Binyon, Laurence : Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) was born in Lancaster, Lancashire. He took up drawing & painting seriously when still at St. Paul’s School where he formed a life-long friendship with classmate Manmohan Ghose. Both, promising poets, went up to Oxford to read Classics (Honour Moderations) – Ghose to Christ Church in 1887 & Binyon to Trinity in 1888. At that time, Sri Aurobindo, while preparing for King’s open entrance scholarship in Classics, showed them his translations from Latin & Greek into English, & vice-versa, & his translation of a Greek poem entitled Hecuba upon which they encouraged him to take up poetry. In 1890 Binyon took a first-class degree in classical moderations; & published four poems in a volume called Primavera: Poems by Four Authors – the three other young Oxford undergraduates were Manmohan, Binyon’s cousin Stephen Phillips, & Arthur Shearly Cripps (1869-1952), who joined Huddleston Theological College & settled in Southern Rhodesia in 1902 to propagate the Gospel. Primavera was reviewed favourably by Oscar Wilde in the Pall Mall Gazette. In 1891, his poem “Persephone” was awarded the Newdigate Prize, & in 1892, he obtained a second-class degree in litterae humainoires. Immediately after graduating in 1893, Binyon started working for the Department of Printed Books of the British Museum, writing Exhibition catalogues for the museum & art monographs for himself, & published his first book of poetry Lyric Poems (1894). Manmohan, who had returned to India in 1894 & maintained a correspondence for some years, inspired Binyon’s poem “Asoka or The Indian Prince” in 1900, & introduced Binyon to Rabindranath Tagore & his poetry. In 1895 Binyon moved into the Museum’s Department of Prints & Drawings under Campbell Dodgson. In 1909, he became its Assistant Keeper. In 1910, he joined the India Society in London, designed to promote Indian Fine Art, where he became friends with Coomaraswamy who introduced him to Rajput paintings. In June 1912, he met Tagore at William Rothenstein’s house & became his lifetime admirer. In 1913, on the death of Poet Laureate Alfred Austin, British Media counted him with Hardy, Masefield, & Kipling as the likely successor to the post which finally went to Robert Bridges. ― Moved by the high number of casualties in the first few weeks of the War, Binyon wrote For the Fallen, with its Ode of Remembrance (as its 3rd or 4th or simply the 4th stanza became known) referring to the rear-guard action of the British Expeditionary Force during the retreat from Mons in late August & the Battle of Le Chateau on 26th August, & its participation with the French Army in holding up the Imperial German Army at the First Battle of the Marne between 5th & 9th September 1914. For the Fallen became a touchstone, frequently anthologized & inscribed on war monuments throughout England. The fourth stanza came to him first:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun & in the morning
We will remember them.
... 174,201,223,226 sensitivity 124 spirit 269 Yogi 6 Avatar's work 63,273 Avidya 259,302 avyakta 302 B Beddoes 197 Benson, Robert Hugh 23 Binyon, Laurence 210,223 Blake 153,197 blank-verse 102,215 Brahma-muhurta 253 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 302 brhat 302 Browning, Elizabeth 60,161 C Celtic fire and ether ...
... mandir, math and Karma Yogis, 198; impact on youth, 198; bureaucracy's reactions, 199ff, both Virgin and Dynamo, 200 Bhavani Mandir Scheme, 288ff Bhutto,ZulfiqarAli,713 Binyon, Laurence, 32, 35, 44, 70, 695 Birley, L.,313,314,324 Birth of Sin, The, 169, 169-72 Birth of the War-God, The, 91, 92ff Blunt, Wilfrid, 242 Bose, Bhupal Chandra ...
... "These words, spoken as if from some spontaneous compulsion in a voice low and thrilled that itself seemed to glow, caused all the class of school boys to turn their heads." Thus wrote Robert Laurence Binyon in his Introductory Memoir in Songs of Love and Death, a book of poems by Manmohan Ghose. "At the back of the room, behind the rest, sat a young Indian with thick hair falling about his forehead... 'apparition', Manmohan Ghose, had entered St. Paul's School in the VII form as a Capitation Scholar. Binyon and Ghose became very close friends as time went on. Their friendship ripened into a lifelong one. And this has paid us a rich dividend. For, through the letters Manmohan wrote to Binyon, we get a wealth of information about the movements of the three brothers in England— all traces of which... which would have been otherwise obliterated. We shall surely dip into that treasure frequently. Just now let us proceed with Laurence's Memoir. "He lived in lodgings with his two brothers, but what his actual circumstances were when he came to England, and how he came to be at St. Paul's, I do not think I ever enquired. As to the School, the High Master, a notable and formidable Page 132 ...
