... of the dream relates solely to you - the symbolism of hair, etc. I presumably represent for you some Page 173 aspect of the Poetic Muse and also your interest in English (and French?) poetry, not surely to forget William Blake who was our first and remains an enduring link. So I would read your dream as suggesting that the Muse is well disposed to your work and that I had the honour... relating solely to me and the you-me element as representing something more general. You write: "I presumably represent for you some aspect of the Poetic Muse and also your interest in English (and French?) poetry, not surely to forget William Blake who was our first and remains an enduring link. So I would read your dream as suggesting that the Muse is well-disposed to your work and that I had Page ...
... himself too now ranks very high though he must still, I should think, be read only by a comparatively small though select audience; Page 668 yet he has practically turned the current of French poetry. So there is something to be said for writing for oneself even if that implies writing only for the few and not for the many. As for the actor, that is quite a different art, meant for the public... with not publishing because you won't be understood. At that rate many great poets would have remained unpublished. What about the unintelligible Mallarmé who had such a great influence on later French poetry? 24 July 1936 Housman's Poetics I have been waiting for a long time to take a look at A. E. Housman's little book The Name and Nature of Poetry. It's been with you for months now. Perhaps ...
... great master of sound-effects and in a subtler fashion than the grandly orchestral Hugo. Also his sound-effects accompany a lyrical spontaneity of word-flow which is almost without a parallel in French poetry and which at times as good as rivals that in English. Apropos of him we could erect a much sounder theory of "pure poetry" on the basis of verse-music. Alan M. Boase writes: "It may or may not be... process of patient poetical alchemy — such was Mallarme's method. But 'pure poetry' evokes for most of us some element of spontaneous song. It is this singing quality — perhaps the rarest of all in French poetry — which Verlaine possessed in a supreme degree." Of course, Boase himself points out that the impression Verlaine created of singing with "the simplicity of the bird on the tree" had behind it a ...
... that for tomorrow. June 28,1936 Mother says that you need not sing tomorrow, but you must come because she has certain things to read to you— not the Bases of Yoga (!), but French poetry. What she said about the stiffness was some time ago and there is no point in bringing that up again now, for since then she told you you had changed much and she was able at last to get through... others who rank among the great ones in French literature and he himself ranks very high though he must still be read only by the comparatively few; yet he has practically turned the current of French poetry. So there is something to be said for writing for oneself even if that implies writing only for the few and not for the many. As for the actor, that is quite a different art, meant for the ...
... religious fantasy, Shakespeare as a drunken barbarian of considerable genius with an epileptic imagination, the whole drama of Greece and Spain and England as a mass of bad ethics and violent horrors, French poetry as a succession of bald or tawdry rhetorical exercises and French fiction as a tainted and immoral thing, a long sacrifice on the altar of the goddess Lubricity, admit here and there a minor merit ...
... It followed more sincerely the contemporary French models; but it missed their best normal qualities, their culture, taste, tact of expression, and missed too the greater gifts of the classical French poetry. For, though that poetry may often fall short of the intensest poetic delight by its excessive cult of reason and taste, though it may run often in too thin a stream, though it may indulge the ...
... repellent and extract artistic beauty from it. But that is not the only stuff of his poetry. 22 July 1936 Mallarmé Blake is Europe's greatest mystic poet and Mallarmé turned the current of French poetry (one might almost say of all modernist poetry) into a channel of which his poems were the opening. Mallarmé's works are, in one word, "unintelligible". Then why did they have so much influence ...
... first part of the line and a refusal of all but the lightest sounds in the close with of course a strong stress at the end. 22 October 1933 Writing Poetry in French If you want to write French poetry, the first thing you have to do is to learn the principles and rules of French prosody. Good verse is the first requisite and good rhythm. 10 July 1933 The point is that in French you must ...
... insensible with the thought that Sri Aurobindo is on my side and rates Corneille above Racine, and Hugo above Corneille, but keeps even Hugo out of the sheer first class. In ranking Hugo as tops in French poetry but not tops enough in world-poetry, Sri Aurobindo is supported by one of the acutest minds of France herself, the Nobel-Prizeman Andre Gide. When Gide was asked by an interviewer, "Qui est le poete ...
... with not publishing because you won't be understood. At that rate many great poets would have remained unpublished. What about the unintelligible Mallarmé who had such a great influence on later French poetry? S still feels weak. His bile colour is improving. Shall I give him some iron and nux vomica? Not iron as yet—let the bile go out first—Nux vomica yes. July 24, 1936 One more ...
... Aeneid? SRI AUROBINDO: No, Ilion: it is in hexameter and about the end of the siege of Troy. NIRODBARAN: What about Radhanand's poetry? He writes in French also. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, his French poetry is very good. The Mother likes it; there is imagination and beauty. Of course, she corrects the poems. He is a stupendous writer with great energy. He has written two hundred books in six months ...
... the eve of my departure to a foreign country, and I was about eighteen, I think. I went to Rangoon with my 66 Les Fleurs du mal (often translated as The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire, first published in 1857. Page 36 mother. I had some relatives, my guardians there; of course, you see, there was a talk of marriage. Before I went to England ...
... farther down and land in the domain of versification—although here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry. Page 313 The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be ...
... from the unrefined touch and flavour of narrow rusticity and entered as it were the realm of a higher, nobler, more luminous and wider perception and brought it down into his poetic creation. In French poetry also this parochial influence pervades all its Romances, the Chansons de Gestes, and even the Chanson de Roland. Real poetry, which is noble and of permanent value, was first introduced by Ronsard ...
