ether, he is surely a prose-writer with an inspired pace, ranging far and wide on terra firma, and his books have value as literature no less than as personal narratives, political studies, historical surveys and sociological discussions. Page 15 ... of him is not too insistent. Page 9 It is also a sense of more than natural presences that is aroused in him by the loveliness and grandeur of Nature as well as the perfection of art and poetry. And most of all the spiritual unknown is at the back of the intense hunger he mentions in his Autobiography to visit "Manasarovar, the wonder-lake of Tibet, and snow-covered Kailas ...
... artist and musician, he is better known as an art-critic. Although he was a practising lawyer, art was his first love. As the general secretary of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, the Rupam magazine stands testimony to his brilliance. In countries like China and Burma (Myanmar), he gave lectures on Indian Art. Among the many books he wrote on art, are: Vedic Painting, South Indian Bronze, ... treasurer. 91. Manodhar: a Bengali sadhak, the Ashram's barber. Sita: ' Harm's companion. 92. Radhananda or Shuddhananda Bharati was born in 1893 in Tamil Nadu. He studied Tamil literature in-depth and soon flowered into a poet and composer. He lived in the Ashram for over a decade, during which he observed silence and lived on uncooked food. He also learnt French and translated... Masterpiece of Rajput Paintings, and his research work on music, Ragas and Raginis. 34. viraha: separation, absence of the divine Lover. 35. BrahmSnanda: bliss of absorption into Brahman. 36. sanra ananda: ananda in the body. 37. Fenetres: name of a house. 38 Maya was Dilip's only sister. She was married to Sri Bhava Page 392 Shankar Banerjee, the only son ...
... and sea And shook herself free. Thou art wisdom, thou art law, Thou our heart, our soul, our breath, Thou the love divine, the awe In our hearts that conquers death. Thine the strength that nerves the arm, Thine the beauty, thine the charm. Every image made divine In our temples is but thine. Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen, With her hands that... Mother, I kiss thy feet, Speaker sweet and low! Mother, to thee I bow. Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands, When the swords flash out in twice seventy million hands And seventy million voices roar Thy dreadful name from shore to shore? With many strengths who art mighty and stored, To thee I call, Mother and Lord! Thou who savest, arise and save! To... itself the uniqueness, the subtle nuance, of every religion. This remarkable quality of it has been evident to the students, in the West no less than in the East, of its prolific scripture and literature. Hence Indian spiritual culture cannot be objected to as being sectarian. But, on the other hand, we should be de-nationalising it if we refused to admit whatever ideas or terms in it distinguished ...
... I said, practically, that art in the sense of perfect mastery of technique, perfect expression in word and sound was not everything and greatness and beauty of the substance of the poetry entered into the reckoning. It might be said of Shakespeare that he was not predominantly an artist but rather a great creator, even though he has an art of his own, especially an art of dramatic architecture and... principle of art for art's sake Racine ought to be pronounced a poet superior to Shakespeare because of his consistent and impeccable flawlessness of word 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... produce philosophies more perfect in themselves than the systems of Shankara or Plato or Plotinus or Spinoza or Hegel, poetry superior to Homer's, Shakespeare's, Dante's or Valmiki's, music more superb than the music of Beethoven or Bach, sculpture greater than the statues of Phidias and Michael Angelo, architecture more utterly beautiful than the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon or Borobudur or St. Peter's ...
... same as those demanded by the European. It would take too long to examine the detail of the difference which we find not only in sculpture, but in the other plastic arts and in music and even to a certain extent in literature, but on the whole we may say that the Indian mind moves on the spur of a spiritual sensitiveness and psychic curiosity, while the aesthetic curiosity of the European temperament... freedom of oriental art, its refusal to be shackled or debased by an imitative realism, its fidelity to the true theory of art as an inspired interpretation of the deeper soul values of existence lifted beyond servitude to the outsides of Nature, the right way to the regeneration and liberation of the aesthetic and creative mind of Europe. And actually, although much of Western art runs still along the... A Defence of Indian Culture A Defence of Indian Culture Indian Art The Renaissance in India XIV Indian Art - 3 The sculpture and painting of ancient India have recently been rehabilitated with a surprising suddenness in the eyes of a more cultivated European criticism in the course of that rapid opening of the Western mind to the value of oriental thought ...
... these too God will give ending. Dante also is no mean master of the same art; and Milton of Paradise Lost can match the poets of both the Aeneid and La Divina Commedia. Indeed Milton demonstrates most Page 244 impressively how Melopoeia could be not only lyrical but also epical, a stupendous music in which a grandiose meaning finds organic reverberation. Sound bearing out the... image-aspect in prominence. The two other aspects that can stand out are Melopoeia and Logopoeia. In the former we are impressed overwhelmingly by the music of the verse: often the very structure invites being set to music. Phanopoeia resembles not music so much as painting and sculpture. Logopoeia is the poetic play essentially of ideas: it employs words principally for their meaning: as Pound puts it... Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one. Here we have Melopoeia about Melopoeia itself—song-making about singing—but, despite an actual woman being the singer, the voice heard by the poet is not of the earth, and his own verse is also shot with an inner rhythm. Halfway through the passage the aerial music begins to be more recognisably of a kind which ...
... may seem almost nursery-rhyme properties. In view of this power, whether exercised with striking novelty or within a known symbo-logy, Chadwick's art in even its most traditional appearance must be distinguished as a new element at play in poetic literature, a pioneering triumph of one kind in what Sri Aurobindo has designated as "Future Poetry". And this triumph which springs from a heart of spiritual... Moonbeam: Labour done, To her own music, slenderly, the Moon goes down; Leaving the sea to anguish for the shore alone, The growth-struck seedling alone split and spiral on; Child-bearing, love-bereft women strive to find Beyond the Moon's working a more pitiful Mind. It is worth pausing a little over both the art and the significance of these lines. The brief... affinities. Even if there were imitation, the fusing of three or four such temperaments and manners would itself be a striking originality. But there is much more here. Miss Chadwick has a mood and a music all her own, full of a more insistent mystical experience, a concreter seeing of spiritual presences — and the technique too is individual. In view of that experience and seeing, the truest ...
... transfiguring the powerful analytic and synthetic mentality. POETIC EXPERIENCE In that poignancy, in that amplitude of spiritual perception is Wordsworth's uniqueness in the poetic literature of England. There have been attempts to depreciate this uniqueness, calling that poignancy and that amplitude pretence and woolliness. We may, of course, enjoy a witticism like James Stephens's apropos... reason why we should lie about Heaven in our old age." But it is impossible to take seriously any detraction of Wordsworth's far-reaching spiritual quality. He was the first Seer in English poetic literature, answering in however limited a measure to the definition of seerhood current in the mystic Orient: one who has known by direct intuition and by intimate personal realisation and by concrete entry... or in lines of poignant racial retrospect, ...old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago, or in lines drenched with the tears of things, like The still, sad music of humanity... The heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world. The last quotation can serve as a good starting-point for a few remarks on Wordsworth's technical ...
... all-accomplishing all-satisfying art-touch in Shelley's verse, turning what might have been a defect into an exquisite effect. No, nothing else than the line as traditionally it has appeared — without any blank after summer to put us in two minds — can be the divine and sovereign poetry which Page 290 Swinburne hailed. Lovers of literature cannot thank Mary Shelley enough... Lament . The Spirit of Delight is addressed: Page 287 Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day Tis since thou art fled away... Thou art love and life! O come, Make once more my heart thy home. Perhaps a too practical intellect may protest: "Even though beauty is diversely pervasive of the whole year, and... Shelley or in English of more Page 272 divine and sovereign sweetness than any other, it is that in the Lament , Fresh Spring, and Summer, and Winter hoar. The music of this line taken with its context — the melodious effect of its exquisite inequality — I should have thought was a thing to thrill the veins and draw tears to the eyes of all men whose ears were not ...
... human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as having found rare voice in the world's literature and art: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. A fifth and highest plane, which he named Supermind and whose realisation above on its own peaks and ultimate descent below into the physical... their role in poetic creation. It etches memorably on our minds what the author calls the metaphysical psychology of the new art inspired by the extraordinary experiences and significances that have gone to the making of his poem and, in seeking affinities for this art, it ranges over a wide terrain of world-poetry and gives us vivid illustration, penetrating analysis, suggestive evocation — ... manifested yet. The absence cannot help being regretted of what would have been a unique expository and elucidative document on the unusual poetic afflatus — unusual in both message and music — that blows through the nearly twenty-four thousand lines of this Legend of the past that he has presented as a Symbol of the future. Luckily, however, we have a substantial number of letters by ...
... A couple of years later, He wrote, "To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness." There lies the utility of dance or music or whatever art form you like. In 1933, He wrote, "There should be no 'desire' to be a 'great' writer. If there... came here in 1933, and I wrote to Him, in 1934, that I didn't know much of literature: [Nirod-da:] I should like to be a literary man. Do you approve? [Sri Aurobindo:] It depends on what kind of "literary man" you want to be, ordinary or yogic. A literary man is one who loves literature and literary activity for its 241Seeing the deer in my imagination,... them as the Divine wanted. You mentalise, mentalise, discuss, discuss, hesitate and hesitate. [N.:] If by chance I could throw away all troubles about progress in Yoga and push on with literature, that would be some solution. [S. A.:] There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity - they can be united. [N.:] At moments I have aspirations for being ...
... compassion on struggling mortals. Andromeda (falling prostrate) Do not deceive me! I will kiss thy feet O joy! thou art! thou art! Athene Lift up thy head, My servant. Andromeda Thou art! there are not only void Azure and cold inexorable laws. Athene Stand up, O daughter of Cassiope, Wilt thou then help... And shook herself free. Thou art wisdom, thou art law, Thou our heart, our soul, our breath, Thou the love divine, the awe In our hearts that conquers death. Thine the strength that nerves the arm, Thine the beauty, thine the charm, Every image made divine In our temples is but thine. Page 85 Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen, With her hands... Athene appesrs What is this light, this glory? who art thou, Obeautiful marble face amid the lightnings? My heart faints with delight, my body trembles, Intolerable ecstasy beats in my veins; Iam oppressed and tortured with thy beauty. Athene I am Athene. Andromeda Art thou a goddess? Thy name We hear far off in Syria. ...
... in the pursuit of literature! If he had Page 218 asked me the question about work and sadhana, I would have answered him otherwise. Of course literature and art are or can be a first introduction to the inner being—the inner mind and vital; for it is from there that they come. And if one writes poems of bhakti, poems of divine seeking, etc. or creates music of that kind, it means... regards their contents, manner, style. I believe in European music the words are of a very minor importance, they matter only as going with the music. But I am not an expert on the subject, so I can't go farther into it. When religious songs were written in medieval Latin, they were very fine, but with the use of the modern languages the art was lost—the modern European hymnals are awful stuff. ... ? Is not culture a some- what extraneous adjunct to a personality—a thing learnt with ado—whereas art with all its limitations at least spring from within ? I have not seen the remarks in question. I don't suppose allround general culture has much to do with excelling in music. Music is a gift independent of any such thing and it can hardly be said that given a musical gift in two ...
... We spoke of a twofold response in Italy to the Classical temper. Over and above the straining after heroic poetry, there was the stress on art as the essence of the poetic expression. Virgil, who had been in antiquity the supreme master of poetry as an art, obsessed the Italian mind of the Renaissance with the importance of literary discipline, the need to mould deliberately a fitting diction of... agree with the Italian emphasis, he was too religious-minded to be a devotee of Art instead of a high priest of divine mysteries. To him the heroic quality itself was part of the Seer's function which was to turn the vision of the Divine into a power on earth. However, he accepted the necessity of unremitting attention to Art, the call for a lofty poetic diction scrupulous in its cast of word, rhythm,... we see the Virgilian epic inspiring the vision of the ancient world. When Dante presents the great figures of that world he gives them a gravity and nobility which strike a new note in Mediaeval literature. This note is absent in the rest of Europe even after Dante. Chaucer, for instance, was versed not only in Dante and Petrarch but also in Virgil. Yet except on rare occasions he has not absorbed ...
... with Puranic literature, reveals to us where the line lies that must eternally divide East from West. The difference is one of root-temperament and therefore unbridgeable. There is the mental composition which has no facet towards imaginative religion, and if it accepts religion at all, requires it to be plain, precise and dogmatic; to such these allegories must always seem false in art and barren in... its own temperament is cast. This is well; yet is there room in art and criticism for that other, less fine but more many-sided, which makes possible new elements and strong departures. Often as the romantic temperament stumbles and creates broken and unsure work, sometimes it scores one of those signal triumphs which subject new art forms to the service of poetry or open up new horizons to poetical... it is among the most significant and powerful in idea of our legends; for it is rather an idea than a tale. Bhrigou, the grandfather of Ruaru, is almost the most august and venerable name in Vedic literature. Set there at the very threshold of Aryan history, he looms dim but large out of the mists of an incalculable antiquity, while around him move great shadows of unborn peoples and a tradition of huge ...
... Page 45 the language and there is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and beauty of sound, but there is also the quality of the thing said which counts for something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves 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... up in a stream of passion, beauty and force. But sometimes there comes down a supreme voice, the overmind voice and the overmind music and it is to be observed that the lines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest and most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore too much to say that the overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which could surpass... spiritual feeling. Aesthetics belongs to the mental range and all that depends upon it; it may degenerate into aestheticism or may exaggerate or narrow itself into some version of the theory of "Art for Art's sake". The Overmind is Page 27 essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and ...
... delight. Art stills the emotions and teaches them the delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction.... Page 354 Music deepens the emotions and harmonises them with each other. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified, self-controlled, deep and harmonious. 49 Higher still is the service of Art in awakening... Street friend (the Englishman) had asked Sri Aurobindo to devote himself to literature and religion, and not to make speeches on Swadeshi and Boycott. Yes, indeed, said Sri Aurobindo in reply: he was devoting himself to literature and religion; he was writing on Swaraj and Swadeshi, and that was a form of literature, and he was discoursing on Swaraj and Swadeshi, and that was part of his religion... essays on "The National Value of Art", Sri Aurobindo has differentiated between the three uses of Art: the purely aesthetic; the intellectual, educative or moral; and the spiritual. The aesthetic appeal, the sense of the beautiful exemplified through the play of colour, form, rhythmic and symbolic sound, has helped savage man to become the civilised man. But Art can also bring about katharsis, ...
... the perfection of the language and there is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and beauty of sound, but there is the quality of the thing said which counts for something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves 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... up in a stream of passion, beauty and force. But sometimes there comes down a supreme voice, the overmind voice and the overmind music and it is to be observed that the lines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest and most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore too much to say that overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which could surpass the... wideness into my heart— But ever the music misses some huge star Or else some flower too small for the minstrel hand. No skill can turn all life my harmony. Perchance a tablet of magic mood will make The truth of the whole universe write itself— But only when with mortal thoughts in-drawn I learn the secret time-transcending art: +Silence that, losing all, grows ...
... constituting characters. They make up that brilliant and confusedly complex, but often crude and unfinished literature... which forms a hasty transition from the Renascence and its after-fruits to the modernism of today which is already becoming the modernism of yester-day" - the literature which stretches in France from Rousseau and Chateaubriand to Hugo and takes on its way Goethe, Schiller and Heine... straining on many lines to find some last truth and utterance which must end either in a lingering decadence or in a luminous and satisfied self-exceeding. From the beginning this modern movement, in literature as in thought, takes the form of an ever widening and deepening intellectual and imaginative curiosity, a passion for knowledge, a passion for finding, an eye of intelligence awakened to all the... illusion of some forceful sensation of living." Much Romanticism on the European Continent took this way and acquired the taint which led Goethe to brand it as "disease", and much in post-Romantic literature, whether avowing itself as Romantic or no, has gone thus "decadent" in various forms. The makers of the English Romantic Revival seldom went far on the road to decadence. But even on that road the ...
... have been neglecting literature and poetry, painting and music, Page 20 dance and drama. The minimum that is necessary, and which should find a legitimate place in any scheme of education is the appreciation of art. It needs to be underlined that one cannot appreciate art unless one has practised one's own discipline as a creative activity or practised some art, at least, as an amateur... reflection, introspection, and a search for meaning. What, for example, is the nature of thinking? How is science distinguishable from mathematics and philosophy? What is the essence of literature and music and art? Is history meaningful? Is there an aim in history? What is technology? What are the best methods of learning technology? What is Page 28 truth? How do we know truth? And... invent illuminating phrases and expressions, to initiate meaningful devices and projects, and to create a stimulating atmosphere and environment. The art of instruction is extremely subtle and delicate, but a good teacher practices this art effortlessly. He harmoniously blends formal with informal instruction. He varies his methods according to circumstances and organizes his teaching to suit ...
