Chesterton : Gilbert Keith (1874-1936), English critic & writer who used the weapon of paradox to probe the profound ambiguities of Christian theology. He was a younger contemporary of Sri Aurobindo at St. Paul’s School.
... examples Chesterton provides of a mixed exaggeration, the three types interblended. Here is one — the closing metaphor about the illumined pages in a medieval copy of the Bible: It was wrought in the monk's slow manner, From silver and sanguine shell, Where the scenes are little and terrible Keyholes of heaven and hell. But surely the most impressive lines Chesterton ever... grotesque running riot: the grotesque has been illumined and sublimated, even if the "star" Chesterton gives us is an asteroid and not quite a planet. Aeschylus who called Helen "a lion's whelp" would have relished it; Marlowe who spoke of "Cassandra sprawling in the streets" would have gloried in it.... Chesterton, however, has more than one string to his bow: his style can be Elizabethan in effects other... Adventures in Criticism Pegasus and "The White Horse" 1 It is often thought that to call G.K. Chesterton a poet is to mistake for the high and authentic light of inspiration mere rhetorical shades masquerading as poetic significances. But the fact is that in G.K.C. there is a genuine poet buried under the clever journalist. His mass of militant ...
... used for a long time about Scott. 1932 I am sending you the first pages of an essay on Chesterton. I hope you will wait till you have finished the whole before declaring that the case is not proven. You have made good to a certain extent—but are these strikingnesses all that there is in Chesterton? Something more is needed to make a poet of rank. I do not think the comparison with Coleridge... 3 The last in spite of haunting ghosts of Kipling and Macaulay pursuing it is fine in vision and expression and substance. Chesterton however exceeds his ghosts—he has something of the racer in him and not merely of the prancing cart-horses they were. If Chesterton is noble, grand style, epic (Chapman also)—it becomes difficult to deny these epithets to many others also. Even Kipling and Macaulay... lines. But I feel now that before the book can be published it has to be brought more up to date and the place of the poets who attempted spiritual poetry more fully indicated. 23 January 1934 Chesterton I have not read Chesterton's poetry as a whole, but what I have seen of it does not attract me. Scott no longer ranks as a poet; Chesterton's verse struck me as a modernisation of Scott. I have ...
... surmounted, but Chapman and Chesterton do not surmount it—whatever their heights of diction or imagination, the metre interferes with their maintenance, even, I think, with their attaining their full eminence. Possibly a greater genius might wipe out the defect—but would a greater genius have cared to make the endeavour? I have left myself no space or time for Chesterton as a poet and it is better... jerk, an explosive leap or a quick canter; one feels the rise, but there is still something of the old trot underneath the movement. It is at least what I feel Page 174 throughout in Chesterton—there is a sense of effort, of disguise with the crudity of the original material still showing through the brilliantly coloured drapery that has been put upon it. If there is no claim to epic movement... at humour—at least at the grotesque. I prefer Scott's Marmion ; in spite of its want of imagination and breadth it is as good a thing as any Scott has written; on the contrary, these lines show Chesterton far below his best. The passage about the cholera and wheat is less flat; it is even impressive in a way, but impressive by an exaggerated bigness and forced attempt at epic greatness on one side ...
... à la Chesterton, I should say: "A bull is one who is never cowed, yet never bullies." In the same vein I may define: "A lion is one who leaps to lie on another." A lion is a beast of prey, seeking to be on the offensive. A bull is a beast of burden, brave but preferring to be on the defensive. A lion is always independent, a bull usually looks up to a master. To play Chesterton again: "A ...
... was greatly indebted to Yeats, and so also is Amal. SRI AUROBINDO: Perhaps X doesn't understand English poetry sufficiently. NIRODBARAN: But he said that Chesterton has variety in metre and he appreciates it. SRI AUROBINDO: Chesterton? NIRODBARAN: Yes, I think that if he doesn't understand a poem, he just doesn't bother about the rest of its qualities; the poem has no appeal for him. ...
... holds, I suppose, that the writer is still a small poet? NIRODBARAN: No. What he wants to ascertain is whether by writing a single great poem one becomes a great poet. In that case Oscar Wilde and Chesterton are also great because they have each written a great poem. SRI AUROBINDO: Thompson's poem is great in a peculiar way. Of course, if you take the mass of his work into account you may say he is... poem: the rest of her is in mere snatches. Still, she is hailed as a great poet. So there can be no fixed standard by which one can judge the greatness of a poet. As to Thompson and Wilde and Chesterton, I believe "The Hound of Heaven" is greater than any poem by the last two. ...
... not think Harris' attack on Shaw as you describe it can be taken very seriously any more than can Wells' jest about his pronunciation of English being the sole astonishing thing about him. Wells, Chesterton, Shaw and others joust at each other like the kabiwālās of old Calcutta, though with more refined weapons, and you cannot take their humorous sparrings as considered appreciations; if you do, you... thing and to have a fine feeling or an idealistic thought is the very height of spirituality. I should like to know whether, in your opinion, Shaw comes off badly in comparison with Wells or Chesterton or Russell as a thinker. And do you mind expatiating on Shaw as a dramatist and a writer of prose? Page 540 I refuse to accept the men you name, with the exception of Russell, as serious... Wells is a super-journalist, super-pamphleteer and story-teller. I imagine that within a generation of his death his speculations will cease to be read or remembered; his stories may endure longer. Chesterton is a brilliant essayist who has written verse too of an appreciable brilliance and managed some good stories. Unlike Wells he has some gift of style and he has caught the trick of wit and constant ...