... Chronicles - Book Four 19 Holiday Walks What did the boys do during school holidays? From Manmohan's letters 1 to his poet friend, Laurence Binyon, we gather that at least during the long summer breaks they went to some hill or seaside resort. Getting away from London must have been a relief. The first letter, dated August 10, 1886,... they soon come! But I don't think I shall get a scholarship so soon as you will." He was wrong, for he won an open scholarship that very year at Christ Church College, Oxford; while his friend, Laurence Binyon, went up to Trinity College, Oxford, only the next year, in 1888. Months went by, it was July, M. M. Ghose was now an ex-Pauline, while his younger brother A. A. Ghose was in Class M. VIII... nature and human souls will merge into God, which seems to me a very strange theory. This is the doctrine of Nirvana." Hmm . . . The next letter is dated "Wed. April 20 th , 1887." Mano tells Laurence, "You are the only one who gives me any encouragement to write [poems] . . . My brothers are quite apathetic about them." Were they? For in another letter he says, "My brother once remarked to me ...
... 1940-contd Talks with Sri Aurobindo 23 MARCH 1940 PURANI: Laurence Binyon says that the dragon is a symbol of water. Water is everything; it forms into clouds and comes down as rain and therefore the dragon is a symbol of the Infinite. SRI AUROBINDO: Why "therefore"? The dragon may symbolise the Infinite by being a symbol of the sky. PURANI: In China... prehistoric animals like the dinosaurs. PURANI: Binyon says that what Wordsworth has realised in poetry, China and Japan have done in art, manifesting the Spirit in Nature. NIRODBARAN: China also? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, both have the same source of inspiration. Chinese art is greater, Japanese more subtle and perfect in detail. PURANI: Binyon writes that they lay a strong emphasis on hues. ... judge the art of the Japanese by their exports, but they export only mediocre things, saying these are good enough for barbarians. Only people who return from Japan bring genuine articles. PURANI: Binyon also says about European religious paintings by Tintoretto and others that there is too much action in them. In a picture of heaven, for instance, one feels quite outside heaven! SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... "He is a wonderful and charming being," Mano wrote to Binyon. "You are inclined to think him superficial, I know. You should know him as I do; and then you would feel what depth and sagacity there is behind his delightful mask of paradox and irony and perversity." When he gave up College in mid-career, Mano tried to reassure his friend Laurence about his prospects of landing a job. "I have been to... 179 In 1889 Mano obtained a Second Class in Classical Honour Moderations. But then, in May 1890, he himself cut short his Oxonian career. When Laurence remonstrated with him for that, Mano stoutly defended himself. "My dear Laurence!" he shot back, "What do you mean by these strange and unreasonable entreaties that I should go back to Oxford? If you knew how I loathe the place, and how... of miserliness." And he added, "Manmohan and I used to quarrel pretty often but I got on very well with my eldest brother." Imagine ... Sri Aurobindo quarrelling! And Manmohan? In a letter to Binyon (8 January 1890), he writes from his lodgings in Earl's Court, "I have been ill — stricken with this malady which is so prevalent in London—the continental influenza. ... I have had to stay indoors ...
... When they came to know him they feared all the money— SRI AUROBINDO: Would be nationalised? (Laughter) EVENING Purani was discussing art with Sri Aurobindo, apropos of Laurence Binyon's book. PURANI: Binyon has not adequately dealt with Indian art here. SRI AUROBINDO: Hasn't he done that in a separate book? PURANI: Yes, with Mogul art. Coomaraswamy says that images were found in ...
... Mirabai had the intensity of love. CHAMPAKLAL: Is there anything like Goloka? Is it real? SRI AUROBINDO: It is real but it depends on how one sees it. PURANI ( showing a book by Laurence Binyon ): Binyon praises Chinese art and says about Indian art that its subject matter appeals indirectly, not through the lines and moods of the painting itself, while Chinese art is synthetic. SRI AUROBINDO:... among the Eastern arts. PURANI: He says that in Chinese art there is the expression of the Spirit in Nature. SRI AUROBINDO: Europeans have no clear idea of the Spirit and the spiritual. What Binyon mentions is the expression of the Spirit of universal Nature and nothing truly spiritual. As I have said, Far Eastern art expresses the Spirit as Nature, as Prakrid, while Indian art expresses the ...