... have stopped me.” 952 Mirra was a headstrong character, and the floodgates were opened. Now she read all the spiritual literature she could lay her hands on, the Dhammapada and other Buddhist and Hinduist texts. These were, besides, the decades of a general discovery of the art and the religions of the East, stimulated by writers like the Maupassant brothers and by an institution like the very active... the classical performances at the Comédie française. There were her meetings with famous people like the novelists Anatole France and Henryk Sienkiewicz, the author of Quo Vadis. There was the music of Richard Wagner, Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck and Ambroise Thomas, the composer of Mignon and twenty-one other operas, and the concerts of Eugène Ysaye, the great Belgian violinist. It is... that time Paris, refashioned by Baron Haussmann, was the cultural capital of the world. It was where the haute couture was created, the greatest concentration of artists lived, department stores , art exhibitions, circuses and cabarets like the Moulin Rouge were visited by an uninterrupted stream of tourists, and the world expositions of 1889 (when the Eiffel Tower was built) and 1900 took place ...
... religious doctrine but a realistic and practical code of conduct. I am thinking in terms of life, of everything important in life. I am thinking in terms of our history, our heroes, our art, our architecture, our music, our laws, and our jurisprudence. In all things our outlook is not only fundamentally different but also often radically antagonistic to the Hindus. We are different beings. There is nothing... him the Hindu-Muslim conflict was not a clash of religions or economic factors. It was an international conflict between two national entities. He said: "Our religion, culture, history, tradition, literature, economic system, laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are fundamentally different from those of the Hindus. These differences are not confined to broad basic principles; they extend to the ...
... first the noun "power" in connection with the poet. It recalls to us De Quincey's division of literature into the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. Philosophy and science are the literature of knowledge while all prose and poetry that are pieces of art fall under the category of literature of power because they affect the emotions and change attitudes and remould character. Note next... too much modulation but rings out its uniformity through the diversity? In the older literatures, metre tended to be of a set form. But to be of a set form is not the essence of metre. It was so because thus alone something in the older consciousness, the strong sense of order, of dharma, got represented in art. When the consciousness changes and becomes more individualised, more complex, as in modern... tual illumination no less than a sense of some primal rapture which 1 The Future Poetry, p. 309. Page 220 affines his heartbeat to what the old tradition designated the music of the spheres, the concord of the universal OM. With that illumination he becomes the seer of truth just as with that rapture he becomes the hearer of it—the truth concerned being the sight achieved ...
... recalls to us De Quincey's division of literature into the literature of ___________ 1 The Future Poetry, SABCL Vol. 9, p. 10. 2 Ibid., p. 29. Page 162 knowledge and the literature of power. Philosophy and science are the literature of knowledge while all prose and poetry that are pieces of art fall under the category of literature of power because they affect the... too much modulation but rings out its uniformity through the diversity? In the older literatures, metre tended to be of a set form. But to be of a set form is not the essence of metre. It was so because thus alone something in the older consciousness, the strong sense of order, of dharma, got represented in art. When the Page 174 consciousness changes and becomes more individualised... everywhere, and each poet has in him the sense of a supra-intellectual illumination no less than a sense of some primal rapture which affines his heartbeat to what the old tradition designated the music of the spheres, the concord of the universal OM. With that illumination he becomes the seer of truth just as with that rapture he becomes the hearer of it - the truth concerned being the sight achieved ...
... first the noun "power" in connection with the poet. It recalls to us De Quincey's division of literature into the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. Philosophy and science are the literature of knowledge while all prose and poetry that are pieces of art fall under the category of literature of power, — because they affect the emotions and change attitudes and remould character. Note... much modulation but rings out its uniformity through the diversity? In the older literatures, metre tended to be of a set form. But to be of a set form is not the essence of metre. It was so because thus alone something in the older consciousness, the strong sense of order, of its dharma, got represented in art. When (he consciousness changes and becomes more individualised, more complex, as... everywhere, and each poet has in him the sense of a supra-intellectual illumination no less than a sense of some primal rapture which affines his heartbeat to what the old tradition designated the music of the spheres, the concord of the universal om. With that illumination he becomes the seer of truth just as with that rapture he becomes the hearer of it — the truth concerned being the sight achieved ...
... exclamation of Adam to Eve after she has eaten of the forbidden fruit: How art thou lost! how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote! Many sentence-structures may also be considered Latinised. Then there are the expansive architecture of his paragraphs and the organ-music in them with a host of internal variations of assonance and consonance. All this outward... It is he who is today and it is he who shall be tomorrow. This is the thing thou seekest." Again, there is the enchanting statement about the Brahman: "Thou art man and woman, boy and girl; old and worn thou walkest bent over a staff; thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet-eyed." Aren't Blake's "minute particulars" here with a vengeance? The same multiple message about the "incarnational"... a single incarnation (which is indeed absurd) but culturally speaking the European-Christian emphasis has been incarnational, and whatever is sublime in Christian art has respected the 'minute particulars'. So indeed has much Indian art and I was thinking specifically of Sri Aurobindo who does not it seems to me respect those minute particulars, but rather sweeps them aside. I enclose a photocopy of ...
... our eyes to the mind behind the words. There is that touch of class everywhere, that authentic Indian behind the English Idiom, that art of seriousness long lost in the fancy-vapour of a kind of literary exercise that passes in the name of Indian literature and sells like hot cakes across the ocean. Unlike his poetry, where he uses his brief style with a masterful ease, his prose is ... prolific prose and poetry with a mind trained on all the elevations of English prose and verse, have been moved to speak of his achievement in the same breath with the work of the greats in literature, history, and philosophy. Sethna's association with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is a myth and a history. What he has done and what remains before us can hardly be mistaken. One look... it is time we took notice of a Master, lying like a hidden treasure at 21 rue Francois Martin, Pondicherry. Without knowing Sethna, nobody can hope to write honestly on recent Indo-Anglian literature. 2 Altar and Flame* Most of the poems in Altar and Flame came out after Sri Aurobindo's departure. Unlike the more characteristic work of Sethna, these are closer ...
... the form and expression of a culture as great as any of the historic civilisations of mankind, great in religion, great in philosophy, great in science, great in thought of many kinds, great in literature, art and poetry, great in the organisation of society and politics, great in craft and trade and commerce. There have been dark spots, positive imperfections, heavy shortcomings; what civilisation has... India's great interrupted endeavour; we must take up boldly and execute thoroughly in the individual and in the society, in the spiritual and in the mundane life, in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in thought, in political and economic and social formulation the full and unlimited sense of her highest spirit Page 91 and knowledge. And if we do that, we shall find that the best... ancient India were less in evidence, there were new gains of spiritual emotion and sensitiveness to spiritual impulse on the lower planes of consciousness, that had been lacking before. Architecture, literature, painting, sculpture lost the grandeur, power, nobility of old, but evoked other powers and motives full of delicacy, vividness and grace. There was a descent from the heights to the lower levels ...
... full of poetic beauty. Those who have some acquaintance with Sanskrit can be advised to read them in the original. Page 144 Bodies without mind One who is devoid of poetry, music, and art is verily a beast, even though he does not grow horns and is without tail. He lives without eating grass, and that is the good fortune for the other beasts. The praises of knowledge Learning... of deadly bite; better falling into the fire; but not the wrecking of one's character. Page 148 Suggestions for further reading A. Berriedale Keith. A History of Sanskrit Literature. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. Bhartrihari. The Niti and Vairagya Satakas. Translation and Notes by M . R. Kale. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 7th Edn., 1971. Vairagya-Satakam ...
... the country was spared the panic reaction of the government against Swaraj. It was the great good fortune of Tamil literature that Bharati listened to his friends and escaped to French India. Otherwise, Page 198 given his predilection to face the music, he would have met with the same fate as his compatriots V. O. Chidambaram Pillai (V. O. C.), Subrahmanya Siva 1 and so many... punished at all. That he is being made to do the hardest work of criminals is illegal and unjustifiable. The police reporters in this case on whose evidence he was convicted were not skilled in the art of reporting. Some of them are said to have taken down speeches in English as they were delivered in Tamil! The mother-tongue of the principal witness was Hindustani, and not Tamil." This was not ...
... Many people believed that Nazism would be a temporary phase and its enormities would pass and the true Germany automatically rise to the fore and there would again be lovely music and great literature and towering philosophy. Sri Aurobindo never subscribed to this sunny view. On the contrary, he held that Nazism, in the form in which we then saw it, was, in spite of its horrible... same in his heart under all variations of outer form. That is why every truth gets twisted in the long run and becomes actually a species of untruth, religion grows an obscurantist blight and art a decadent saturnalia, philosophy a riot of sophisms, and politics a huge machinery for exploiting the many in the interests of the few. O so slow is the journey of the Gods! Always the path is... lust in spite of all the misery his higher self sees and feels in them - a reluctance as if blindness and lust were things to be cherished, precious components of the life-drama, indispensable art-elements of the cosmic scheme. But man's love of the base and the torturesome becomes not just one part of his nature but almost his whole being when the Asura, with his attendant Rakshasa and ...
... what Sri Aurobindo regarded as 'Mantra' in the spiritual sense." But what is Mantra? Let us read what Amal wrote apropos of it in one of his letters in 1990: "All great literature is at the same time sculpture and music. In Savitri and The Life Divine there is not only artistic rhythm: there is also the wing-beat of the Mantra, the significant sound that lives in a modulated phrase as if... but he hasn't Yeats's subtly rich incantation-effect. ... AE has his own music even as he has his own moods. But there is a spell-binding by words, which Yeats commands very often and AE very seldom. AE can be delicate and intuitive, colourful and revelatory: what he does not have as a rule is that verbal spell-binding - an art which to those who are sensitive to the soul of words is most precious... do not utter themselves in their own tongue: they are reflected in the mental imagination and given forceful speech there." Mantra is altogether unknown to Milton. Modern-ism does not have even that music of Milton. Long ago Sri Aurobindo himself said that the rise of modernism was necessary against the Victorian type. He wrote: "It is the most unlovely and uninspiring period of the English ...
... recognises and proclaims his own essential oneness with all that Keats stood for and strove after. It was in the fitness of things that one out of the two most purely poetic minds in English literature should write the greatest of all elegies on the other, affirming with him his unity in death when the unity in life remained unrealised and seeing in a final vision his own death soon following that of Adonais... Born of the very sigh that silence heaves. Or else we have the poignantly human leading on to the en-chantingly visionary, as in the great passage where the Nightingale's song becomes the music of an Immortal Bird binding together the perishing ages and the severed areas of existence: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, ... prepared for it by any past development, not fitted for it by anything in the common atmosphere of the age.... Each besides had an immense development of that force of separative personality which is in art at least the characteristic of our later humanity. There is nothing of that common aim and manner which brings into one category the Elizabethan dramatists or the contemporaries of Pope and Dry-den." ...
... him in the long drawn-out structure of modulated harmony. But our fourth paradox lies in the queer conjunction that the greatest artist in English poetry is also the greatest Puritan in England's literature. We have already said that he was Cromwell's Foreign Secretary; like Cromwell, he belonged to the sect of those who wanted to make religion "pure" and called themselves Puritans. They held... the life of the conversation - and that on account of a flow of subject and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility". "He had an excellent ear, and could bear a part both in vocal and instrumental music." The consequence, to Paradise Lost, of so complex a nature, with several opposite traits held together, is that the matter rather than the manner is Puritan, and even in the matter the basic... Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind, And Samata... 2 We are reminded of the Portuguese Camoës's: De Quiloa, de Mombaça, e de Safala... Quite a rhythmic phrase, but lacking in the art-touch introduced by the name "Melind" to close the line with an alliteration to its beginning, so that the strange catalogue is saved from being just a drift and acquires for the ear a satisfying point ...
... n, p. 163. 87. People, Places and Books, p. 80. 88. Cf. William James: "In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as 'dazzling obscurity', 'whispering silence', 'teeming desert', are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed... and so "took away the very strength of which Savitri is built" (Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, First Series p. 294). 6. Disjecta Membra: Studies in Literature and Life, p.61 . 7. A History of Indian Literature, Vol. I, (Tr.by Mrs. S. Ketkar), p. 397. 8. ibid.., p. 398. 9. ibid.., p. 398. 10. Vyasa and Valmiki, p. 22. Sri Aurobindo seems to... 125. 122. My account of Won above is largely based upon my own review-article in the Indian PE.N., December 1958, pp. 399-401. 123. "The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature'. Page 465 124. The Name and Nature of Poetry, p. 12. 125. pp. 157-8. 126. Savitri, p ...
... who but Page 206 Pururavus could have imagined it? I dwell on these subtle and just perceptible features of Kalidasa's work, the art concealing art, because the appreciation of them is necessary to the full reception on our mind-canvas of Kalidasa's art & genius and therefore to the full enjoyment of his poetry. And while Pururavus glorifies & revels in his passion, he is also revealed... On Literature On Literature The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings Vikramorvasie: The Characters Pururavus is the poet's second study of kinghood; he differs substantially from Agnimitra. The latter is a prince, a soldier & man of the world yielding by the way to the allurements of beauty, but not preoccupied with passion; the subtitle... existence. It is this double aspect of Hindu temperament, extreme spirituality successfully attempting to work in harmony with extreme materialism, which is the secret of our religion, our life & our literature, our civilisation. On the one side we spiritualise the material out of all but a phenomenal & illusory existence, on the other we materialise the spiritual in the most definite & realistic forms; ...
... disappeared. And this is so frequent, this is so true that such stories are often told in Japan. Their literature is full of fairylore. They tell you a story in which the hero comes suddenly to an enchanted place: he sees fairies, he sees marvelous beings, he spends exquisite hours among flowers, music; all is splendid. The next day he is obliged to leave, it is the law of the place, he goes away. He... in which all his major works were published serially. Page 48 [Reading from Srinvantu, 64-66 86 ]: The art of Japan is a kind of directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only in the physical... 82A monthly magazine about Indian culture, based on Sri Aurobindo's teachings, which has been in existence for more than sixty years. Its founder-editor is Amal Kiran. 83Amal Kiran, Life-Literature-Yoga, 41-42. Page 45 of taking the normal dose (1 /12 of a grain), ... I don't know whether you have an idea of what a grain is; nowadays one talks in terms ...
... to mean or so might be interpreted that truth and art are two unconnected or little connected things, and if truth is to be made at all the subject matter of art, it yet does not become art unless it has come out transfigured and, it may be, unrecognisable in the imagination's characteristic process. But in fact it does not mean that, but only that art is not an imitation or reproduction of outward Nature... and made vivid in a strong outlining illumination is what we shall henceforth demand of the artist in verse. And it cannot be denied that the crudity of actual life so treated and heightened in art—for art cannot merely reproduce, it cannot help heightening—gives us a new sensation, becomes a crude and heady wine setting up an agreeable disturbance in the midriff and bowels and a violent satisfaction... to the heart's perfection and the loving unity of all life. The same uniting alchemy and fusion can take place between truth of philosophy and poetic truth and it is continually found in Indian literature. And so too all the old Rig Veda, all the Vaishnava poetry of North and South had behind it an elaborate Yoga or practised psychical and spiritual science, without which it could not have come into ...
... have continued doing so to the best of my ability. Cinema is certainly an art, and this art has many facets such as acting, photography, direction, music, Costumes, make-up, decor, laboratory work, editing, etc. All these facets get beautifully highlighted through cinema. But art is not merely for art's sake. Art is only a medium to express an emotion or an ideal. A good artist shows it in... his handkerchief without stopping to play. That gives us a measure of his patriotism. Naturally something of the vibration of his illness crept into his music and this is why Mother felt a vibration of illness whenever she heard his music. And so she rejected the film because she did not want the Ashram children to absorb that vibration of illness. On another occasion, we received a Hindi... spend some money whenever there is any necessity. You may want to know what I do with the money. Well, I don't mind telling you. I am very fond of reading books - history, English and Bengali literature, descriptions of historic sites, forts and temples, etc. I have set up a small library of my own. I spend some amount on getting these books. On Sundays or holidays I go for long rides on my motorbike ...
... 291 Then he sees another aspect: "Thou hast not spoken with the kings of pain", never known pain. Thou seemest always to feel life like music, like a song,—harmonious, rapid, grand. "Thou livest in thy inner bliss" undisturbed by pain. Thou art like a silver deer "O ruby-eyed and snow-winged dove!", flitting m the unwounded beauty of thy soul. Thou hast come to this world "where hardly love... "an unseized bliss." But when he attains the bliss, when the hope is fulfilled the charm melts away, the heavenly music ceases. Would you follow the uncontrolled passion of your mood and defy the Law? "Only the gods can speak what now thou speakest". But thou art human, "think not like a god." Calm reason alone must be your guide, neither the furious march of the giant to capture heaven... Savitri noticed the presence of Narad with his "fiery sweetness". Narad flung "on her his vast immortal look". The speech of Narad here is one of the rarest poetical passages in world's literature. It has chiselled classicism of the Greeks, and romanticism rarely equalled in its exuberance and intensity and colour. And yet it is convincingly real. It is the yogic vision revealing a picture ...