... greatest of modern poets to whom the mantric word came as soaring to the eagle, ... Sethna shall receive the smile of the great Goddess of Poetry, Saraswati, not only for having (in the words of Chesterton) "... watched when all men slept And seen the stars which never see the sun" but also for having readily acquitted [himself] of [his] sacred responsibility, the sense of which... Mother have kept me treading ‘the razor’s edge’.” Example 7 : "As for the culinary art, you may be tops there but I can boast of ‘one far fierce hour and sweet’ like the Donkey’s triumph, as Chesterton sees it, when Jesus rode on it into Jerusalem. Once Sehra [my wife] and her sister Mina and our Goan cook were making rice chapattis and they mocked me for my incompetence in common life. Immediately ...
... responded so exultantly to the panpsychic or pantheistic Nature-mysticism of the young Wordsworth. I don't remember your mentioning Luther anywhere, but I would not have been surprised if, like Chesterton, a fellow-convert, you had called him, in spite of his crudities, "a great man", a compliment which only of late has become possible to Catholics. But converts have a certain tendency too, which ...
... but also a fire, one in which intellect was married to imagination and made the philosopher a poet even if he did not fulfil the poetic element in him through any substantial body of verse proper. Chesterton has wittily hit off the difference between Plato and Aristotle and summed up the qualities of their thinking: Said Aristotle unto Plato: "Have another hot potato. " Said Plato unto Aristotle: ...
... newspapers and magazines. At this time his father suddenly died. He dedicated to his father his first book titled Parnassians, a critical assessment of the work of H.G. Wells, G.B. Shaw, G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Hardy, whom he considered the four outstanding denizens of Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses. The Parsi author A.S. Wadia sent Wells, whom he personally knew, the article on him ...
... as native as soaring to the eagle, this first small band of ardent admirers led by Sethna shall receive the smile of the great Goddess of Poetry, Saraswati, not only for having (in the words of Chesterton) "......watched when all men slept And seen the stars which never see the sun." ______________________ ' For there have been a few others like Sisir Kumar Ghosh of Shantiniketan ...
... on Shaw as you describe it can be taken very seriously any more than can Wells' jest about his pronunciation of English being the sole astonishing thing about Page 178 him. Wells, Chesterton, Shaw and others joust at each other like the Kabliwalas of old Calcutta, though with more refined weapons, and you cannot take their humorous sparrings as considered appreciations; if you do, ...
... Give the Divine a full sporting chance. When he lights something in you or is preparing a light, don't come in with a wet blanket of despondency and throw it on the poor flame. 89 Welt, Chesterton, Shaw and others joust at each other like the kabiwalas of old Calcutta, though with more refined weapons, and you cannot take their humorous sparrings as considered appreciations; if you do, you ...
... beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey towards the stars?" G. K. Chesterton I 'The Symbol Dawn' Sri Aurobindo's chosen aim in life was to show earth-bound : mortals the path that leads to the Life Divine. It was to illustrate this ...
... capacity." St. Paul's School showed its pride in its Old Pauline when it separated out Sri Aurobindo's class reports from the school's records, along with those of two other Old Paulines, G. K. Chesterton and Field Marshall Montgomery. Page 144 ...
... Kiran Chowdhury A simpleton, a pundit There is more simplicity in a man who eats caviar on impulse than in a man who eats grape fruit in principle. G. K. Chesterton Kiran Chowdhury was born in Chottogram (Bangladesh) in 1912. He was a dear friend of mine. He was known to many and many more have heard of him (many anecdotes are orally passed on). He ...
... not think Harris' attack on Shaw as you describe it can be taken very seriously any more than can Wells' jest about his pronunciation of English being the sole astonishing thing about him. Wells, Chesterton, Shaw and others joust at each other like the kabiwalas 1 of old Calcutta, though with more refined weapons, and you cannot take their humorous sparrings as considered appreciations; if you do ...
... shows very pleasantly to my mind that official Roman Catholicism sits lightly on you. One of my tutors - Father Gense (a Dutchman) at St. Xavier's School - called Luther "a pig". I was happy to read Chesterton styling him "a great man". Maybe this compliment was possible to G.K.C. because he was a convert and not a born Catholic. You, in spite of being a Catholic by birth, have emerged into An ...
... Aurobindo. The review is signed P.M. and my correspondent is much upset by what he terms its stupidity. Looking behind the stupidity I suspect an inferiority complex at work in P.M. If I might play Chesterton I should say that P.M. feels acutely that he is no A.M. In other words, he feels that he is a sort of light that can do nothing but go winking and has neither the colourful hope of dawn nor the intense ...