... about it, except the letters written by Manmohan to Laurence Binyon. It emerges from these letters that Manmohan felt himself a little out of tune with the other two – he went into different lodgings when they went to 128, Cromwell Street, the office of the South Kensington Liberal Club. In a letter of 20 April 1887 he writes to Binyon about his poetic efforts: "You are the only one who... financial position in London because remittances from their father at first became irregular and ultimately almost stopped. This is borne out by many references in Manmohan's contemporary letters to Laurence Binyon, and also by what Sri Aurobindo stated in his memorial to the Secretary of State for India (about being given another chance to appear in the riding test for the I.C.S.) in 1892. He wrote: "I... Dr. K.D. Ghose of Khulna, has been unable to provide the three of us with sufficient for the most necessary wants, and we have long been in an embarrassed position." ² Manmohan's letters to Laurence Binyon support this statement with a wealth of detail. In a letter of July, 1887, from 49, St. Stephen's Avenue, Manmohan wrote: "My position, by the way, is very hazy just now; I do not know whether ...
... through a Biographer's Eyes "ETERNITY !·how learnt I that strange word?" asks Laurence Binyon in a poem. The question might more appropriately have been put by a young Bengali to himself during his student days in England with his two elder brothers, one of whom was an intimate friend of Laurence Binyon. For this young Bengali was caught in puzzling psychological cross-currents. Educated... concrete expansion of consciousness such as India has always sought_hadJiappened to him momentarily at the age of fourteen, an expansion which neither Huxley nor Haeckel allowed to be possible. So Binyon's query may be considered as setting the secret basic rhythm to the life of the boy from Bengal who had been taken out of India in 1881 when seven years old, tutored privately at first in an English ...
... can understand your forgetting your own work, but how is it that you have omitted Harin himself? Surely he has published things that are bound to remain? Also, how was it that Oscar Wilde and Laurence Binyon could give praise to Manmohan Ghose? Has he done nothing that could touch Sarojini's level, though in another way? I did not speak of Harin because that was a separate question altogether—besides... of his later work. As for his earlier work Page 448 it had qualities which evoked the praise of Wilde. I do not know what Binyon has written, but he is a fine poet and an admirable critic, not likely to praise work that has not quality. (Wilde and Binyon were both intimate friends of my brother,—at a time Manmohan was almost Wilde's disciple. If I were inclined to be Wildely malicious I... which makes for successful creation. I don't know whether his later work had it. My brother was very intimate with Oscar Wilde, but, if I remember right, none of the singing birds except Phillips and Binyon went very far. But I think Manmohan published very little in his lifetime—nothing ever came my way. 25 January 1935 You write in your note to Harin [of 24 January 1935] about Toru Dutt and "Romesh ...
... and the modern recoil from the heavy exuberance in some of the early work of Laurence Binyon or the inflated emptiness of William Watson in particular moods makes for a healthy tension and pithiness; yet it is purblind folly and a deafness of ear to run down as too elaborate the lyric exquisiteness of colourful phrase Binyon could display — And sweet the rose floats on the arching briar's ...
... Manomohan's friend and class-mate, Laurence Binyon. Manomohan, Binyon, Stephen Phillips and Arthur Cripps were to collaborate on Primavera, a collection of poems, that came out in 1890. Having first experimented on Greek and Latin verses, Sri Aurobindo turned a passage from the Greek into English verse when he was seventeen. This piece, 'Hecuba', was liked by Binyon who suggested that Sri Aurobindo... he had taken to drinking. The boys were separated from their parents, and they knew besides about the mother's malady and the father's sufferings. A letter of February 1888 from Manomohan to Laurence Binyon almost uncovers the whole horror and pity of the predicament of the Ghose brothers during their stay in England: All childhood and boyhood is expansive. This human ivy stretches passionately... fourteen years in England — and he had no misgivings about the future either. He had made but few friendships in England, and none very intimate comparable to Page 43 Manomohan's with Laurence Binyon; Sri Aurobindo had, as a matter of fact, never found the mental atmosphere of England congenial to the movements of his mind and the tremors of his sensibility. Anyhow, he was leaving England ...