... piercing sublime of pure poetry. It is no derogation of Sri Aurobindo's poetic art or craftsmanship to say that such too is our experience when exposed to the whole vast body of his early poetry and verse translations. As a metrical craftsman, Sri Aurobindo is probably without an equal in Indo-Anglican literature; and not many practitioners of verse among his exact contemporaries in England... something is seen, a profound change operated in some inner part, there enters into the ground of the nature something calm, Page 156 equal, ineffable.... Similar touches can come through art, music, poetry to their creator or to one who feels the shock of the world, the hidden significance of a form, a message in the sound that carries more perhaps than was consciously meant by the composer... the Rishi's answer: Seek Him upon the earth.... Perfect thy human might. Perfect the race. For thou art He, O King. Only the night Is on thy soul By thy own will. Remove it and recover The serene whole Page 168 Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover To God the goal. 38 If is a memorable finale which underlies one of the' ...
... Synthesis of Yoga (which expounds all the past Yogas and goes on to the Yoga of Self-Perfection) -Commentaries on the Isha Upanishad and the Kena Upanishad - The Future Poetry & Letters on Poetry, Art, Literature. These books have the rare quality of literary charm on top of profound thought. Coming to the wonderful Mahabharata show, I may draw your attention to quite a perceptive review of it in the... first sight you think. Anyway, there is no doubt that the dream bears testimony not only to an actual inner-plane contact but also to a warm intimate relationship in a common love of literature - poetic literature in particular - to which our happy talk of "dalliance with eternity" bears evidence. The turning of our talk to the TLS shows the deep interest with which one naturally approaches a... would be good to have it within Sri Aurobindo's centenary year. But I did not picture my learned correspondent as a horseman! That radically changes my picture of you. Though from Indian art and folk-art, and the famous 'horse-sacrifice' I realize that the Horse too plays a central part in Indian life, though a very different one from the Forest. As to the last stage of life few surely can face ...
... India too, culture had a very powerful impact. We shall illustrate this phenomenon through two very powerful personalities, Subramaniam Bharati and Kamala Devi Chattopadhay. Bharati's Literature On 4 April 1910, a significant event occurred: Sri Aurobindo, poet, patriot and Yogi, arrived in Pondicherry from Bengal. Towards the end of 1910, V. V. S. Aiyar - Barrister Savarkar's... patriotic songs being sung lustily to put the audience in a right receptive frame of mind; and during the last 10 or 15 years, his songs have been rendered on the air by accomplished exponents of Carnatic music such as N. C. Vasanthakokilam, M. S. Subbulakshmi and D. K. Pattammal. Bharati festivals have been organised, books and appreciative articles have been published, and Bharati's position as the pre-eminent... and it was a matter of time before Kamaladevi and Harin fell in love. By the time Kamaladevi was twenty, she had married Harin. They had shared interests in the arts, especially theatre and music, and the two also collaborated to produce plays and skits. Their only son, Ramu, was born in the following year. Whether due to the envy of the gods or cupidity of human nature the Harin- Kamaladevi ...
... Like the accom-panying French Revolution, it is the insurrection of a submerged population; but this time, a population of the mind." 3 Even when Lucas concedes that "the description of Romantic literature as simply 'dream-work' does not quite suffice" and that" except in an extreme form, it does usually retain a superego, an ideal of conduct, often a highly quixotic one" and that the "dream-life"... Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci or Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner or Morris's The Haystack in the Floods 4 - even Page 145 when he opines that "health, both in life and in literature, lies between excess of self-consciousness and excess of impulsiveness, between too much self-control and too little" 5 and that "the Romantic intoxication of the imagination suspends the over-rigid... drives" had a say in certain parts of this Movement and a much greater one in the Romanticism of the Continent which it shares as well as exceeds. Sri Aurobindo 7 has called the general Romantic literature of the period "brilliant and confusedly complex, but often crude and unfinished" and he has further said: "Much of it we can now see to have been ill-grasped, superficial and tentative; much, as ...
... being poetically the longest and most comprehensive mystical portrait in all literature. To lead from darkness into light, from ignorance of God to knowledge of Him is the work assigned by many poets to woman. There is the praise by Goethe of the Eternal Feminine calling us onward and upward. And there is Dante's music about the santo riso, the saintly smile, of Beatrice which guided him from... and conduct. In that shape they can reach man's inner being persistently and ubiquitously over and above doing so with a luminous and vibrant sugges-tiveness unrivalled by any other mode of literature or art. But scattered and short pieces of poetry cannot build the sustained and organised Weltanschauung required for putting a permanent stamp upon the times. Nothing except an epic or a drama can... to be overhead because of the crowdedly repetitive clipped sounds "till" and "did" and "build". The overhead rhythm needs a different art — and behind the art a different psychological disposition. Thompson's opening line has nothing markedly counter to the overhead art; somehow the right psychological disposition is still lacking. In the last line he is on the verge Page 117 of both ...
... this only do I love thee, but Because Infinity upon thee broods, And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearned up to the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered... the immense mass of ideas which form the connecting tissue of his work. But he brings into them an element which gives them another potency and meaning and restores something which in most of the literature of the time tended to be overcast and sicklied over by an excessive intellectual tendency more leaned to observe life than strong and swift to live it and which in the Page 195 practicality... movement of bygone nations and ages and the labour and creation of the present and some nobler coming turn to a freedom of unified completion,— The journey done, the journeyman come home, And man and art with Nature fused again... The Almighty leader now for once has signalled with his wand. And some part of his work, as in the Passage to India , opens out even into a fuller and profounder sense ...
... note that in Savitri we have not only deliberate echoes of several great lines of English poetry, lines passed through the typical Aurobindonian spirituality, but also reverberations from the poetic literature of other countries. Dante too has contributed some strains. One may be mentioned at once. Do you remember the story he makes Ulysses tell, but none of the classics know, the story which has served... enjambed variety. Tennyson's revival of "this sort of blank verse" must have had more consciousness behind it, just as in a greater way Milton was conscious of the overflowing sort in his "organ music" and the mature Shakespeare in the large curves of his many-motioned violin, though I may doubt if the Shakespearian "consciousness" was much more than the Life Force of the Late Renaissance complexly... those which look instinctively immediate and those which look consciously selective and formative. In his early days Sri Aurobindo had not gathered any body of technical knowledge and it was his keen art-feeling — engendered by his long self-steeping in the greatest and finest poetry of several countries — that was his guide. But later he acquired a mass of technical knowledge, and a critical sense ...
... that in Savitri we have not only deliberate echoes of several great lines of English poetry, lines passed through the typical Aurobindonian spirituality, but also reverberations from the poetic literature of other countries. Dante too has contributed some strains. One may be mentioned at once. Do you remember the story he makes Ulysses tell, but none of the classics know, the story which has served... enjambed variety. Tennyson's revival of "this sort of blank verse" must have had more consciousness behind it, just as in a greater way Milton was conscious of the overflowing sort in his "organ music" and the mature Shakespeare in the large curves of his many-motioned violin, though I may doubt if the Shakespearian "consciousness" was much more than the Life Force of the Late Renaissance complexly... those which look instinctively immediate and those which look consciously selective and formative. In his early days Sri Aurobindo had not gathered any body of technical knowledge and it was his keen art-feeling - engendered by his long self-steeping in the greatest and finest poetry of several countries - that was his guide. But later he acquired a mass of technical knowledge, Page 215 ...
... spirituality not only as the supreme occupation of man but also as his all-integrating occupation. Similarly, the entire spectrum of Indian culture,—its religion, ethics, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, dance, music, and even its polity and social and economic organization,—all these have been constantly influenced and moulded by the inspiring force of a multi-sided spirituality. The ... can be effectuated. The renascent spirituality is all-embracing and is deeply committed to undertake all activities of human life and to transform them. It has begun to influence literature and art and music, education and physical culture. Even social and economic and political fields are being taken up, not indeed to cast them once again Page 61 into some rigid formula of a religious... the posterity an unfailing fountain of spiritual waters that have poured themselves into all lines of inquiry and expression, not only those of religion and philosophy but even of science, art, literature, architecture and polity. If India stands as a unique spiritual civilisation and if India has been able to keep some illuminating light burning even in its darkest period of inertia and ...
... did not wish to be killed under the night's bewildering pall." Suddenly it did not matter if my small attempt had any merit of its own -enough that it had kindled in the mind of a lover of great literature the moment of pure joy that a memory of Homer's lines calls forth! That letter was the start of a correspon-dence that began in the nineteen-seventies and a friend-ship that endures to this day.... Readers were asked to invent a name for a book such as would never interest one to read it. The first prize was won by "How to Ride a Tricycle"; the second by the title "The Roads of Pondicherry". In literature proper the town had a place in Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes story "The Sign of the Four". The four conspirators fix on Pondicherry as their venue. When this novel was published, Sri Aurobindo... has put it in poetry and even made it an end word evoking the rhyme "simple and merry". If not for anything else your piece should be published for the sake of its making Page 123 music with this name. The poem will also be noted for the phrase "Amal in Pondicherry". So far Pondicherry was associated with Sri Aurobindo. Now it will be linked forever with a disciple of his, too.. . ...
... subtle, personal and universal for the modern mind. In the past indeed there have been hieratic and religious ways of approaching the truths of spirit which have produced some remarkable forms in art and literature. Sufi poetry, Vaishnava poetry are of this order, in more ancient times the symbolic and mystic way of the Vedic singers, while the unique revelatory utterance of the Upanishads stands by itself... possibility. Wordsworth, meditative, inward, concentrated in his thought, is more often able by force of brooding to bring out the voice of his greater self, but flags constantly, brings in a heavier music surrounding his few great clear tones, drowns his genius at last in a desolate sea of platitude. Neither arrives at that amplitude of achievement which might have been theirs in a more fortunate time... to even the most cynical trivialities and could rise to heights of poetry and passion: but none of these things, however adapted to his other gifts, was the style wanted for this greater utterance. Art, structure, accomplished mould were needs of which he had no idea; neither the weight of a deep Page 133 and considered, nor the sureness of an inspired interpretation were at his command ...
... August 1920 under the general caption 'The Future Poetry' began as a critical review of Dr. James H. Cousin's New Ways in English Literature. The review, however, was only a starting-point. The rest was drawn from Sri Aurobindo's ideas and his already conceived view of Art and Life. And, ultimately, the "review" became a treatise of thirty-two chapters, and has since been posthumously issued as a book... well. In European literature, the Iliad and the Aeneid led up to The Divine Comedy and its sanctified heroine, Beatrice. "Sri Aurobindo's Penthesilea too," writes Prema Nandakumar, "is but the forerunner of the more than Beatrice-like power of Savitri, the immaculate woman who redeems Satyavan, the besieged Troy of the triune Satyam-Sivam-Sundaram. Beyond the 'tragic art' of Ilion looms... soul. The real aim of the arts architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry is to speak to the spirit of man through meaningful images, and only the media vary in the different arts, the poet's being the word that is charged with power and purpose. Most people are content to live in the outer mind and senses, but the aim of art and especially of poetry is to help us to live in the soul, to enable ...
... the exclusive reality of Matter, that is responsible for the poverty of the higher intelligence in modern man and the remarkable paucity of any outstanding intellectual creation, either in art or literature, music or philosophy. The remedy for this enslaving dependence lies in developing higher idealism, a yearning for the Infinite and Eternal, a tension towards the Absolute. A one-pointed aspiration ...
... illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. 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;... that is to say, I suppose, special and artificial language, expressing in this case only abstract ideas and generalities without any living truth or reality in them. Such jargon cannot make good literature, much less good poetry. But there is a 'poeticism' which establishes a sanitary cordon Page 146 against words and ideas which it considers as prosaic but which properly used can... poetry exquisite, original and unique. The intellect produces the idea, even the poetic idea, too much for the sake of the idea alone; coming from the Illumined Mind the idea in a form of light and music is itself but the shining body of the Light Divine." (What is the difference between the plane of "dynamic or creative intelligence" and that of "dynamic vision"?) 'On one the creation ...
... and Art were first discussed in 1929 in Conversation XIV, and the main thrust of the Mother's exposition was that Art, in its fundamental truth, was nothing less than "the aspect of beauty Page 303 of the Divine manifestation". The artist too is like a Yogi who goes within seeking the right inspiration: A man like Leonardo da Vinci was a Yogi and nothing else .... Music too... them a special place in the Aurobindonian Yoga-literature. The Mother no doubt speaks out of her manifold experience of this and the divers occult worlds, but what gives the talks their stamp of authenticity and authority is the sanction from Above, for it is clear she speaks generally from an overhead level of direct understanding. Life, art and Yoga, morality, religion and spirituality, free... dagger: Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? ... Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going. ...
... rapid evolution of Post-Impressionist art. Matisse, she says (without naming him), was doing his very best as a painter, but he had to struggle with the fate of so many Parisian artists at the beginning of their career: he could not sell his work, which means that he went hungry. One day, somebody who wanted to help him brought an art dealer to his studio. The art dealer was not impressed by what he... classes to take up art as a career. It would have been tolerated that she did water colours or painted fans and screens, but not paintings on canvas! This was not included in the catalogue of the conventions of the higher bourgeoisie. 1 – Jean-Paul Crespelle The Julian Academy In 1893, when she was fifteen, Mirra passed her final school examinations and joined an art studio, the Académie... respectable bourgeois family where art was considered as a pastime rather than a career and artists as rather unreliable people, prone to debauchery and with a dangerous disregard for money, I felt, perhaps out of contrariness, a compelling need to become a painter.’ 3 This certainly points back to her own experience. Not only did Mirra feel attracted to an art she had practised since an early ...
... in a synagogue, exalting music of Camille Saint-Saëns was played and a flashing ray of light pierced her heart. As the Mother she would later say that art is a great means of spiritual progress, and she would often tell her young, bright-eyed audience during her evening talks about the occult levels or worlds where sound and music originate, and about the composers whose music she had loved so much.... enjoyed music very much and had several composers among her acquaintances. One of them was Ambroise Thomas, a celebrity at the time because of his twenty operas – foremost Mignon, which is still in the international repertoire, and Hamlet. Thomas would become Director of the Paris Conservatory of music. He was probably the composer who, as the Mother said, was so skilled at the intricate art of o... from the Collège de France. She also improved her knowledge of English, took music and singing lessons, and inevitably discovered the Guimet Museum, where she often prostrated herself in front of the Buddha statues, so that the place became really a kind of a temple to her. She read extensively in the religious literature of the East, deepened her knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita, the Rig Veda, the ...
... be revived. Page 19 IX. Roll of Art in Education A depressing aspect of our present system of education is that artistic abilities of our children are totally neglected or only marginally encouraged. The first aim of art education is purely aesthetic, the second is intellectual, and the third and the highest is spiritual. Music, art, and poetry may be viewed as a perfect education... facilities and opportunities to develop their talents and to express them; on the other hand, every child should be helped to enter into the domains of art and gain the capacity to understand and appreciate the uplifting role of art. What is true of art is also true of craft and the educational sys- tem should cater to the children's potentialities to develop skills in respect of different crafts.... these problems. A great deal of research needs to be conducted to find out the factors that lead to drug addiction and Aids. Relevant literature on population control and family-life education should be developed, and through wide diffusion of this literature, parents, children and people in general can be provided with the required information and useful messages that will give everyone concerned ...
... impulses, so as to refine them and sublimate them to the highest possible degrees, and to transmit the resultant fund of experience through various modes of expression, including those of poetry, music, dance, drama, art, architecture, and craft. The height of a culture is to be judged by the depth and height that are reached in terms of an ascending process of harmonization and, in that process, development... Page 32 the basic foundations of Indian culture, we shall find that it knocked off four main elements with perilous consequences. First of all, it eliminated the study of poetry, music and art, which constitutes perfect education of the soul; secondly, it eliminated the study of philosophy, dharma and spiritual knowledge—three elements, which are the supreme components of the Indian heritage;... an experimental Institution for a new aim and mode of education where the beauty and sublimity of Nature can serve as a living partner of teaching and learning and where the values of poetry, music and art can vibrate in the rhythms of life of the development of personality and mingling of cultures of Asia and of the world that would promote internationalism and world-citizenship, and universal fraternity ...
... regions. He portrayed the beauty of the Himalayas and the Ganges. He gave precise and minute descriptions of all kinds of birds. He possessed a great knowledge of music both vocal and instrumental. He was expert in three ragas of Indian music. He was familiar with the various strata of Indian society. His keen observation surveyed all sorts and conditions of men, princes and peasants, wise and worldly... i.e 550 or 560 BC. It is also called the Vedic age or age of intuition. The Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads correspond to that age. The second period is the age of Reason. The great epic literature (mainly the Ramayana and Mahabharata), great philosophical systems, codes and ethics, codes of statecraft, as also great sciences and arts, began to develop during this period. Valmiki and Vyasa... division: such a partition would be contrary to the law of human development. Almost all the concrete features of the age may be found as separate facts in ancient India: codes existed from old time; art and drama were of fairly ancient origin, to whatever date we may assign their development; physical Yoga processes existed almost from the first, and the material development portrayed in the Ramayana ...