... accomplished miracle and which have been the admiration of after ages. Even the poetry of the Greek decadence preserved enough of this power to act as a shaping influence on Latin literature. French poetry is much more limited than the Greek, much less powerful in inspiration. For it deals with life from the standpoint not of the inspired reason, but of the clear-thinking intellect, not of the enlightened ...
... of image and word and rhythm which constitutes his poetry as well as the poetry of others whose work I bring into relation with his. I didn't know you were such a Francophil. My amour with French poetry does not extend to the most recent mood and mode of that belle of unwithering youth and infinite variety. I have heard of the 'imaginal' school but ail the names you list are unknown to me. I shall ...
... followed more readily contemporary French models, but missed... their culture, taste, tact of expression, and missed too the greater gifts of the classical French poetry...." 39 contributions are satire and the mock-epic. It practises a neat, clear, pointed utterance of superficial ideas in the form of ...
... epigrammatic points: his language is always logical and precise; whereas the English poet is vague and gives us images unrelated by logic. And it will not be till the advent of the Symbolists that French poetry will really become capable of the fantasy and fluidity of English." German Romanticism, on the other hand, is vague enough, but there is not much luminosity in its cloudiness and whatever ...
... fragment in Alexandrine, beginning I walked beside the waters of a world of light, Page 369 is Sri Aurobindo's only attempt in the metre which is the staple one of great French poetry. He has some interesting things to say on this metre: "The difficulty, I suppose, is its normal tendency to fall into two monotonously equal halves while the possible variations on that monotony ...
... Psalms and the Prelude) and the in-depth references to Indian names like Sakuntala and Parasara as well as concepts like Yoga and Maya, Sethna does take us back repeatedly to English and French poetry. Possessed of enviable scholarship in these areas, it is but natural to come across poems like Lammergeyer: Preach pity to the Lammergeyer’s breast, Make its brute claws grasp ...
... ultimately quintessential, the ideal utterance of secrecies' ". He is not only a Maitre for his disciples but also a real creative innovator." Mallarmé turned the whole current of French poetry (one might say, of all modernist poetry) into a new channel, of which his poems were an opening.... The French language was too clear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle ...
... Amal-kiran's collected poems The Secret Splendour in The Hindu of 27 September 1994 K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar has the following to say. Amal is a "lyric genius whose sensitive responses to English and French poetry have filled his poems with honeyed delight. He can coerce us into entering the worlds of the spirit with effortless ease...The paindefying Ananda that marks these poems is a welcome gift for a world ...
... have I found true insight." As regards poetry, she appreciated Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri and a few other poems the most. They reveal the sheer truth, she said. On poetry in general she said that French poetry was hardly poetry because it was written not with the imaginative mind so much as with the intellect. Page 103 ...
... another (Mallarmé)." Well, if she thinks it derogatory to be compared to such great poets as Blake and Mallarmé! Blake is Europe's greatest mystic poet and Mallarmé turned the whole current of French poetry (one might almost say, of all modernist poetry) into a channel of which his poems were the opening. "Mallarmé's works are, in one word, 'unintelligible'. Why on earth should I write such things ...
... and was educated there. He lived in France but maintained his relation with his mother-country. His poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and manner of French poetry. He has bypassed the rational and emotional tradition of his adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the East. This mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way ...
... life and was educated there. He lived in France but maintained his relation with his mother-country. His poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and manner of French poetry. He has bypassed the rational and emotional tradition of his adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the East. This mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way ...
... down and land in the domain of versification – although here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry. Page 85 The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered ...
... 4 While Romanticism was the stimulating culture of the French Revolution, French romantic poetry had its efflorescence much later, say with Victor Hugo's Hernani (1830). Almost three decades after, Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil (1857) "created a new shudder" in France, but also gave modern poetry the violent renovation it needed. His successors were the Symbolists - Mallarmé... research in Mallarmé's symbolist poetry is most welcome. The book divides roughly into two equal parts. The first is a close study in 8 sections of Mallarm é - Man and Poet. The second comprises English translations of 35 of Mallarme's poems, and commentaries on a few of them. Throughout the book, the citations from Mallarmé are in the original French as well as in Sethna's excellent... variety of subjects, and especially poetry - Sethna's, Sri Aurobindo's and other people's poetry. Ever since his first coining to Pondicherry over sixty years ago, Sethna has been a committed and dedicated and evangelistic Aurobindonian, and he is also the best informed, the most perceptive and the most illuminating of the critics of Sri Aurobindo's poetry. (Sri Aurobindo: a biography ...
... gives English poetry a first shape by the help of French romance models and the work Page 65 of Italian masters; the Elizabethans start anew in dependence on Renaissance influences from France and Italy and a side wind from Spain; Milton goes direct to classical models; the Restoration and the eighteenth century take pliantly the pseudo-classical form from the contemporary French poets and... does Chaucer, as if by accident, strike out a really memorable line of poetry; yet Dante and Petrarch were among his masters. No other great poetical literature has had quite such a beginning. Others also started with a poetry of external life, Greek with the poetry of Homer, Latin with the historical epic of Ennius, French with the feudal romances of the Charlemagne cycle and the Arthurian cycle... bounds of a high poetic intelligence. We see in modern French creation a constant struggle with this limitation: even we find a poet like Mallarmé driven to break the mould of French speech in his desperate effort to force it to utter what is to its natural clear lucidity almost unutterable. No such difficulty presents itself in English poetry; the depths, the vistas of suggestion, the power to open ...
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