... expression here seemed impossible to better and so any attempt to be original would have been a betrayal of poetry. We may realise the neces sity of the plagiarism by looking, for instance, at Laurence Binyon's To the high imagination force now failed or Barbara Reynolds's High phantasy lost power and here broke off. (K. D. S.) The middle portion came next, not exactly ...
... attracted some attention as a poet. He was on friendly terms with his class-mate, Laurence Binyon, later to become a well-known literary figure, and with Stephen Phillips, the notable poet. He was also familiar with the famous Oscar Wilde. Sri Aurobindo when he was seventeen, translated from Greek a poem entitled 'Hecuba' and Binyon who happened to read it went out of his way to encourage him to write more ...
... the literary production in English was of poor quality. Far away now were the lush cultural pastures of Cambridge and London, where Aurobindo’s eldest brother, the poet Manmohan, had befriended Laurence Binyon, Stephen Philips and Oscar Wide, the last calling him ‘an Indian panther in evening brown.’ Small wonder that Aurobindo spent a substantial part of his salary on crates of English books ordered ...
... 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 be at a loss, for I cannot remember that any Western writer of genius or high reputation as a critic has had any first-hand knowledge of Sanskrit literature or of the Prakritic ...
... Acting Chief Minister of Kashmir State. When Sri Aurobindo went to Kashmir in 1903, he met his cousin 'Ashudada' and his family. K. D. 's second son Manmohan once confided in a letter to Laurence Binyon (July 28, 1887), "My father when a boy was very poor, living almost entirely by the charity of friends; and it is only thro' his almost superhuman perseverance that we have to some degree retrieved ...
... occasion we have an anticipation of some Aurobindonian God-glimpse as in: O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, sola intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi! Laurence Binyon englishes the lines: O Light Eternal, who in thyself alone Dwell'st and thyself know'st and self-understood, Self-understanding, smilest on thine own! Barbara Reynolds's ...
... make poetry: they are its effective mediums. It passes from the delight of sense to a subtle discovery behind appearances and plucks some central satisfying soul-thrill from transitory emotion. Laurence Binyon's Page 41 And sweet the rose floats on the arching briar's Green fountains sprayed with delicate frail fires has a texture and range of vision to which the acutest s ...
... read and read and I wrote by a sense of the sound. I am not a prosodist like X. NIRODBARAN: Had your brother Manmohan already become a poet when you started writing? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. He, Laurence Binyon, Stephen Phillips and Arthur Cripps, who did not come to much in poetry afterwards, brought out a book in conjunction. It was well spoken of. I dare say my brother stimulated me greatly to write ...
... not commonly appreciable is to forget all innovators and to fall into an error that should have been swept away for good when Symons and Gosse sponsored Sarojini Naidu or Fowler-Wright and Laurence Binyon hailed Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. It is curious to remember that Gosse's advice to Sarojini Naidu amounted to saying: "If you, an Indian with such a flair for our tongue and our literary ...
... anticipation of some Aurobindonian God-glimpse as in: O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, sola intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi! Page 209 Laurence Binyon englishes the lines: O Light Eternal, who in thyself alone Dwell'st and thyself know'st and self-understood, Self-understanding, smilest on thine own! Barbara Reynolds's ...
... gathered together. Recollecting this scene I am now put in mind of a particular aspect of Dante's vision in the highest rung of Paradise. Slightly modifying the beginning of line 2,I may cite Laurence Binyon's English rendering: Leaves I beheld within the unfathomed blaze Into one volume bound by love, the same That the universe holds scattered through its maze. I can only think of ...
... will is the world's work. Very interesting indeed is what you say about Dante's verbal innovation. I wonder whether in an English rendering we can incorporate a suggestion of his feat. Laurence Binyon has a fine sensitive version: Save where joy tastes its own eternity, Barbara Reynolds translates, just as creditably though less grandly, thus: Where ever-present joy knows naught ...
... word is understood by Western scholars. Yet the subject-matter and thought of the major portion of these poems is entirely Indian. What then made Professor Spiegelberg make this remark? Laurence Binyon speaking of Manmohan Ghose in his Introduction to Songs of Love and Death remarks about the latter: "What struck me most was his enthusiastic appreciation of Greek poetry, not so much the books ...