... Chitraswa, art-beloving gallant boy. But O pious-hearted monarch! fair Savitri hath in sooth Courted Fate and sad disaster in that noble gallant youth!" 'Tell me," questioned Aswapati, "for I may not guess thy thought Wherefore is my daughter's action with a sad disaster fraught Page 565 Is the youth of noble lustre, gifted in the gifts of art, Blest... vigilant self-restraint, firm intellectual truthfulness and unsparing rejection, the three virtues most difficult to the gadding, inventive and self-indulgent spirit of man. The art of Vyasa is therefore a great, strenuous art; but it unfitted him, as a similar spirit unfitted the Greeks, to voice fully the outward beauty of Nature. For to delight infinitely in Nature one must be strongly possessed... word that releases from its warm rich womb multiple suggestions more in a vertical than horizontal direction. We may perhaps appreciate the merit of Vyasa's art better in terms of the values, and not mental conceptions, he upholds most. "Art is not only technique or form of Beauty," says Sri Aurobindo, "not only the discovery or the expression of Beauty—it is a self-expression of Consciousness under ...
... the literature he might have thought necessary as an aid to his poem. He was construct-ing a Body of Doctrine from the Scriptures, compiling a History of England, collecting materials for a Thesaurus or Dictionary of the Latin tongue. Every day he pursued his tasks with the use of several assistants whom he kept near him. Each afternoon he also made it almost a fixed practice to hear music, vocal... 460-64. Page 39 29 .Bk. XII, 610-14. 30 . Life - Literature - Yoga: Some Letters of Sri Aurobindo (Revised and Enlarged Edition, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1967), p. 161. 31 . The Future Poetry (Pondicherry, 1953), p. 116. 32 . Ibid., p. 117. 33 . Life - Literature - Yoga, p. 60. 34 .Apropos of his own designs: "Tho' I call them... general aspect with a direct pointer, but he too does so just en passant. 35 He comes to it in trying to clinch his contention that Milton was really "a minor poet with a remarkable ear for music, before diabolic ambition impelled him to renounce the true Muse and bloat himself up, like Virgil (another minor poet with the same musical gift) into a towering, rugged major poet." To take away ...
... perhaps, I look at the new form of the first Book and make such changes as inspiration points out to me—so that nothing shall fall below the minimum height which I have fixed for it" — Life, Literature and Yoga—letter 31 IV "The poems come as a stream beginning at the first line and ending at the \3St....Savitri is a work by itself unlike all the others. I made some eight or ten... Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth, Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair And in her body as on his homing tree Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings. A music of griefless things shall weave her charm; The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice, The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh, Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God, Her... remembered clasp, and in thee glows A heavenly jar, thy firm deep-honied heart, New-brimming with a sweet and nectarous wine. Thou hast not spoken with the kings of pain. Life's perilous music rings yet to thy ear Far-melodied, rapid, grand, a Centaur's song, Or soft as water plashing mid the hills, Or mighty as a great chant of many winds. Moon-bright thou livest in thy inner ...
... vigilant self-restraint, firm intellectual truthfulness and unsparing rejection, the three virtues most difficult to the gadding, inventive and self indulgent spirit of man. The art of Vyasa is therefore a great, strenuous art; but it unfitted him, as a similar spirit unfitted the Greeks, to voice fully the outward beauty of Nature. For to delight infinitely in Nature one must be strongly possessed with... dense word that releases from its warm rich womb multiple suggestions more in a vertical than horizontal direction. We may perhaps appreciate the merit of Vyasa's art better in terms of the values, and not mental conceptions, he upholds most. "Art is not only technique or form of Beauty," says Sri Aurobindo, "not only the discovery or the expression of Beauty it is a self-expression of Consciousness under... dispassionate judge who does not tamper with evidence in a complex case. Indeed, in a certain manner of speaking, we may say that no great art is possible without the sense of true detachment, not only classical but also dramatic and even romantic. Not only poetry but every art perhaps. Then the statue of the Buddha carved in a rocky mountain loses itself and becomes some infinity of calm, as does the marble ...
... trying to persuade you that truth is on its side, that you have never had the least shadow of any inner experience and especially that Yoga must be a grim affair in which there is no place for music or literature. The first thing to do is not to open the door to these old visitors. It is better often to offer one's work to the Divine in an atmosphere of peace and joy and gratitude, feelings which... If Sahana gives up music,—I presume it is only a temporary stop—I suppose it must be for a reason personal to her sadhana. There is no incompatibility in principle between music and sadhana. Of course I heard your music. I am no judge of technical merit in that field, but it seems to me that in the inner element and the psychological source of your singing and its music, if I may so express it... ranges. Yogic or occult powers are no more supernatural or incredible than is supernatural or incredible the power to write a great poem or compose great music. Few people can do it, as things are,—not even one in a million; for poetry and music come from the inner being and to write or to compose true and great things one has to have the passage clear between the outer mind and something in the inner ...
... 1928, forgot all about the dissertation on ‘The Philosophy of Art’, and stayed on in the Ashram for ten and a half years fully engaging himself in the Aurobindonian integral Yoga of self-change and world-transformation. He acquired a new name 'Amal Kiran' (‘The Clear Ray’), and his sadhana took within its scope the literature of Power as well as Knowledge. Although Sethna returned to Bombay... the body's vehemence I have taken to myself the whole Wonder of the timeless Secrecy! And, finally, on 9 August: Forsake me not, Sweet Power! Make my life music with Thy kiss The 89 lyrics, long and short, are in a variety of metres, and the sequence may be described as a record of the beatings of the poet's heart as it turned more and more in ...
... the poet is not writing in his native but a learned language. I refer to this because the only advice one writer can give another rightly is technical criticism. The craft of any art, Page 287 painting, music, poetry, sculpture, is continually growing and much can be taught in the schools. But the inspiration cannot be passed on from one to another. So I confine myself to a technical... leaf of red. Your name is fading music upon my worship's mouth; It spills in langorous fragrance from lilies of the South; It is the odorous night-flower wherewith your locks are bound, — Or the moon-pale soul of roses caught in a mesh of sound' I experienced something akin to ecstasy when he used to recite: "Your name is fading music upon my worship's mouth;" as it made... not said but only suggested, but it is obviously the spirit of the poem,— and it is this spirit in it that made me write to Amal the other day that it would be perhaps impossible to find in English literature a more perfect example of psychic inspiration than these eight lines you have translated....As to the tail, I doubt whether your last line brings out the sense of 'something afar from the sphere ...
... Miltonic summit of the line, Those thoughts that wander through eternity — a line in which the words are borne on a rhythm which gives perhaps the grandest vibration, in all European literature, of a feeling of contact with what Dr. Otto calls the "numinous" and Emerson the "Oversoul". But Marlowe could have brought a power as splendid in its own way if more loose, an equal strength of... life-force, might envy. Questions to Sri Aurobindo 1. Is my essay up to the mark? 2. Does the theory I have expounded and illustrated in this article hold water? As part of literature it may be perfectly legitimate, but is there any chance of its being true? Sri Aurobindo's Answers 1. Yes. 2. What is exactly your theory? There is one thing — influences... the genial current of other poetic souls let loose cataract on cataract of words in his. The point is that an extraordinary power possesses the poet, deploys itself capriciously, fills him with tense music, then lets him drop into loose verbiage, and returns at odd moments to string him up anew. It is possible to regulate the power somewhat, but beyond a certain degree no poet can be sure of ...
... since the poet is not writing in his native but in a learned language. I refer to this because the only advice one writer can give to another rightly is technical criticism. The craft of any art, painting, music, poetry, sculpture, is continuously growing and much can be taught in the schools. But the inspiration cannot be passed on from one to another. So I confine myself to a technical criticism... its native speech. I suppose this is common sense and it could apply to any poetic literature. But it should apply all the more to English poetry by the very nature of the language concerned, the plasticity to which Sri Aurobindo has referred. We may be struck by this plasticity in the diverse styles English literature teems with - the individual element at almost riotous play as between author and author... sweep of significance. The next two also are well turned and the whole stanza with its diversified units of suggestive expression and its skilful placing of pauses has a distinct "art" governing its substance of "unrest". This art persists admirably all through the poem and, when one has finished reading, one notices that the first stanza stands apart from the others by the different way the half-rhymes ...
... perfection of the language and there is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and beauty of sound, but there is also the quality of the thing said which counts for something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves 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... in a stream of passion, beauty and force. But sometimes there comes down a supreme voice, the Overmind voice and the Overmind music and it is to be observed that the lines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest and most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore too much to say that the Overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which could surpass... but this at least it must do to however small an extent or it is not poetry. Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction ...
... an interest for anything to do with art, with beauty —music, painting." Beauty. Expressions of beauty. Yes, all her life long that love of beauty ran like a silvery stream. And that silvery stream would flow out of her fingers as she sat at the organ. How I loved it! Page 96 10 Musical Waves "Music, Mother." The Second World War... pass on to the next. "But after a time I had experienced it, and the thing didn't seem important enough to me to devote a whole life to it. So, I would pass on to another thing: painting, music, science, literature . . . all, all; and practical things." Practical things —dancing, running, jumping, playing games ... an entire range of them. Not only was Mirra a fast runner who easily outstripped... experiences was brought about by music. "I haven't very often been to churches," said Mother. "I have been to mosques and temples—Jewish temples. Now, the Jewish temples in Paris have such beautiful music. Oh, what beautiful music! I had one of my first experiences in a temple. It was at a marriage, and the music was marvellous (I was up in the galleries with my mother). The music (Saint-Saëns, I was later ...
... and flourished through the life of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. In the next few pages we have given a few extracts from the literature related to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. These extracts are very few but it is hoped that they will lead the reader to the study of that vast literature consisting of Chaitanya-caritamrta and others in order to gain the indescribable sweetness and delight that are so distinctive... incarnation of Vishnu himself, while others are only the mace, discus, conch etc. of the Deity. From the philosophical and spiritual point of view, his poetry ranks among the highest in Tamil literature. But in point of literary excellence, there is a great inequality; for while some songs touch the level of the loftiest world-poets, others, even though rich in rhythm and expression, fall much below... his charm and sweetness one night in August 1494 A.D. The eight verses that he composed to describe his ecstasy on the vision of the sweetness of Sri Krishna have become well known in Indian literature pertaining to the yoga of devotion as Madhurashtakam (eight verses depicting the sweetness of Sri Krishna). These verses have moved millions of Indians over centuries, and we give in the next few ...
... children should also be encouraged to learn music or art or clay work or things of that kind. He felt that over a period of four or five years of primary education, children could be expected to arrive at a certain competence in regard to reading, writing and calculating ordinary sums. In addition, children will have also indicated their interest in music, art, craft work, drama, recitation of poems,... that his basic answer was that one of the most important instruments of vital education is that of good stories. He invited the participants to the task of collecting good stories from the world literature. He, however, explained that stories should have been written in chaste language and that they should be of deep human interest, and that they should vibrate with the uplifting atmosphere. During... but she wondered whether a new curriculum could be formulated which would promote humanising influence. She said that the direct human contact is diminishing at every level. Even in the field of music, she said, instead of listening to live performances, we prefer to hear recordings on cassettes. RV referred to Sri Aurobindo's view that instead of mechanisation of life, natural growth and ...
... moon's last disc; rich men of their bright dross, By gifts disburdened, fairer shine by loss. For another sample, savour Bodies without Mind: Some minds there are to Art and Beauty dead, Music and poetry on whose dull ear Fall barren. Horns grace not their brutish head, Page 454 Tails too they lack, yet is their beasthood clear. That Heaven ordained... greatest book of our time and Aldous Huxley calling it "a book not merely of the highest importance as regards its content but remarkably fine as a piece of philosophic and religious literature". Yes, here is Sri Aurobindo whose mystical thought appreciates with its calm and clear vision a momentous truth behind the motive and work of western materialism itself, because its own... a difference of opinion between Prof. Iyengar and myself on a few lines of alleged poetry written in English by an Indian. It poses the question whether much of this writing is on the level of literature at all, whether the normal critical categories can be applied to it. Even to call it bad or weak is to hazard making those words meaningless. If mine seems an extreme view I will be content to ...
... poetic merit they have is solely due to the poet’s innate sense of rhythm and word-music. The description—‘a born poet’—could hardly be applied to anyone with greater appositeness than to Nishikanto, for the poetic vein of speech is for him more like a natural function of his psychological constitution than a cultivated art and the sense for rhythm and subtle sound-body of words which comprise the essence... I walk because He also walks, I talk because He also talks: On Death’s stem blows His Immortality. [25] Dilip Kumar’s music and Nishikanto’s lyrics led to the creation of a number of memorable songs which resulted in the emergence of a storm in the world of Bengali music; among them the most notable ones were Ei prithibir pather pore, Jwalbar mantra dile more, Andharer ei dharani, Eje kon karmanasha... he received. Nishikanto had a unique style of creating his paintings. His creations may resemble modern art and yet they are characterized with the presence of surrealism and metaphysical elements. This was because he drew inspiration from the poetry of Sri Aurobindo and as a result his art took a turn towards symbolism. He also included the experiences of his visions in his paintings. Dhiraj Banerjee ...
... being poetically the longest and most comprehensive mystical portrait in all literature. To lead from darkness into light, from ignorance of God to knowledge of Him is the work assigned by many poets to woman. There is the praise by Goethe of the Eternal Feminine calling us onward and upward. And there is Dante's music about the santo riso, the saintly smile, of Beatrice which guided him from... s and conduct. In that shape they can reach man's inner being persistently and ubiquitously over and above doing so with a luminous and vibrant suggestiveness unrivalled by any other mode of literature or art. But scattered and short pieces of poetry cannot build the sustained and organised Weltanschauung required for putting a permanent stamp upon the times. Nothing except an epic or a drama can... to be overhead because of the crowdedly repetitive clipped sounds "till" and "did" and "build". The overhead rhythm needs a different art - and behind the art a different psychological disposition. Thompson's opening line has nothing markedly counter to the overhead art; somehow the right psychological disposition is still lacking. In the last line he is on the verge of both, yet comes short because ...
... and precious wonderful gems; let it rise like a mountain of true and invaluable interpretations. Let there open out in the land of Marathi the gold mines of well-inspired and rejoiceful pleasing literature and let, in row after long glowing row, the creepers of right thinking and discernment be planted: ( Jnaneshwari : 12.12) In this flourishing city of Marathi... last seven hundred years is this opus Jnaneshwari a standing proof for such a unique claim; its fertilising streams have produced in the course of time rich harvests of both esoteric and secular literature. Saint after saint and bhakta after exceptional bhakta have acknowledged without the least reservation the yogic and spiritual debt they owe to the Lord of Knowledge as his name Jnaneshwar very aptly... ordinary action of breathing can give rise to extraordinary treatises or Page 108 masterpieces. These will be rich in meaning and rich in literary value. In the richness of their lilt and music newer and newer creations will flow with sweet cadence and rapturous gracefulness. In their silent songs there will be the knowledge of the One, the very delight of the Self. That is why Jnaneshwar ...
... Aurobindo welcomed such remarks from Amal whom he had prepared in the art of poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he lived, could have talked with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate movements on rhythm, overhead poetry, etc., which are now a permanent treasure in English literature." 43 We should indeed be quite thankful to Amal Kiran for these... spiritual philosophy put in the revealing language of a poet, its expression carrying the inspired and inevitable Word. We have in it mysticism, occult knowledge, religion, metaphysics, art, science, literature, history of man and history of earth, all that is noble and living, that can impart to our perception the sense of infinity which can give meaning to our daily occupations. Any one of these... fact it has thus already opened out an altogether new world of creative action for us. Based on Savitri we already have Sunil Bhattacharya's music and Huta Hindocha's paintings under the direct guidance of the Mother. These are examples of the new art that is to come in its wake and there shall be many more creations to bring Savitri itself closer to us. We thus envisage the coming of new schools ...
... mastered his subject is the true art of teaching. The mother-tongue is the proper medium of education and therefore the first energies of the child should be directed to the thorough mastering of the medium. Almost every child has an imagination, an instinct for words, a dramatic faculty, a wealth of idea and fancy. These should be interested in the literature and history of the nation. Instead... parts of his own literature and the life around him and behind him, and they should be put before him in such a way as to attract and appeal to the qualities of which I have spoken. All other study at this period should be devoted to the perfection of the mental functions and the moral character. A foundation should be laid at this time for the study of history, science, philosophy, art, but not in an... gains. * * * In India ... we have been cut off by a mercenary and soulless education from all our ancient roots of culture and tradition.... The value attached by ancients to music, art and poetry has become almost unintelligible to an age bent on depriving life of its meaning by turning earth into a sort of glorified ant-heap or beehive. The future is mightier than the past ...
... and developed. In his childhood and youth, he received music lessons from Damon 6 the most famous music teacher of his time, he learnt literature from Pythocleides, he absorbed philosophy through the lectures of Zeno ,7 and he had Anaxagoras 8 for a friend and teacher who uplifted his mind to loftier purposes. From him Pericles learnt the art of eloquence and found within himself a calmness, which... differ he did. Although like the Sophists he was well versed in the art of argumentation, could give analogies and change the course of a dialogue, and had a way with words, on four accounts he differed from them; he abhorred rhetoric, he aspired to strengthen the moral fibre in men, he desired nothing more than to teach men the art of self-examination, and he refused any payment for his services as... displeased Socrates who abhorred forensic competitions. This probably caused a rift between them, for after this, Eucleides founded the Megarian School, which taught students the art of disputation. Though he taught this art with great zest to the point of madness, nevertheless, he had not lost his softer side. There is an anecdote regarding a quarrel he had with his brother. Livid with Eucleides, his ...