... ed newspapers and magazines. At this time his father suddenly died. He dedicated to his father his first book titled Parnassians, a critical assessment of the work of H.G. Wells, G.B. Shaw, G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Hardy, whom he considered the four outstanding denizens of Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses. The Parsi author, A.S. Wadia sent Wells, whom he personally knew, the article on him. Wells ...
... native as soaring to the eagle, this first small band of ardent admirers led by Sethna shall receive the smile of the great Goddess of Poetry, Saraswati , not only for having (in the words of Chesterton) ...watched when all men slept And seen the stars which never see the sun. but also for having readily acquitted themselves of their sacred responsibility, the sense ...
... report of a meeting with Sri Aurobindo:] "He laughed till his body shook; it was rollicking...." This won't do. It is a too exhilarating over-description. It calls up to my mind a Falstaff or a Chesterton; it does not fit in my style of hilarity. It is long since my laughter has been continuous and uncontrolled like that. For that to be true I shall have to wait till the Year 1, S.D. (Supramental ...
... the diverse styles English literature teems with - the individual element at almost riotous play as between author and author (Sir Thomas Browne, Addison, Gibbon, Ruskin, Carlyle, Meredith, Arnold, Chesterton, Shaw, etc.) with no persistent tradition of writing as, for instance, in France for both prose and poetry until very recent times when a rebellious 'modernism' blew winds of radical change over ...
... Page 286 Batter my heart, three-person'd God, till now You have but knock'd - and Wordsworth can say about the very stones on the highway, "I saw them feel" and even the jolly Chesterton within earshot of the familiar North Sea washing his beer-swilling island can wander back in legend and write of a Celtic chief: He heard the noise of a nameless sea On an undiscovered isle ...
... through Dilip Kumar's transcript, Sri Aurobindo deleted the description and wrote on the margin: "This won't do. It is a too exhilarating over-description. It calls up to my mind a Falstaff or a Chesterton; it does not fit in my style of hilarity. It is long since my laughter has been continuous and uncontrolled like that. For that to be true I shall have to wait till the year 1, S.D. (Supramental ...
... Cross I'd bear.' " 67 5. Pun as a device for much in little: A pun may present neatly in a nutshell what could only otherwise be expressed in a roundabout fashion. Here is what G.K. Chesterton has written apropos of this characteristic of a true pun: "When we come to the great puns of Hood or of any other writer, we note first of all this use of the pun in sharpening and clinching ...
... He also mentioned in this letter that he knew about Sri Aurobindo from Devadas and C. R. Das. 23-8-1925 "Joan of Arc" by George Bernard Shaw Sri Aurobindo : These men, Chesterton and G. B. S., try to be clever at any cost. It seems that G. B. S. wants to put in here the idea of evolution. ( After three days ) Sri Aurobindo : I have finished reading Joan of Arc ...
... falsity. Who would think of censuring out of hand a prose style like Sir Thomas Browne's, Jeremy Taylor's, Donne's, Gibbon's, De Quincy's, Landor's, Car-lyle's, Ruskin's, Meredith's, Henry James's, Chesterton's, Charles Morgan's, Sir Winston Churchill's? These very names — three of them contemporary — should make one hesitate also to declare that the typically English style is the opposite of ...
... aspirants of all climes as a modem Prometheus of the Soul's latent fire waiting its hour to out flash an Era of Light. When I .envision, his radiant face in my meditation I am constantly re- minded of Chesterton's memorable lines: To have seen you and your unforgettable Face, Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray, Pure as white lilies in a watery space, It were something, though you ...
... indeed inspiring. How did his globe-trotting steps turn right towards your Kentish house? Your short but vivid account of Champaklal's play with the ancient sword sent my mind to an incident in Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse: the feat of bow-less and sling-less Colan the Gael, swifter than the arrow-flight attempted by Earl Harold from the opposite side: Whirling the one sword round ...
... therefore, as it thinks, with the false. Even the unnatural is there, a persistent departure from the common norm, from right method and sound device, a frame of things in which everything, to use Mr. Chesterton's expression, is of the wrong shape. The old orthodox Christian point of view might regard this culture as a thing of hell, an abnormal creation of demons; the modern orthodox rationalistic standpoint ...
... personality, a being. Sri Aurobindo : That means what is created is living. But why not leave out my poetry? If you want examples I gave you that of the Hound of Heaven and you may add Chesterton's Lepanto . Disciple : X says that if there is poetic force, it will be felt. I told him that everybody may not feel the force; the Hound of Heaven, for instance, won't be appreciated... fragments and yet he is regarded as second Page 249 to Pindar who is called the greatest lyricist. The Hound of Heaven is a far greater poem than any of Oscar Wilde’s or of Chesterton’s. 26-9-1943 Disciple : What is the real root of man’s interest in story and literature? Is it independent of Truth? If it is not, what is its purpose? Sri Aurobindo : Literature ...
... I am glad Celtic mythology lets loose wonderful horses into the English imagination. I have read a bit of Vernon Watkins but not come across his "Ballad of the Mari Lwyd". I have enjoyed Chesterton's "Ballad of the White Horse" but no actual white horse takes part in the story: only the location of the tale is indicated by that name. It's sad that so fine a symbol spells only "death" for the ...
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