... cultural training in our present system of education makes us ignorant and undiscriminating receptacles, so that we are ready to take the considered opinions of competent critics like Okakura or Mr. Laurence Binyon and the rash scribblings of journalists of the type of Mr. Archer, who write without authority because in these things they have neither taste nor knowledge, as of equal importance and the latter ...
... know, the story which has served as the basis of Tennyson's Ulysses, Page 256 that memorable success of his in blank verse, along with Morte d'Arthur and Tithonus? I have Laurence Binyon's translation — poetic enough but naturally nowhere near Dante's unique blend of simplicity and exaltation, clear-cut flow and concentrated force. Dante's Ulysses tells his comrades: "Brothers ...
... none of the classics know, the story which has served as the basis of Tennyson's Ulysses, that memorable success of his in blank verse, along with Morte d'Arthur and Tithonus? I have Laurence Binyon's translation - poetic enough but naturally nowhere near Dante's unique blend of simplicity and exaltation, clear-cut flow and concentrated force. Dante's Ulysses tells his comrades: "Brothers ...
... expression here seemed impossible to better and so any attempt to be original would have been a betrayal of poetry. We may realise the necessity of the plagiarism by looking, for instance, at Laurence Binyon's To the high imagination force now failed or Barbara Reynolds's High phantasy lost power and here broke off. ...
... How bitter another's bread is, thou shalt know By tasting it: and how hard to the feet Another's stairs are, up and down to go. (Laurence Binyon) Milton the stern Puritan springs several surprises of the Page 38 utmost poignancy held on the ...
... our animal origin made religion and mysticism and poetic idealism look like fantasies. Yet now and again the great aspirations refused to be brushed off as being "wishful thinking". A poem of Laurence Binyon asked very pertinently the question: Eternity! how learnt I that strange word? In the Middle Ages there was the famous Ontological Argument that the very idea of God the Perfect Being entailed... feeling of faultless form, but form is itself a coming short. God alone can contain everything as well as exceed it and fill us with a sense of the Primal, the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Unsurpassable. Binyon's "Eternity", we may say, sums up the essence of the God-idea, the God-word, which go clean out of all possible learning by us. A reality corresponding to them seems an inevitable conclusion from our ...
... well with my eldest brother." Manmohan was of a different type. He was anything but practical. He was a dreamer and a visionary. A classmate of Laurence Binyon and a friend of Oscar Wilde, he was himself a poet of considerable merit. He, Binyon, Phillips (Stephen Phillips) and Cripps... brought out a book (of poetry) 6 in conjunction, which was well spoken of. "I dare say, my brother stimulated... secretary of the South Kensington Liberal Club where the three brothers had been staying. Manmohan makes a rather amusingly sarcastic reference to his elder brother in one of his letters to Laurence Binyon: "At last to my joy my brother came to see me, who, as you know, is a very matter-of-fact person, with a commercial mind, a person who looks at everything from a business point of view. And... History of English Literature, says: "Manmohan (1867-1924) is the most remarkable of Indian poets who write in English. He was educated at Oxford, where he was the contemporary and friend of Laurence Binyon, Stephen Phillips and others who became famous in English letters. So completely did he catch the note of his place and time that a reader of his Love Songs and Elegies and Songs of Love and ...
... at Cambridge with Sri Aurobindo. Phillips was in touch with the group at Cambridge and was a personal friend of Sri Aurobindo's elder brother, Manomohan Ghose, who knew also Oscar Wilde and had Laurence Binyon as a classmate. Page 407 O purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, By taking true for false ...
... days and immediately afterwards, Sri Aurobindo often experimented in literary translation and turned passages or pieces from Latin or Greek into English. Hecuba from the Greek was liked by Laurence Binyon, who thought that it revealed a poetic talent that deserved to be cultivated. A Rose of Women Page 70 from Meleager was included in Songs to Myrtilla [Now in Translations ...
... poetry. Once he said that, although Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa was an earlier work and the more brilliant, Kumarasambhava was more deep and mature. Or the conversation skirted casually around Laurence Binyon, Stephen Phillips, Robert Bridges, Oscar Wilde, Manomohan Ghose, Bharati Sarabhai, the Hexameter, and the clue to it that a Cambridge friend, Ferrar, gave. Was Blake greater than Shakespeare ...
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