... for thousands of years in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, and had spread thence to neighboring countries. But certain elements had been lacking until the Greeks supplied them. What they achieved in art and literature is familiar to everybody, but what they did in the purely intellectual realm is even more exceptional... What occurred was so astonishing that, until very recent times, men were content to gape... for burial, issuing orders that it was to be treated in a manner befitting a brave warrior. Here the great poem suddenly ends, and the rest of the story is to be collected from the subsequent literature. Page 20 v Indeed, the war of Troy continued. The terrible Achilles struck fear into the Trojans. In one incident, he fought a duel with Penthesilea, the famous queen of the... river of Styx, but since she held him by the heel, he remained vulnerable at that point. Later on, Peleus took his son Achilles to Chiron, the Centaur who taught him the arts of war and other arts like music and painting. Achilles was destined to be the greatest of the heroes of the Trojan War. IV The city of Troy stood on Mt. Ida. This mountain forms part of Phrygia. On a hill three miles ...
... law, not force Or thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, then Hast sifted well the atom — universe... And first, as thou wast not the first of powers, So art thou not the last; it cannot be — Thou art not the beginning nor the end. From chaos and parental darkness came Light the first fruits of that intestine broil, That sullen ferment, which for wonderous... Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1 PART V Savitri in World Literature Let us try to put Savitri in the perspective of some of the world's great poems, if only for its own fuller grasp. Valmiki, the first bom of poets, author of the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana, is the supreme singer; Veda-Vyasa coming after him, the author of the... thousand words: he was no artist, he was a creator. Others might be greater as artists, one might recall Racine; greater in his range, the poet of the Mahabharata, for instance; Milton a greater music-maker; but none approaches Shakespeare in word-magic. The "easily-come" word rather than the play was the thing for him. Sri Aurobindo, though regarding himself "first and foremost a poet," had yet ...
... 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 of poetry... a nymph of heaven, an Apsara, for bride—is shot with an impetuous beauty and steeped in love's coundess moods. A passage, capturing various phases of the tumult of desire with an alert kaleidoscopic art which casts back to the sensuous mobility of the Elizabethans and strains forward to the nervous subdety of the moderns, may be instanced: He moved, he came towards her. She, a leaf Before... y of another type the suggestive effect of consonantal sounds in the line mentioning one of the Snake-lords of the Underworld— Magic Carcotaka all flecked with fire— a line of splendid art in both visual and rhythmical impact from that mythic imagination which is among the most noteworthy features of Love and Death. Page 75 ...
... fulfilled. The teaching of the different Arts - dance, music, painting - should be based on the same fundamental principle: to give to the student the best conditions for the perfecting of his own capacities and to help and encourage him in the process. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development. The highest aim of Art is to find the Divine through beauty. But this discovery... foreign languages. The cultures of different nations are made accessible not merely intellectually in ideas principles and languages, but also vitally in habits and customs, in art under all forms - painting, sculpture, music dance, architecture and decoration - and physically in dress games and sports. Shows, exhibitions and films are used extensively for this purpose. [The aim is] to help i... single movement.35 The study of classical languages and their literature would not disappear. It is bound to lose - it has already lost – the position it has for long occupied as an all-sufficient instrument of education. But it should retain its due place as a separate and independent branch of knowledge. Moreover literature - poetry as well as prose - would also continue to Page 69 ...
... any goodwill into it... Music is good. Oh, yes! Because there are no words. Music is good. I had a vision like that, of an auditorium in Auroville with a large organ, and someone (whom I'm trying to prepare, who knows how to play the organ very well and whom I'm trying to prepare inwardly), who was playing (I SAW that, I saw it); playing the music of the higher Consciousness... who has had a lot of contact with the people who make that new "pop" music, (you know, this new "musical" movement which goes together with the hippies). He's the father of little [name], born in Auroville. Page 107 Yes, I must see him on his birthday. He came to see me and made me listen to that music. [The reference is to the "Rolling Stones ".] What's it like... hammering). I am pushed all the time, all the time to repeat it to them. April 16, 1969 AM X-137-144 (Mother listens to the "pop" music introduced to her by [an Aurovilian ]. The recording of the conversation begins with the "music". Then Mother speaks.) It's very amusing! (Mother laughs) It's the whole vital in revolt against the mind, but it's magnificent! They entirely ...
... education ended at the age of twelve, but an aptitude for music led to his becoming a music teacher and composer. One or two of his minor operas were quite popular in their day and his contemporaries considered him a musician of the first order, although today the rating would not be so high. Throughout his life Rousseau was to fall back on music as a means of livelihood, for his writings brought him... between all these explanations and the conversation with Robert the gardener. (...) Children, who are great imitators, all try their hand at drawing. I would have my pupil cultivate this art, not exactly for the art itself, but for rendering the eye accurate and the hand flexible; and, in general, it is of very little consequence that he understand such or such an exercise, provided he acquire the ... occasion, and to take for a marked inclination toward such or such an art the imitative spirit which is common to man and monkey, and which mechanically leads both to wish to do whatever they see done without knowing very well what it is good for. The world is full of artisans, and especially of artists, who have no natural talent for the art which they practice, and in which they have been Page 257 ...
... ranges. Yogic or occult powers are no more supernatural or incredible than is supernatural or incredible the power to write a great poem or compose great music; few people can do it, as things are, — not even one in a million: for poetry and music come from the inner being and to write or to compose true and great things one has to have the passage clear between the outer mind and something in the... have been persuaded that without his active help added to invisible Yogic powers I could not have achieved poetic utterance. I can lay claim to having acquired early a taste for poetry and music. For music I have had a native aptitude since I was a child. But my taste for poetry developed later till, in my *The italics are mine. Page 110 adolescence, it grew into... read and read. For instance, you can't deny that your style which is incomparable was manufactured partly by your enormous reading?" "I agree," he answered, "that without style there is no literature except in fiction where a man with a bad style like Dickens or Balzac can make up by vigour and power of his substance. But I cannot agree with you that I manufactured my style laboriously; style ...
... later art and poetry inter- Page 21 preted to Athens her religious ideas, her thought, her aesthetic instincts, the soul of grandeur and beauty of her culture." 23 But we may note that something of the essential Greek soul operates in Homer in the same way as in the later art and... between observing thought and life is the distinctive effort of classical poetry and that endeavour gave it its stamp in Athens or Rome or in much of the epic or classical literature of ancient India". 17 However, Classicism is not all of one piece within its own psychological type. In Europe it has a history of four ... therefore French Classicism has almost always found a satisfying and characteristic form by which it has exercised a great influence from time to time on other Euro-pean literatures. The difference, however, of its quality from that of the Graeco-Roman we may gauge by understanding how the dear-thinking intellect differs from the inspired ...
... this programme the study of art and values, and in this connection, the followings questions could be discussed: What is art? How is art viewed in India and the West? Six limbs of Indian art: Rupa Bheda, Pramaana, Bhava, Lavanya, Sadrishya, Varnikabhanga. Art and the pursuit of the value of Beauty in relation to poetry, music, painting, architecture, dance... include a special study of Indian culture and Indian system of values. It should also include the study of Indian religion and spirituality, Indian ethics and Indian concept of dharma, Indian literature, Indian art, Indian architecture, and Indian polity. It may be suggested that these programmes can be spread over three years of courses. Page 225 IX In the light of the foregoing... similar to the satisfaction of an artist in the perception and creation of a form that reflects the intended meaning, in a vehicle that represents colour, line, mass and proportion, or very similar to music in which the meaning is captured in the form of a sound in a vehicle marked by pitch, volume and rhythm. Idea is really a Form, as Plato conceived it and as Vishwamitra much earlier described it as ...
... for various forms of Indian art and culture and also some practical skills in one or more forms of art and culture. The module is proposed to cover: *Indian schools of painting. *Indian schools of music. *Indian schools of dance. *Indian literature. Practical aspect of the Module will comprise training in either music, painting, dance or literature. Counselling ... 4Citizens and Indian Constitution, Module 5Transition to Work, Module 6Leadership, and Module 7Indian Art and Culture, A brief note on each module is given below. Module I: Understanding and Managing Self 1 * There are considerable amount of literature on the subject. There are assessment centres in the industrialized countries which offer services for psychographs... students of the institute/the faculty members mostly train the students in the various items. There will be various departments working for the exhibition programme viz. Fabrication group, Art 8c Settings group, Music group, Choreography group, Costumes/make-up group, March past group, Refreshment group, Cultural Committee group, Stage decoration group, Security and Seating arrangement group, Logo group ...
... of the subjects on which Amal Kiran writes so authoritatively and thought-provokingly. The vision of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, mysticism, yoga, philosophy - both eastern and western - literature, especially his treatise on Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare and other English poets and authors, sociology, politics, Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin are all subjects in which he is completely at home... and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped by massed consonants in several places to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music. The four "i"s and the four "o"s suggest at once penetration and expansion, the latter as if from an all-round fastness. The "v" in "riven", pronounced as it is with the upper teeth touching the lower... subject-matter takes body as it were and becomes alive. Says he: "...here too the accent is recognisably Aurobindonian. The Overhead breath blows everywhere and in the last line we have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is superb, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and ...
... that Japanese art, like Japanese life, was extremely mentalised. "It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations." The Japanese people - not the artists and the connoisseurs alone, but the common people also, the working men and the peasants, and even school children - had a spontaneous feeling for beauty in the physical. Their eyes intuitively sought beauty in nature or art, their nerves... True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life .... A Japanese house is a wonderful artistic whole; always the right thing is there in the right place, nothing wrongly set, nothing too much, nothing too little. Everything is just as it needed to be, and the house itself blends marvellously with the surrounding nature .... ... the strict sense of beauty and art is... sensibilities were fully awakened, and she could grasp the language of flora and fauna alike, even as she could look deep into the hearts of human beings. 13 As with their life, so also the literature of the Japanese was full of fairylore, and Mirra found that everything in Japan, from beginning to end, gave her "the impression of impermanence, of the unexpected, the exceptional". 14 After ...
... cities cut like gems of conscious stone. 17 We are reminded of a story from Greek mythology in which Apollo plays on his lyre and his divine music creates the city of Troy. It is, therefore, that architecture that is sometimes called "frozen music". If rhythm can create a city, however allegorical it might be, then we can say that there is an awareness concealed in the layers of stone. ... around him. Apart from creating a special literary effect on the surface, he triggers off underneath it a mystic significance. It may be said that in the past, specifically in English literature, precious metals and stones have enjoyed a place of pride. The English poets may not have treated these metals and stones seriously as portents of good or evil. However, they did feel a sense... him. A spontaneous response in the poem On first Looking into Chapman's Homer with "Much have I travelled in the realms of gold" captivates instantly the precious and permanent value of literature and how the poet finds his native region here. Unlike Milton who regards gold as profane, D. G. Rossetti elevates this precious metal to the high heavens. In The Blessed Damozel the eponymous ...
... transcription from the inner source and where the inspiration fails return upon your work so as to make the whole worthy of its origin and its object. All work done for the Divine, from poetry and art and music to carpentry or baking or sweeping a room, should be made perfect even in its smallest external detail, as well as in the spirit in which it is done; for only then is it an altogether fit offering... and prosaic. 8 October 1934 And if great music rolled from his far mouth, This doesn't sound right. Either "rolled" must be changed or it should be something like "A mighty music rolled": that is to say, rolled is too sonant unless what precedes it is sonant also. 16 April 1937 Your remark about my fifth line ["And if great music ... "] is liable to seem hypercritical but really... and one a day of this kind is a feat. If the apparent ease covers a lot of labour, that is the lot of the poet and artist except when he is a damned phenomenon of fluency. "It is the highest art to conceal art" "The long and conscientious labour of the artist giving in the result an appearance of divine and perfect ease"—console yourself with these titbits. As for repetitions, they are almost inevitable ...
... them even as the beads of a necklace are by its thread. 12. Salutations to Thee who art all this, but yet art not attached to anything and art only their witness. This cosmic manifestation is the work of Thy Māyāśakti. It affects beings of various types like Devas, men and animals involved in it, but not Thee who art its master. 13-14. The fire is Thy face; the earth, Thy feet; the sun, Thy eyesight;... the time to be free from Samsāra has come, that one gets holy company and through that, the mental inclination to practice devotion. 29. Salutations to Thee who art Pure Consciousness, who art the source of consciousness everywhere, who art the infinite power of Brahman controlling the three factors of Time, Karma and Nature that determine the destiny of Jīvas! 30. Salutations to Thee Vāsudeva, the... where the mountain valleys are filled with creatures, all standing still, absorbed at the sight of the dances of peacocks enraptured with the music of Śrī Krsna's flute. 11. Fortunate indeed are these does, though unintelligent by nature. For, on hearing the music of Śrī Krsna's flute they, along with their mates, receive the gloriously bedecked Śrī Krsna, offering him their love-soaked glances in worship ...
... rigorous unification they see the only true union, a single nation with a standardised and uniform administration, language, literature, culture, art, education,-all carried on through the agency of one national tongue. How far such a conception can be carried out in the future one cannot forecast, but at present it is obviously impracticable... life of a regional people. The home of a robust and virile and energetic race, great by the part it had played in the past in the political life of India, great by its achievements in art, architecture, sculpture, music, Andhra looks back upon imperial memories, a place in the succession of empires and imperial dynasties which reigned over a large part of the country; it looks back on the more recent... g the principle of division into regional peoples but not abolishing that division. For there had grown up out of the original elements a natural system of sub-nations with different languages, literatures and other traditions of their own, the four Dravidian peoples, Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of the North, Rajputana and Bihar. British ...
... Bengal, was going to sing on the radio, and he very much wanted Sri Aurobindo to hear him. So the radio was brought near and the sponge-bath and the music went on simultaneously. When at the end of Bhishmadev's programme we asked him how he had liked the music, he answered, 'Oh, I completely forgot.' We had a good laugh." 20 "A similar instance happened in Dilip's case. He had sent the timing of his... his radio programme from Calcutta and beseeched Sri Aurobindo to hear him. Sri Aurobindo asked Champaklal to remind him of it. When the music was over, he asked Champaklal, 'Where is Dilip's music?' Champaklal laughed and said that it was already finished!" 21 Sri Aurobindo was not even a conversationalist - as we normally understand and use the term. Nirodbaran was a regular participant in Sri... Sri Aurobindo Came To Me whose chapter "Avowedly Personal" showed to the reading public how humorous Sri Aurobindo could be in his written correspondence. Then came out in 1967 Amal Kiran's Life-Literature-Yoga which revealed Sri Aurobindo's humour enlivening literary topics in rich profusion. The Second Page 13 Series of Nirodbaran's Correspondence saw the light of day in 1959 and ...
... make new things for us as well as to make existing things new to the mind and eye. It is no real portion of the function of art to cut out palpitating pieces from life and present them raw and smoking or well-cooked for the aesthetic digestion. For in the first place all art has to give us beauty and the crude actuality of life is not often beautiful, and in the second place poetry has to give us a... a just balance between observing thought and life is the distinctive effort of classical poetry and that endeavour gave it its stamp whether in Athens or Rome or in much of the epic or classical literature of ancient India. But this balance is easily lost, a difficult thing, and, once it has gone, thought begins to overweight life which loses its power and élan and joy, its vigorous natural body and... and universal success to this advantage that he gives us more of this discovery and fusion for which the mind of our age is in quest than any other creative writer of the time. His work is a constant music of the overpassing of the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds and lights of the truth of the spirit give new meanings to the finer subtleties of life. The objection has been made ...
... other-worldness or world-worthlessness. In India we find, during every period when her civilization bloomed an intense joy in life and nature, a pleasure in the act of living, the development of art and music and literature and song and dancing and painting and the theatre, and even a highly sophisticated inquiry into the sex relation. It is inconceivable that a culture or view of life based on other-worldiness... embalmed body of Lenin in Moscow's Red Square, It was also a sense of more than natural presences that was aroused in Nehru by the loveliness and grandeur of Nature as well as the perfection of art and poetry. And most of all the spiritual unknown was at the back of the intense hunger he mentioned in his Autobiography (1936) to visit "Manasarovar, the wonder-lake of Tibet, and snow-covered Kailas ...
... ordinarily all thinking is attributed to the ‘intellect’, an intellectual therefore is a man whose main business or activity is to think about things — a philosopher, a poet, a scientist, a critic of art and literature or of life are all classed together as intellectuals. A theorist on economy and politics is an intellectual, a politician or financier is not, unless he theorises on his own subject or is a thinker... all art for the sake of sadhana, but such sacrifice was not needed. Sri Aurobindo’s yoga includes all. He wrote afterwards: “The development of capacities is not only permissible but right when it can be made part of Yoga; one can give not only one’s soul, but all one’s powers to the Divine.” (29.6.31) I was preparing joyfully the dance I wanted to show to the Mother. Dancing and music had... strange ecstasy of that experience. When the song and music had stopped, we went to her one by one and returned with her blessings and some fruits or sweets. We saw her sitting in the same way as before in the dim light, keeping open the gates of another world. We heard her sing once or twice, but several times her organ-music. Whoever heard this music played at night knows what it is. We used to wait ...
... formless Infinity. The rock-hewn temple in the mystic cave of Savitri's heart is a beautiful example of this Art. She enters into the deep recess and finds herself amidst great figures of the gods conscious in stone and living without breath. In fact, this Art itself can then become a great yogic Art. We may therefore say that in it is the world of "true matter" where the supramental physicality will first... external reality. There has to be an art with eyes wide open. The modern Shilpa Yogin's has to be sajāg-sādhanā. Such contemplation and representation is the invitation for the future art. "The Gods must be shaped within to live in us and an inspired dynamic union with the Transcendent's sphere lead us into a Divine Life on earth." That shall be the future Art. 11: Is the Yoga of Aswapati a... There shines the Sun in its tranquil majesty, tranquil glory. It is that glory which shall be present in future painting. Such is also the wondrous harmony we find in Sunil Bhattacharya's music, music that moves in the rhythms of Savitri. 2: When in the context of the line "All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour" from Savitri the Mother was asked if man can delay or ...
... Aurobindo's five years at St. Paul's were a period when — albeit desultorily — he garnered extensively from classical and modern European literature. Strictly in academic terms, his school record speaks for itself. He won the Butterworth 2nd Prize in Literature, and an Honourable Mention in the Bedford History Prize. Twice in November 1889, he participated in debates, once on the inconsistency of... river Hooghly (otherwise known as the Bhagirathi), it is about eleven miles to the north of Calcutta. Konnagar is apparently a place of considerable antiquity, for it is mentioned in old Bengali literature. The Mitras and the Ghoses of Konnagar have carved out creditable names for themselves in the political and cultural history of Bengal. Among the many outstanding men who have sprung up from the... with Greek during the first two years, Sri Aurobindo was able to take his regular studies easy in the last three years and devote his spare time to general reading, especially English and French literature, some Italian, German and Spanish, and the history of ancient, mediaeval and modem Europe. The period of about two years between old Mrs. Drewett's going away and Sri Aurobindo's winning a ...
... Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes, Because his touch is infinite and lends A yonder to all ends. (12.6.1987) 1, The Future Poetry and Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 1972), pp. 164-165. Page 71 ... to the increasing infirmity of my legs, the trudge from the Ashram Gate to the chair kept for me opposite the Samadhi is quite a strain. But(the strain of the body tends to vanish into a strain of music within me as I go looking at the several pots of plants ranged all along my passage. The continuous green of the leaves wafts to me a sustained heart-ease while the many-coloured and many-shaped blossoms ...
... pharaohs and sultans, as if we were not already swamped with tyrants—or even to evolve ever more intelligent geniuses, super-Goethes or super-Beethovens—a world ultimately so overflowing with literature and music that we might be saturated or bored to death, as if this formidable human ascent of suffering and chaos and conflict were only meant to eternally produce the same song, only greater and louder... because they are no longer necessary to wrest our cry from within a cage. Then each one will have his real name beneath all the costumes or without a costume, his unique vibration, his irreplaceable music amidst the great Totality, his memory restored at last, and his great wings. And our eyes will open upon our earth as if we had never seen it before. Perhaps it will be another earth. Another... those marchers of the great human invasion sculpted or poeticized or conquered? Where is it? Where is that only kingdom never conquered, that one note which fills all, that little color for no canvas or art gallery? Tomorrow, tomorrow, they say, but tomorrow never comes; and where is the real person in all those actors? We go on and on, in ever increasing numbers and dresses, on the great human thoroughfare ...
... revealing or transmuting image and the image into the object, which is part of the highest art of symbolic or mystic poetry. Heard before? If you refer to elements of the rhythm, words or phrases here and there, or images used before though not in the same way, where is the poetry in so old and rich a literature as the English that altogether escapes this suspicion of "heard before"? Absolute originality... magnificence. The rhythm, word-music, etc. are not that striking. Perhaps you find some inner truth behind these things that magnifies them to you? Page 496 Well, have you become a disciple of Baron and the surrealists? You seem to suggest that significance does not matter and need not enter into the account in judging or feeling poetry! Rhythm and word music are indispensable, but are not... I can understand very well what Suhrawardy objects to in Harin's poetry, though his expression of it is absurdly exaggerated ("trash"), and he may be right in thinking it an exotic in English literature; but I am under the impression that Harin will stand in spite of that, though he has still to write something so sovereign in its own kind as to put all doubt out of court; but, even as it is, the ...
... strongly against the idea that I condemned poetry and other things of the kind as inconsistent with Yoga or considered them of no value (as well as the misconception that the Mother disliked music and condemned literature, etc. or I may add, the idea Page 266 that Mother and I have never suffered and do not know what suffering is). If I felt that I had to repudiate these groundless imaginations... I stand (whatever my worth) for the Classical style in music viz. that class of music where the singer or executant is a creator at every step in improvisations etc. while Tagore is for fining the cadre of the melody a la European music where the singer, as you know, follows the composer—having no choice. I stand for the free movement in music with all its dangers which are great; Tagore for the safe... that has nothing to do with music and it is a strange and violent twist to say that it includes a prohibition of music as incompatible with sadhana. On the contrary I have always encouraged you to do whatever, poetry or music, helps the devotion and combats the false idea that there is no capacity for spiritual things in you. The very fact that people find in your music so much more than before shows ...
... more — India had been in the vanguard of human civilisation. She had, almost continuously, thrown out with exuberant self-confidence an amazing variety of literatures, philosophies, schools of painting and architecture and dancing and music, sound systems of government, fruitful traditions in medicine and engineering, and the elaborate sciences of grammar, mathematics, chemistry and astrono my... founded, thus trained, the ancient Indian race grew to astonishing heights of culture and civilisation; it lived with a noble, well-based, ample and vigorous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries; it rose to the highest possible ideals and no mean practice of knowledge and culture, of arduous greatness and heroism, of kindness, philanthropy and human... good. In the first important phase of India's reaction to the Western impact, there were the stirrings of intellectual activity stimulated by contact with the new rulers, their language and literature, their social and political institutions, their religion, their whole attitude to life. The missionaries had established printing presses in different parts of the country, and books in English ...
... the perfume of the human form; just as sound is the perfume of poetry and music—but if a sculptor tints his statue, the effect Page 25 displeases us, because it seems gaudy or tinsel, or in plain words disproportionate. In some cases beauty seems to have only one of these elements, for example frankincense and music which seem to possess perfume only, but in reality we shall find that they... they have each one or both of the other elements. For incense would not be half so beautiful, if we did not see the curling folds of smoke floating like loose drapery in the air, nor would music be music if not harmoniously blended with form and colour, or as we usually call them, technique and meaning. Again there are other cases in which beauty undoubtedly has one only of the three elements: and... harmonious. From this I infer that if a writer's works appear beautiful in print or manuscript, but not beautiful when read aloud, he may be set down as a good artist in calligraphy, but a bad artist in literature, Page 46 since suggestion to the eye is the perfume of the written, but suggestion to the ear the perfume of the spoken word. In this however I seem to have been digressing to no purpose; ...
... alternative middle paths, and the one presented here in A Free Man's Worship is truly instructive. Bertrand Russell was a consumate master of English prose, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. His wit, brevity of expression and precision of thought give to his writings an exceptional charm that is unique and inimitable. In conclusion, we may recall what he said about himself:... radio, discussions, etc. 1944 — Returns to England. Elected to Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, for the second time. 1950 . — Nobel Prize for Literature. 1955 —Awarded the Silver Pears Trophy for work on behalf of World Peace. 1957 — UNESCO Kalinga Prize. 1950-70 — Struggle for World Peace... whole of wisdom; for not by renunciation alone can we build a temple for the worship of our own ideals. Haunting Page 291 foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote ...
... great length of the line as compared with the rest of the poem drives deep into us the ultimate magnitude of the spiritual achievement the whole piece pictures. If any poetic phrase in world-literature comes up to the blend of literary surprise and satisfaction we have here, it is the fourth line of the first stanza in Mallarmé's sonnet Le Cygne (The Swan) : Le vierge, le vivace et le bel... Invisible made visible in its own direct right. But the challenging concepts and adventurous images of the preceding poetry are not effaced: they play their subsidiary roles and waft to us, like background music, the atmosphere of spiritual philosophy. And the burst of pure sight is mediated, so to speak, by the lines: One with the Eternal, live in his infinity, Drowned in the Absolute, found in... " the work of the post-Mallarmé poets like Valéry, Rilke and the later Yeats, the shades and shimmers of the Beyond are not caught into an intellectual chiaraoscuro but what looks such is rather the art-pattern of some lucid-languaged revelatory power other than the sharp-phrased interpretative intellect. A philosophical atmosphere is there, yet shot with a luminosity and wideness of significance exceeding ...
... so taught through great passages of literature, great and inspiring biographies of leaders of different domains that a holistic vision of the growth of humanity towards the goal of its unity becomes unfolded in the mind of the student. It will be emphasised that history is not merely the study of the past but a great door opening on the future. 10. Music, art and poetry A large number of... presentation of bright visions of the future that has to be built against the obstinate obstacles of the old world. This can be done through stories, plays, short poems and activities of drawing, painting, music, which embody a drive towards the building of the new world. Visions of the unity of humanity, messages of freedom and harmony need to be underlined. 3. Emphasis on progress Children normally... stifle the wings and breath of the child's soul but to pro vide to each child the minimum programme of learning, and the basic requirements of self-education. Once the child has begun to practise the art of self-education, the teacher needs to provide to each child the necessary facilities and learning materials appropriate to its inclinations, talents, and actual or potential capacities, so that each ...
... they freed poetry from the facilities and prettinesses of the old rhymed stanza; by their magnificences of style and emotion they brought new elements into Hindu literature, and they gave battle with their strange and fiery coloured music to the classic frigidity of the Sanskritists.... That marvellous epic, the Meghnad-badh, was the coup de grace. When Vidyasagar praised the Meghnad-badh as a supreme... inspired seer of the National Anthem, Bande Mataram, and the greatest novelist in Bengali literature. Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra, Sri Ramkrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Yogi Vijay Krishna Goswami, the world-poet Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, the gifted pioneer of the new school of Indian Art, Jagadish Chandra Bose, the greatest Indian scientist 79, etc. etc., - an unbroken line... Mother, that thou art weak? Holder of multitudinous strength, I bow to her who saves, to her who drives from her the armies of her foemen, the Mother! Thou art knowledge, thou art conduct, thou our heart, thou our soul, for thou art the life in our body. In the arm thou art might, O Mother, in the heart, O Mother, thou art love and faith ...
... L Lajpat Rai, Lala, 17 language, 75, 129 see also Aryan language . Dravidian languages. Sanskrit Latin, 109 law, its true function , 45 see al so dharma and Shastra Lenin, 192 literature, 73, 80 love, 14, 91,153 gospel of, 45,46, 144 M machinery , 103 , 127 , 135, 136, 141 exaggerated importance of, 51,52, 71, 79 ,81 of the State, 104 , 177 Mahabharata, 46, 98(fn)... , 41 see al so India, as th e Mother motherland. see under India, as th e Mother Mrinalini Devi , 16 Muller , F. Ma x, 87 , 95, 96,97, 116 , 117(fn) Mullick, Subodh, 27 Munje, B. S ., 155 music, 65 , 66 Muslim, culture, 168 , 179 , 222 League, 31(fn), 195(fn), 224, 241(fn) religion, see under Islam Muslims, 167 , 169, 173 , 190 com ing India, 158 , 178 ·179,248 India n Muslims , 3 1... 112 Ambedkar, B. R., 204,205 America , 59 , 81 , 174,237 Americans, 77 , 239 Andhra University, 247 Anushilan Samiti, 13 Arabians, 190 archaeology , 98(fn), l001(fn) Arjuna, 51 , 125,206,240 art, 65-68, 103, 127, 182,220 Indian a r t, 59 .60, 67, 68 , 168 Arya (English monthly), 83, III Arya Samaj , 170 Aryan, 49 , 106 character and life, 52, 60 fig h te r, 126 invasion (theory of). 96 ...
... Dilip, Arjava, Sethna (Amal), Nirod - often raised other questions too. Likewise, in the talks before 24 November 1926 and the resumed talks after 1938, among the subjects that figured were literature, poetry, art, politics, Vedic exegesis, education, psychology, philosophy, religion, war, and even nudity and birth-control, besides of course problems relating to the sadhana. Many of the letters (and... 1936;77ie Mother (1928) too had in the main a similar origin. Introducing the first series of Letters of Sri Aurobindo (1947), Kishor Gandhi wrote: The letters of Sri Aurobindo are a vast literature of very great value... intended for direct and intimate help to disciples, they are written in a somewhat less lofty and difficult style than his other more metaphysical works and yet they bear that... piquancy, even the sheer brilliance and gusto of the writing are inevitably lost. But in volumes like Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, the collection of letters entitled Life Literature - Yoga, and Dilip's Among the Great, Sri Aurobindo came to Me and Yogi Sri Krishnaprem - all of which include several of Sri Aurobindo's letters - it is easier to appreciate the personal touch ...
... European from Asian Turkey. Ancient name: Hellespont. 2 Troy was an ancient city in northwestern Anatolia that holds an enduring place in both literature and archaeology. The legend of the Trojan War is the most notable theme from ancient Greek literature and forms the basis of Homer's Iliad. Ancient Troy commanded a strategic point at the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (Hellespont). 3 For... in the art of healing as well as that of philosophy. He was not merely attracted to the theory of medicine, but was in the habit of tending his friends when they were sick and prescribing for them various courses of treatment or diet, as we learn from his letters. He was also devoted by nature to all kinds of learning and was a lover of books. He regarded the Iliad 2 as a handbook of the art of w and... oligarchic constitution (oil garchy means a government by a small group of people). The ruling class of Sparta devoted itself to war and diplomacy, deliberately neglecting the arts, philosophy and literature, and forged the most powerful standing army in Greece. This warrior city devoted itself to austerity, frugality and discipline; it created an ideal of an absolute surrender of the individual to the ...
... Sound, thou art thy Master and thy God. Thou art THYSELF the object of they search: the VOICE unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the VOICE OF THE SILENCE. Om tat Sat 24 These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. Music gives you... Silesius again, "Er ist als ich so klein; Er kann nicht fiber mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein."²³ In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as 'dazzling obscurity,' 'whispering silence,' 'teeming desert,' are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed... mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an Page 162 encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence." But in ...
... own luminous truths instead of thought essaying to capture them in a mental cast for intelligible communication. The style of Savitri thus is different ____________________ 1 Life-Literature-Yoga, p. 38. Page 242 from that of Paradise Lost in very temper and texture. We should commit a psychological mistake to term it Miltonic. Miltonic it is in so far as it organises... is often termed Milton's "organ-voice" is wanting -something in the manner and still more in the rhythm, that makes the miracle of the line about "those thoughts" not a sheer freak of revelatory music but an exceptional upsurge from a sort of constant base in the rhythm-roll of Paradise Lost. The reason for this is that, though mostly limited to the mental range of vision and not piercing beyond... themselves: most often their influence, when it does enter in, plays upon a Higher-Mind transfiguration of the mental Miltonic. Perhaps the Higher Mind is directly vocal in: Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss... 2 The Illumined Mind seems to put its own stamp on a Higher-Mind expression when we hear: Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul... 3 The deeply ...
... reflection, introspection, and a search for meaning. What, for example, is the nature of thinking? How is science distinguishable from mathematics and philosophy? What is the essence of literature and music and art? Is history meaningful? Is there an aim in history? What is technology? What are the best methods of learning technology? What is truth? How do we know truth? And how best can we serve it ...
... envelop the whole world. It wasn't to be an exclusive or introvert affair: We do not want to rule out any activity of the world as beyond our province. Politics, industry, society, poetry, literature, art will all remain, but we must give them a new soul and a new form. 5 The politics of nineteenth and twentieth century India was an importation from Europe, and had proved an imitative... Ouspensky, Jacob Boehme, M. Théon, astrology, the interpretation of dreams, Kaya Kalpa, Space and Time, Russian Communism, Tagore, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya's poetry, current literature, Islamic culture, Indo-English poetry. Art, Education, medicine, psychology - all these and the Sadhana of Supramental Yoga as well! Those of us who were not of the elect can still have some taste of those daily feasts... waste patch or a giant capsule, and in their struggle for existence men encountered only prickly pear, rattling bones or pursuing shadows. The mood found expression, in the West, in the chilling literature of disillusion - in works like James Joyce's Ulysses and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. And not only the bleached and empty men and women of the war-weary West, but Indian youths too - recoiling ...
... 27 .Bk. IV, 73-5. 28 .Bk. I, 62-4. 29 . Savitri, Bk. II, Canto 7. 30 . Ibid., 31 .Bk. X, 469-72. 32 . Savitri, Bk. I, Canto 2. 33 . Life - Literature - Yoga, p. 38. 34 .Bk. II, 299-309. 35 . Savitri, Bk. 1, Canto 2. 36 . Savitri (1954), p. 821. 37 . Ibid., p. 825. 38 ."Terminal Pause in Milton's Verse"... "organ-voice" is Page 102 wanting - something in the manner and still more in the rhythm, that makes the miracle of the line about "those thoughts" not a sheer freak of revelatory music but an exceptional upsurge from a sort of constant base in the rhythm-roll of Paradise Lost. The reason for this is that, though mostly limited to the mental range of vision and not piercing beyond... themselves: most often their influence, when it does enter in, plays upon a Higher-Mind transfiguration of the mental Miltonic. Perhaps the Higher Mind is directly vocal in: Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss... 17 The Illumined Mind seems to put its own stamp on a Higher-Mind expression when we hear: Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul... 18 The deeply ...
... pauses, when one of his personages has conquered in the games, to give the fact full place of honour. If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing... loved to play, and they played on a great scale. All over Greece there were games, all sort of games; athletic contests of every description: races — horse-, boat-, foot-, torch races; contests in music, where one side outsung the other; in dancing — on greased skins sometimes to display a nice skill of foot and balance of body; games where men leaped in and out of flying chariots; games so many one ...
... ; how can we compare him to an ant ? Sri Aurobindo : In what way is the physical man superior to an ant ? Disciple : There is art, there is literature. Sri Aurobindo : Humanity is not organised for art ! Disciple : And even art does not come from the physical plane ! Disciple : You spoke of the vital beings living on their own plane. Do they also fight each other... cinema that is helping crime. Of course, they want to use it for an educative purpose. They may relay good music but the question is whether people appreciate and understand it. Disciple : Radios are better than gramophones. Sri Aurobindo : Gramophones were murderers of music. But unfortunately, it is the same with all things that requires popular support, – the theatre, cinema etc... perverse hostile vital world which generally comes in contact with our physical plane Apart from that there are beings that have a splendour and greatness and knowledge of their own. Much of the poetry and art comes from that plane. Disciple : If they are not hostile beings, as you say, then they can manifest grand things here. Sri Aurobindo : But generally they are too arrogant to do that, they ...
... emphasis came to be laid on Buddhist literature. In the Gurukulas, the programme of studies included, apart from the Vedas, the study of Vedangas, and various systems of science and philosophy.' In the time of Kautilya (fourth century, B C), studies also included Varta, i.e., subjects relating to agriculture, cattle rearing, and trade, and Dandaniti or the science and art of government. In the Buddhist schools... heap from which Prince Abhaya rescued him alive. He also brought him up till he (Jivaka) thought: "In these royal families it is not easy to find one's livelihood without knowing an art. What if I were to learn an art!" Thinking thus, he went to Takkasila to study medicine under a world-renowned physician who lived there. He learnt much and easily, understood well, and did not forget what he had learnt... even the cleverest bowmen and, showing his mastery in "the twelve arts", won back the good opinion of the complaining clansmen. Along with literary education, Siddhartha was given education in music and the military arts and pursued excellence in all his studies. He had a deep, questioning mind; it seems certain that he must have gone through a systematic course of study in all the deepest philosophies ...
... hundreds of devotional songs, and her school teaches both classical music and devotional music. And, besides, it allows every student to take up a course in Indian culture; and one can specialise in a number of other courses for specialisation in any particular aspect of Indian culture, - religion, spirituality, ethics, dharmashastra, yoga, art, architecture, polity. But the question is how to join that school... be visits of eminent scientists to her school and she had taken an active part in organising a Science Museum under the guidance of the teachers of the school and other visiting scientists. In music and art and embroidery she had special gifts, and she had learnt, to some extent, not only Indian Kathak but also Western ballet. Her father was a very learned man. His speciality was Sanskrit... in running away from school to enjoy natural beauty and harmony and music of the heart. You must have read his poems. Do you remember those beautiful lines?" "Which ones?" asked Naveen Chandra. Upendra replied instantly : "These are from 'Prelude': 'Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony and music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant ...
... because it is a greater consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, that it will insist on a real change. Since the spread of the Yoga throughout the world will proceed slowly, its creations in art, literature, architecture, etc., may be inferior to those of Buddhist, Christian and Muslim creators. Your argument assumes that the greater consciousness will be in its creations inferior to the inferior... liberation—unless of course either animals become humanised and begin talking and thinking in philosophical terms (perhaps it will not be necessary for them to write poetry and paint pictures or make music), or else animals disappear altogether being no longer necessary to the evolution. About the One there are different versions. I just read some where that the Buddhist One is a Superbuddha from whom... years. Yes. But is this Higher Evolution really a Buddhistic idea or only a European version of what Nirvana might be? "Think not of the past. Think not of the future. Think not that thou art actually engaged in meditation. Regard not the Void as being Nothingness. "At this stage do not attempt to analyse any of the impressions felt by the five senses, saying, 'It is; it is not.' But ...
... she wrote: "I was full of questions and this enabled him to tell me about the world, and the men and women who inhabited it and who have moved others by their ideas and actions, and through literature and art.... The letters in this book, written when I was eight or nine, deal with the beginnings of the earth and of man's awareness of himself. They were not merely letters to be read and put away.... the great sea, and the mountains, and snow, and glaciers, and wonderful starlit nights (especially in gaol!), and the love of family and friends, and the comradeship of workers in a common cause, and music, and books and the empire of ideas. So that each one of us may well say: — Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth, Yet was I fathered by the starry sky. It is easy to admire... America — the vast conquests of the Mongols — the Middle Ages in Europe with their i wonderful Gothic cathedrals — the coming of Islam to India and the Moghal Empire — the Renaissance of learning and art in western Europe — the discovery of i America and the sea-routes to the East — the beginnings of Western aggression in the East — the coming of the big machine and the development of capitalism — ...
... people. Thus the manner in which way Ugadi Pacchadi is made and served, the items of costume one must possess for various social gatherings, the festivals we celebrate, the vigils we keep, the music and art, both highbrow and middlebrow, which we enjoy - the sum total of this is culture. It is an anthropological way of looking at culture and we would be well advised to keep in mind this dimension,... English, as McCully has shown, is deeply implicated in nationalist discourse. Our freedom was won with English but it is necessary to point out that there was always an uneasiness about it. Our modern literature is replete with instances of this conflict. However, the modern intellectual cannot wish away the presence of this language in our conceptual universe and I want to draw attention to the work done ...
... the full story. Seek Him upon the earth... For thou art He, O King. Only the night Is on thy soul By thine own will. Remove it and recover The serene whole Thou art indeed... 143 The Central Being. The Universal Person "Thou art He" – such is the eternal truth. Tat tvam asi , thou art That. This is the Truth the ancient Mysteries taught and the later... without ever feeling tired. If when thou art doing great actions and moving giant results, thou canst perceive that thou art doing nothing, then know that God has removed the seal on thy eyelids.... If when thou sittest alone, still and voiceless on the mountain-top, thou canst perceive the revolutions thou art conducting, then hast thou the divine vision and art freed from appearances. 282 Immobility... margin of immense continents which lie behind, unexplored. 16 This substantial difference between Indians and other peoples appears most strikingly in their art, as it does also in Egyptian art (and, we assume without knowing it, in the art of Central America). If we leave behind our light and open cathedrals that soar high like a triumph of the divine thought in man suddenly to find ourselves before ...
... welcomed such discussion from Amal whom he had prepared in the art of poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he been alive, could have discussed with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate expositions on rhythm, overhead poetry, etc., which are now a permanent treasure in English literature. Sri Aurobindo's quotations from memory from Homer, Shakespeare... seal of incomplete completion was put about two weeks before the November Darshan of 1950. Very probably he had taken the decision to withdraw from this world of the sad music of humanity and leave in compensation his divine music of Savitri . A curious incident has stuck in my memory. One day he continued working even beyond 1.30 p.m. — a rare occurrence — and that was the day I was invited for lunch ...
... by faith and surrender? I heard Mother said to X that if one wants to be an artist one must work hard. What is true of art, is true of everything, isn't it? For heaven's sake, don't be so universal in your rules. Art means a technique (especially painting, sculpture, etc., music also, poetry less) and technique has to be developed. But that does not mean that there is nothing that can come by simply... aspiration". I mean by it the measure of the soul's sincerity in yearning after the Divine and its aspiration towards the higher life. The soul aspires for union with the Divine. Poetry, literature, music, etc., do they have then any place in that aspiration? Still the Divine gives these things. They are first in life a preparation of the consciousness—but when one does Yoga, they can become ...
... such remarks from Amal whom he had prepared in the art of poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he lived, could have talked with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate movements on rhythm, overhead Page 80 poetry, etc., which is now a permanent treasure in English literature. Sri Aurobindo's quotations from memory from... the seal of incomplete completion was put about two weeks before the November Darshan. Very probably he had taken up his decision to withdraw from this world of the sad music of humanity and leave in compensation his divine music of Savitri. A curious incident has stuck in my memory. One day he continued working even beyond 1.30 p.m. — a rare occurrence — and that was the day I was invited for ...
... rejected, sex, vanity, ego-centrism, attachment, etc. etc.; but that does not include rejection of the activities and powers that can be made instruments of the sadhana and the divine work, such as art, music, poetry, etc. Yoga can be done without the rejection of life, without killing or impairing the life-joy and the vital force. I will be praying all the time to you and Mother for the tireless... tamasic kind at that? I have worked hard enough in all conscience. Now, however, I don’t feel any joy at all in any work – not even music which brings only sorrow for which reason I have been seriously thinking of giving up music! Is that because I want to give up music? I don’t know how this conclusion follows. But I won’t argue or question. I accept your judgment as final. If joylessness comes to... Dr. Indra Sen and Nishikanto Sen – Registrar in the University – are there. The latter loves me and my music. I would prefer to stay with him a week. Dr. Indra Sen was suggesting to me to lecture at the Amphitheatre on “Sri Aurobindo and what he stands for” as I did at Trivandrum with music of course. I may do so if you give me your blessings – not otherwise. * Yes. Page ...
... Aurobindo has been at pains to explain what they should look for in Savitri. Poetry no doubt is concerned with beauty, and aesthetics — when it does not degenerate into aestheticism of the Art-for-Art's-sake variety — looks for the rasa or taste of beauty. But poetry should be for Truth's sake too, not only for Beauty's sake, though of course — at the highest level of apprehension — the two... given to it in Sri Aurobindo's earlier poems and plays. For example, these words are put into the mouth of Eric, King of Norway: 20 Ibid., pp. 7-8. 21 Wintemitz, A History of Indian Literature. Page 287 Some day surely The world too shall be saved from death by Love. 22 But in Sri Aurobindo's epic, Savitri is the Avatar of the Divine Mother and not alone... "Overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry." And yet, although perfection is perfection — whether it be perfection of the language, or of the word-music and rhythm, or of the feeling or thought communicated— "there is also the quality of the thing said which counts for something." 65 A pebble has its beauty, and snow-clad Himalayas are beautiful ...
... piano moderately well and came to have a deep love for classical music. Academically I did very well and graduated first in my class in high school, as well as achieving second place in the field of liberal arts in the Southern California State competitions in 1961. I attended Stanford University, majoring in Japanese language and literature, and won the Freshman Achievement Award for being in the first... All that thou hast, shall be for others’ bliss, All that thou art, shall to my hands belong. I will pour delight from thee as from a jar, I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways, I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre, I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought. And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasy, And when thou liv’st one spirit with all things, Then ...
... total annihilation of the human race, thus giving a chance of survival and recovery for Man. In modem times, man's awakened subjectivism has tried to put forth its first promising results in art, music, literature, education, and there has also been - as in Ireland and in Bengal - an attempt at the discovery of a nation's or of a sub-nation's soul. Sri Aurobindo rightly points out that it was not her... gymnast who lands himself on every new bandwagon, the Forsythe class (so to say) or the great inchoate patron of the mass communication media. And the result has been "to cheapen thought and art and literature, to make talent and even genius run in the grooves of popular success... ." 19 For true culture, however, we have to go beyond sensationalism and philistinism and even civilisation. Culture ...
... The main subject discussed was "art". During the talk Mahatmaji said he was himself an artist, that "asceticism was the highest art". He expressed the view that he had kept the Ashram walls bare of any paintings because he believed that walls were meant for protection and not for painting. He maintained that no art could be greater than Nature's – Life is the greatest art, etc. Disciple : Did you... you read Gandhiji's view on art ? Sri Aurobindo : No. I did not. What does he say ? Disciple : He has said to Dilip that asceticism is the greatest art and no art can be greater than Nature's. Disciple : He has looked at the sky studded with stars in the silent night and finds no art greater than that. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, it is an old idea, – I believe Tolstoian – that... they find them to be true and therefore they are not willing to leave them behind and go beyond. We have to take up the work from the yogic point of view. For example, it is necessary to spread our literature because it spreads the new thought. Some men may receive it correctly and some incorrectly. A movement is set up in the universal mental plane. So also in social work the whole frame is shaken by ...
... which continued over several years, a small selection was later translated into English, some of it by Sri Aurobindo himself, and published under the title Prayers and Meditations. As spiritual literature, it is an incomparable treasure but the Mother set such small store by her writings that the bulk of the diaries was destroyed by her. In 1912 Mirra was closely associated with a group of seekers... changes and corrections as necessary, but in serial instalments as if he were writing a novel for a popular magazine! I, for one, do not know of any comparable instance in the sphere of journalism, literature or philosophy. There is another question: How could Sri Aurobindo, who never made a deep study of philosophy write a philosophical masterpiece such as The Life Divine? Sri Aurobindo himself has... accomplished a painter that her works were exhibited in the French Salon along with those of the great artists of the time — Renoir, Cezanne and others. She also developed a deep and abiding interest in music and played the organ with an inspired touch. In October 1897 Mirra married Henri Morisset, a disciple of the painter Gustave Moreau. Their son, Andre, was born the following year in August. The next ...
... September 30, 1934 I am sorry to have to thrust upon you something, it is rather urgent for the Art Book of Haren Ghosh 51 you know: Prithwi Singh's friend. He has asked me to contribute an article. I have written half of the article "Modem Bengali Music and Classicism." There my father's music naturally comes in he having been one of the greatest of modem composers if not the greatest. So this... this book. This book is much superior than those books which are generally published now-a-days in Bengali literature and receive praises. This is no doubt a wonderful piece of literature.´ "He (Sarat Chandra) has no doubt that this book will get a special place in modern Bengali literature. On the whole the book is a masterly creation." This is no formal praise as you can see. So can't help... this to explain to you that you have not pained or hurt or displeased me, nor has Krishnaprem either It would be childish to be displeased with someone because his opinions on literature or a particular piece of literature are not identical with my own at every point. I may also say that I was not displeased with you for your letter. I was a little disappointed that you should have gone back to ...
... knows how any kind of sectarian mentality is incompatible with the vision (in this context it even feels incorrect to use the word ‘teaching’) of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The rich and voluminous literature they have left was intended as a communication of their own experience 92 and for the expansion of the understanding and the knowledge of the reader; they have always stressed the absolute in... threefold, fivefold, tenfold. Then in 1973 the Guide, the Lodestar departed. It was an unbelievable shock, especially for the still so young and helpless Auroville. She had understood the man with his music of The Rolling Stones and The Doors, the hippie with his joint or the girl in an unwanted pregnancy. Whatever picture one may construe of the Mother, she was no moralist with a raised eyebrow, no mother... famous Tutankhamen. Akhenaton’s new religion became ‘the closest approach to monotheism the world had ever seen,’ writes an Egyptologist. It created a new life-style and a much more realistic form of art — the reason why Nefertiti’s bust is still admired by so many. The profound influence of queen Tiy on her son is a historical fact, but not much is known of the rationale of the whole enterprise. ...
... under the same conditions, and one NDE-experiencer even remembered the number plate of the truck which had hit and killed him instantly. Three Illustrations There is already a wide-ranging literature about the near-death experience, a topic which, if true, will concern all of us at one moment or other. The following three illustrations are chosen because they highlight the phenomenon from various... doing’, Speer continued, ‘looked like a silent dance to me. The room was so beautiful …’ He smiled at the memory. ‘I was not alone; there were many figures, all in white and light grey, and there was music … And then somebody said: “Not yet.” And I realized I had to go back and I said I didn’t want to. But I was told I had to – it was not yet my time. What I felt then was not something I know how to describe... power, had been intriguing against him, using the sinister Bormann to manœuvre Speer into disfavour with Hitler. The medical institution where Speer’s condition had grown critical was a state-of-the-art Party hospital at Hochenlychen, near Berlin, run by Dr Karl Gebhardt. This was an SS-Gruppenführer and the personal physician of Himmler, who, as Speer said later, had directed Gebhardt to eliminate ...
... 8 Ibid., p. 67. Page 184 Her diagrams of geometric force, Her potencies of marvel-fraught design Courted employment by an earth-nursed might. 9 The vast literature of Tantra, the very best in this path, is distilled and presented in evocative poetry by Sri Aurobindo. The occult siddhis are not brushed aside as fraudulent but accepted by him as part of Sat... Might ( yā devi sarvabhuteshu shakti rūpeṇa samsthithā), 49 Ibid, p. 503. Page 207 and Sri Aurobindo brings in the image of Mahakali as found in the Tantra literature: A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen, Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt, Her feet upon a couchant lion's back. A formidable smile curved round her lips, Heaven-fire... lingered on her face, Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears. Her heart was riven with the world's agony And burdened with the sorrow and struggle in Time, An anguished music trailed in her rapt voice. Absorbed in a deep compassion's ecstasy, Lifting the mild ray of her patient gaze, In soft sweet training words slowly she spoke. 49 Sri Aurobindo ...
... everywhere and makes without the least loss in essential poetry a battle-piece comparable to any in the world's best literature. Being blank verse, there is nothing in it of the ballad-tone whose facility as well as jerki-ness often lowers the inspiration of such pieces in English literature: it has a terse strong construction, often with a touch of Latinisation, reminiscent of Milton, and its movement... Circling in a corner of its boundless self... Unlike the name "Arcturus", which is well-known for one of the brightest stars in the northern heavens and which has found its way not unoften into literature, "Belphegor" which Sri Aurobindo has brought in with powerful effect has practically no place in popular astronomy and has figured rarely in past literary usage. However, it has become famous... brighten up the faded name and quicken the life-bloom on the withered lips that at one time uttered it, then we should know how sweet it were to repeat that name, sweeter than the simple and solemn music in the Dorian mode prevalent in the Greek countryside. But such a name disappears and later men do not cherish it." Page 330 The first fourteen lines of stanza 8, With thy kisses ...
... Krishna's will is what matters — and that will be realised, make no mistake about that. How and when — is known to Him — not to us. "The famous civilisation of ours with all its treasures of art and literature and science may vanish as did that of Atlantis and yet nothing will have gone, for He is there and all is in Him. As Christ said to the Jews, proud of their descent from Abraham: 'I tell you... the course of the next few years, to revolutionize my life. But the great call to Sri Aurobindo, the Seer-poet, was yet to come. Meanwhile I toured India, "hunting for music in the heart of din," learning new styles of our classical music, writing travelogues etc., and wrote to Krishnaprem from time to time telling him all about my thrilling discoveries as a musicologue. The only letter of his I still... I admired whole-heartedly his most mature work and master piece, The Yoga of Kathopanishad, in which he sounded this warning. Nevertheless, once it so happened that I just could not face the music; it seemed as though the odds were hundred to one against me and so, in sheer despair, I wrote to Krishnaprem that I had finally decided to call it a day, admitting defeat. In explanation, I added ...
... the vision of mere luxurious animal life, who have been content with merely thinking of and describing the incident of their political slavery in the language of freedom learned from the noble literature of England, and then imagining themselves free; who have been content with the mere explanations their text-books give of their country's economic condition, content furthermore with their life... large declarations, these weighty generalisations, these luminous enunciations of policy and principle that raise Sri Aurobindo's contributions to the Bande Mataram to the level of political literature, there are other attractions too - brilliant fireworks, exhibitions of sword-play, exercises in political jousting - and it is thanks to these that some of Sri Aurobindo's victims are ever likely... Gokhale and Rash Behari Ghosh had made contemptuous references to the Nationalists in the Council Chamber. "They have betrayed", wrote the Bande Mataram, "a sad ignorance of the Nationalist literature in the country, its manly and truthful ring, its patriotic fervour, its success in stimulating race-consciousness, its certain drift towards self-realization, its clear logic, its historical insight ...
... For six years and a half, the Arya gave its readers and the world at large the very munificence of Sri Aurobindo's thought in the several realms of knowledge: philosophy, literature. Yoga, scriptural exegesis, art and literary criticism, history and sociology, national and international politics. Paul Richard's collections of extracts from the world's outstanding thinkers, grouped suggestively... dispel it. Come, manifest Thyself that Thy work may be accomplished. 23 It is the voice of humanity wrung from the depths, it is the conscience of humanity speaking out, it is the still sad music of humanity invoking the Divine's effective intervention. Despair wars with hope, terror is exceeded by pity, and yet beyond the poisoned present a redeemed future is resolutely inferred. The entry... materialism, meditation, astrology and the universal consciousness, discourses on the reincarnating soul and the ascending unity, notices of books and journals, appreciative notes on poetry and art - these too were scattered in princely profusion in the garden of the Arya. Even as a business proposition, the Arya - notwithstanding its steady refusal to make easy concessions to its readers - ...
... that enjoyment they increase in deathlessness. That is why hymn after cheerful hymn is raised by the Rishis to Soma, the Lord of Delight and Immortality: "O Thou in whom is the food, thou art that divine food, thou art the vast, the divine home; wearing heaven as a robe thou encompassest the march of the sacrifice. King with the sieve of thy purifying for thy chariot thou ascendest to the plenitude; with... worshipper is in difficulty, when Dread and Darkness surround him and hurt him,—gives them protection. Rishi after Rishi has hymned 23 Savitri, p. 526. 24 A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 80. Page 112 Agni not only to complete his felicities but also to get this god's protection. Thus, for example, Kanwa Ghaur (1:36:15): Protect us, O Agni, from... Finally, of what she calls God's creation of that nothing is left. This is the kind of spell Death tries to cast over Savitri, but she would not fall into the trap; she breaks that "dangerous music" and in the sweetness and harmony of her words brings a promise and a hope and a certitude. She is a little crescent in the sky of night cutting the gloom with the silver edge of her smile; she is a ...
... general vulgarisation"; and as for Germany, "Hitler must have crushed all fine things out of Existence - German music, philosophy, etc. How can anything develop where there is no freedom?" 4 On 12 May 1940, intervening in the discussion on modem art, Sri Aurobindo said: What modem art is trying to do - at least what it began with - is to convey the vital sensation of the object; very often... added: Moni said that he was not allowed to sing in school by the teachers: it was considered immoral. If music is immoral, then there can be no question about dancing, and yet in ancient India even the princesses were taught dancing and used to dance before the public. Music, painting, dancing, all these were publicly encouraged. 8 On another occasion, when a reference was made... Means and Eyeless in Gaza. Or as the random breeze blew, the conversation might for a moment light Page 694 upon Greek sculpture or modem German art or on the impressionists or on Roger Fry's views on Art. On 24 January 1939, when the discussion was on the susceptibility of some races to beauty, Sri Aurobindo went into silence for a while, and then said: I was thinking ...
... the possibilities of anyone who has the faith and will to undertake it. 5 August 1932 Literature and art are or can be first introductions to the inner being—the inner mind and vital; for it is from there that they come. And if one writes poems of bhakti, poems of divine seeking etc., or creates music of that kind, it means that there is a bhakta or seeker inside who is supporting himself by ...
... side of the Iron Curtain. Religion had become religionism, science had ceased to be free inquiry being now mortgaged to the armour-plated Defence Establishments, and industry, commerce, even art, literature and education seemed to be helplessly tied to the chariot-wheels of the new soulless despotisms of the world. "The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed." No wonder sensitive spirits looked for... peace and unity". The Department of Art, too, was busy, and there were plans for a TV Programme. UNESCO had made a first contribution of 3,000 dollars to be used for a TV Project, and it as up to Auroville Page 777 to make the most of it. William T. Netter, in his report published in Mother India (December 1969), made the point that in India art experience had always been: "seen in... Science, Engineering Technology and Physical Education), several Residential Homes, and the necessary facilities for study, practical work, athletics, ' sports, recreation, medical care, painting, music, dance and drama. By 1970, there were about 750 pupils (most of them in residence), and the teaching and tutorial staff (whole-time and part-time) numbered over 200, all of them sadhaks of the Yoga ...
... and even then you must think about it. If you don't think about it, you will never learn. To live in the right way is a very difficult art, and unless one begins to learn it when quite young and to make an effort, one never knows it very well. Simply the art of keeping one's body in good health, one's mind quiet and goodwill in one's heart things which are indispensable in order to live decently ... should have taken the opportunity to tell them, "Oh, you should learn fencing!" And a pistol too? X: Yes, Mother. And tell them... teach them to shoot... make it into an art, into an art and into a training of calm and self controlled skill. One should never... never raise a hue and cry.... That will not do at all, at all, at all. I am not at all in favour of that. The methods... rest, let me relax! Ah, I am going to stop making an effort"; then one is sure to fall into a hole immediately and make a big stupid blunder. 21 September 1955 Sweet Mother, how can literature help us to progress? It can help you to become more intelligent, to understand things better, to have a sense of literary forms, to cultivate your taste, to know how to choose between a good ...
... of a political character. Apart from that I avoid usually racial and religious questions, especially if they are controversial, confining myself to things of a spiritual or cultural character (literature, art etc.). There too I write almost entirely to disciples or seekers of the Yoga. 1 February 1936 Useful and Useless Letters What is meant by vital nature? These are questions that anybody... be read? Why, they might say, is X [ the recipient of this letter ] wasting his time in trivial prosaic things like this when he might have been spending it in producing a beautiful lyric or fine music? But the worker knows and respects the material with which he must work and he knows why he is busy with "trifles" and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour. December ...
... because she has mentioned them. One question was about the state of samadhi or trance. As the Mother later narrated to her audience in the Ashram playground: ‘In all kinds of so-called spiritual literature I had always read wonderful things about this state of trance or Samadhi, but I had never experienced it. So I did not know whether this was perhaps a sign of inferiority. And when I came here, one... happened to me.” He replied: “Nor to me.”’ 2 Another of Mirra’s questions was why, in spite of her many talents, she had always been so ‘mediocre’ in everything she did: painting, writing, music … Aurobindo’s answer was simply that this was indispensable for her development. We may infer that people who are extraordinarily gifted in a certain field have to dedicate their life exclusively to... all eternity and is absolutely self-existing. Its highest attributes are Existence (sat), Consciousness ( chit-tapas) and Bliss ( ananda). All is That, nothing can exist without being That. ‘Thou art That, O Shvetaketu.’ (Chandogya Upanishad). For reasons beyond human comprehension, That wanted to know itself: It wanted to objectify Itself in order to have a concrete knowledge of Itself. To that ...
... notions might have some niches to settle in like the white doves of purity. And last, though not least, there was the thrill, day after day, of receiving his letters — on art and science, religion and politics, philosophy and literature, the way of all flesh and the ascent to God's Grace redeeming flesh . . . was there any theme he could not write about and improvise on in a vein at once rapturous and... homo extemalis Russellius, an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger than his external one — the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external things by an inner standard and is interested in them not 'for their own sakes' but for their value to the soul's self-development ...
... But perhaps you mean Ramkumar? Or whom do you mean? 107 XXXI. Puns: 1. NB: You must have seen in today's paper the great news: Prof. Sanjib Chowdhury of Dacca has got the Nobel Prize in literature - for his book Songs from the Heights. Sri Aurobindo: Didn't see it. Who the devil is he? The title of the book doesn't sound encouraging; but I suppose it can't be merely Noble Rubbish. 108... long poem; have been working at it for many hours, but could not extract anything. Sri Aurobindo: But what did you extract? Not even words? What a constipation! 84 5.NB: ... In that case Music should have the greatest gift. I won't dilate any more, but ask you to do it. Sri Aurobindo: Why should I dilate either - at the risk of bursting? Besides to-night I have other dilatations (I can't... out what the abbs, mean should stimulate your intuition and sharpen your intelligence. 93 2.NB: [My new poem:] "The scented air your gold locks leave Haunts like a heavenly piece of art." Plenty of romanticism and incoherence and outburst, perhaps? Sri Aurobindo: R and I are there in plenty, but O is not in evidence. 94 XXIII. Humorous exploitation of a quick procession ...
... Page 68 and concentrated, and at once you will find my presence within you and around you. 1 November 1934 Do You think I should stop reading Gujarati literature? It all depends on the effect that this literature has on your imagination. If it fills your head with undesirable ideas and your vital with desires, it is certainly better to stop reading this kind of books. 2 November... theories, etc., etc. 22 September 1936 Mother, will You tell me the names of some good French writers I could read? If it is to learn French, you should take a textbook of French literature to study and then read one or two books by each author mentioned in the textbook, beginning at the beginning, that is, with the earliest authors. 22 September 1936 Page 142 ... psychic love for You. It is not impossible to feel the Presence without having psychic love. But it must be rather exceptional. 24 September 1936 I am starting to study the history of literature. I have found that I can't understand Corneille at all—I mean that I don't understand old French. Corneille is not old French, Corneille is classical French. It is absolutely necessary to study ...
... knowledge or the development of the heart's devotion. Doing of work, too, is religion. It is this great teaching that is a permanent leaven of all our literature -s religion. It is this great teaching that is a permanent leaven of all our literature -/i> eṣa dharma sanātanaḥ (this is the eternal religion). There is a general notion that action forms, indeed, part of religion, but not action... Another sequence on "The National Value of Art" was started on the 20th November. His poem, "Image", was also published on the same date. His drama, "The Birth of Sin" was begun on the 11th December and a poem, "Epiphany", was published on the 18th December. Sri Aurobindo's yoga, politics, poetry, drama, philosophical essays and dissertations on art, all went together. Or, it was rather out of... and evil. The fruit of this ignorance is lifelong slavery.... The body is the prison.... "This captivity is the perpetual state of the human race. On the other hand, we see on every page of literature and history evidences of the irrepressible ardour and endeavour of humanity to regain its freedom. As in the sphere of politics or society, so in individual life, this effort continues from age ...
... are so much liked by the modem mind. But there are perhaps an equal number of other images given by Sri Aurobindo, which are conventional and found used throughout the length and breadth of the literature of the world. But in Sri Aurobindo's hands they cease to be conventional or stereotyped; they are infused by him with a Page 372 new breath and a new spirit. We shall consider... n is: Close is my father's creepered hermitage Screened by the tall ranks of these silent kings, Sung to by voices of the hue-robed choirs Whose chants repeat transcribed in music's notes The passionate coloured lettering of the boughs. 166 And the last one: Apparelled are the moms in gold and green, Sunlight and shadow tapestry the walls To make a resting... an image which is 139 p. 231. 140 225. 141 p. 262. 142 p. 269. Page 385 a miracle one for Nature's dance. There is another strangely mixed image drawn from the art of dancing, this time the combination being made of Eastern and Western imagery: Creation and destruction waltzed inarmed On the bosom of a torn and quaking earth; All reeled into a ...
... Islam and Puranic Hinduism. 92 That would be the divinised society of the future, and that would also be the true communistic society.* * At the Bombay Seminar on 'Sri Aurobindo and Indian Literature' (14 May 1972), more than one Urdu scholar (K.A. Faruqi, Malik Ram, Waheed Akhtar) referred to the similarities between Sir Mohammad Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo. Both had been critical of Sankara's Mayavada... prehistoric ages of inanimate or animal existence; but ahead of him lie the plenitudes and puissances of the Life Divine. The first volume opens magnificently: it is a key beginning as in music, and sets the tone of high seriousness to the entire work: * Mother India, August 1966, pp. 66-7. In the course of a conversation, Sri Aurobindo is reported to have said on 20 February 1940:... call it what you will, he has sought it unavailingly down the endless march of the years, or he has found it only to lose it soon after. Human sensibility has been quick to register the "still sad music of humanity", to record the cries that moan the frustrations and manifold hurts of life, the whimpers that reiterate the melancholy truth "Sorrow Is". Power corrupts, knowledge confounds, friendship ...
... teleological? or rather [one that] will at once contain and exceed the teleological? If it had only been Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Edison, Beethoven, Napoleon, Schopenhauer, the creators in poetry, art, science, music, life or thought, who possessed imagination, we might then have found an use for their unused imaginations in the greater preparatory richness they gave to the soil from which a few exquisite... g and mighty, suffused with strange light as if from another world, its rhythms unequalled for fathomless depth of sound and the rolling sea of solemn echoes they leave behind them. Here only in literature have philosophy and poetry at their highest met together and mingled their beings in the unison of a perfect love and understanding. For the Upanishads stand, as poetry, with the Page 349 ... words for his thought-symbols will bear emphatic testimony. There was therefore a subtler and vaster world in Shakespeare than the world we know him to have bodied forth into tangible material of literature. Secondly we note that all these imaginations already existed in Shakespeare unmanifested Page 387 and unformed before they took shape and body; for certainly they did not come from outside ...
... affair. Bharati would visit without fail; it was not so with Srinivasachari however. "There was hardly any subject which they did not talk about in their meetings at night. They discussed literature, society, politics, the various arts...." 2 Long afterwards "Bharati leamt the Rig Veda from Sri Aurobindo". About a week after Sri Aurobindo was lodged at Shankar ². Old Long Since:... present." Nolini Kanta, Subramania Bharati and Chandrasekhar attended the reading of the Rig Veda regularly. Chandrasekhar's younger brother, V. Chidanandan, who was then a student of English literature, saw Sri Aurobindo once or twice and sought his advice on his literary studies. He also Page 412 recorded some of the talks from day to day. A.B. Purani, who had been reading... read Jadu Babu's review of my book, but I feel sure that he could never mean to say that Sri Aurobindo Ghose belongs to the same type of humanity as Sandip of my story. My acquaintance with the literature of our contemporary politics being casual and desultory, I do not, even to this day, definitely know what is the political standpoint of Aurobindo Ghose. But this I positively know that he is a great ...
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