... 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 prescribed in school as those he had sought out on his own account. Theocrates, Meleager, above all Simonides were his special favourites. I had imagined that an oriental's... (a more brilliant classical scholar) shared this appreciation of Greek Art and Poetry with his elder brother is undoubted. We know that the libraries of both brothers were filled with volumes of Greek Poetry and Art. Mr. Sailendranath Mitra, Secretary of the Post-Graduate Council of Arts, Calcutta University, a nephew of the scholar and linguist Harinath De and a pupil of Manmohon Ghose, once told me... accompanied the latter to the house of Raja Subod Mullick where Sri Aurobindo was staying and how even in the thick of Sri Aurobindo's political period the two brothers happily reading and discussing Greek Poetry would be entirely lost to a sense 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 ...
... make is that there can be a focus in which several shades of light mingle and there can be a multi-faceted distinctness and a crowded accuracy. You mention Greek poetry as being the opposite of the involved and the complex. I must admit Greek poetry to be superb and to be in the main, despite Aeschylean and Pindaresque elements, "clarity winged with beauty". But I wonder what the Greeks would have thought ...
... to venture. If it is not accepted it will remain a blot in the poem. Tagore coined the word তৃণাঞ্চিত but he laments that people have not accepted it. Why a blot? There are many words in Greek poetry which occur only once in the whole literature, but that is not considered a defect in the poem. It is called a hapax legomenon , "a once spoken Page 656 word" and that's all. তৃণাঞ্চিত ...
... Penthesilea. In case after those ten pages you don't respond and can't go further, kindly pass the book on to your friend Philip Sherrard or somebody like him who is deeply conversant with Greek poetry both modern and ancient. Page 11 As you may recall from our old correspondence, it was about Ilion that Herbert Read wrote to A.B. Purani on June 5, 1958: "It is a remarkable ...
... can make Sophocles Romantic or Shakespeare Classical. Similarly, Dante rests Classical for all his poignancy and sensitivity. Lucas 23 himself feels that though he has called several things in Greek poetry Romantic he would like not to exaggerate; for Homer and Aeschylus never sound the extreme Romantic note that is heard in Spenser and Marlowe, while Catullus in even his "Romantic frenzy" is still ...
... rigid tradition, too appreciative of rhetorical device and artifice and even permitted and admired the most extraordinary contortions of the learned intelligence, as in the Alexandrian decline of Greek poetry, but the earlier work is usually free from these shortcomings or they are only occasional and rare. "The classical Sanskrit is perhaps the most remarkably finished and capable instrument ...
... 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 remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into ...
... Saraswati Has called to regions of eternal snow And Ganges pacing to the southern sea, Ganges upon whose shores the flowers of Eden blow. 57 No more would be devote himself to Greek poetry as he had done during the past few years; no more would he exchange alexandrines and hexameters with the faded poets of ancient Greece and Rome; no more would he feel the heart-beats of European ...
... accompanied by one of his students, Sailendranath Mitra. The latter was wonderstruck to see how even in the thick of Sri Aurobindo's political activities the two brothers would happily read and discuss Greek poetry "entirely lost to a sense of time." The nature of fire is not only to burn but to set aflame all that comes into contact with it. When Sri Aurobindo was arrested on 16 August 1907 on a charge ...
... rigid tradition, too appreciative of rhetorical device and artifice and even permitted and admired the most extraordinary contortions of the learned intelligence, as in the Alexandrian decline of Greek poetry, but the earlier work is usually free from these shortcomings or they are only occasional and rare. The classical Sanskrit is perhaps the most remarkably finished and capable instrument of thought ...
... and leave its stamp in the building of the general mind of humanity. One or two examples will be sufficient to show the vast difference. No poetry has had so powerful an influence as Greek Page 49 poetry; no poetry is, I think, within its own limits so perfect and satisfying. The limits indeed are marked and even, judged by the undulating many-sidedness and wideness of the modern mind ...
... if truth could never be true unless it came living either in visible loveliness or in loveliness of moral nature and action. All this complexity-in-unity of the Greek mind expressed itself in Greek poetry which, according to Sri Aurobindo, dealt with life from one large viewpoint, that of the inspired reason and the enlightened and chastened aesthetic sense. Mark the epithet "inspired" affixed to ...
... venture. If it is not accepted it will remain a blot in the poem. Tagore coined the word তৃণাঞ্চিত 82 but he laments that people have not accepted it. Why a blot? There are many words in Greek poetry which occur onlyonce in the whole literature, but that is not considered a defect in the poem. It is called a "hapax legomenon", "a once-spoken word" and that's all. তৃণাঞ্চিত for instance is a ...
... Greek Drama (I) IT seems that on listening to some Greek lines included in my talk the other day, many of you have expressed a desire to hear a little more about Greek poetry. This then will be my subject today. I am particularly reminded in this connection of a line from Sophocles, the dramatist – like the Latin sentence I quoted on the last occasion. Sri Aurobindo ...
... 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, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into ...
... part in great upheavals of the future. 1884-90 At St. Paul's School in London. Learnt Greek. In I886, started writing English poetry Wrote also Latin and Greek poetry. Learnt European languages to study their lite-ratures. Made a thorough study of European history. Won all Classics prizes. 1885 Had an inner perception ...
... glance at it, now from this side now from that, and try to form some impression of its richness and variety. In this chapter, however, we shall confine ourselves to the translations: from old Greek poetry, from mediaeval and modem Bengali poetry, from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, from Bhartrihari, and lastly from Kalidasa. 2 In the matter of translations, Sri Aurobindo seems to have ...
... Poet and essayist in modem Greek. Translated poems of the English poet, George Eliot, into modern Greek; was in diplomatic service, now retired and settled in Athens. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1963. An Elder, ma î tre, now in the literary world of modem Greece. References: "Poetry" (Chicago); Greek Number, June 1951; "Poetry", Greek Number, October 1964; '"Poems" ... satisfied with being a 1 This is what exactly Seferis says about this "old man" of Greece. "He has no inclination to reform. On the contrary, he has an Page 52 witness, seeing nature unroll her inexhaustible beauty. Eliot's was more or less a moral revulsion whereas the Greek poet was moved rather by an aesthetic repulsion from the uglinesses of life. It was almost a... sleep in the other, the sunk life." It is the Virgilian "tears of things"— Lacrymaererum— the same that moved the muse of the ancient Roman poet, moves the modern Greek poet. Seferis' poetry sobs—explicit or muffled—muttering or murmuring like a refrain—a mantra: 'Oh the pity of it all!' What else is it, I repeat, but sobbing: Page 47 I look ...
... its form, recalls the idea of Greek choric poetry. Milton disparaging rhyme, which he had himself used with so much skill in his earlier, less sublime, but more beautiful poetry, forgot or ignored the spiritual value of rhyme, its power to enforce and clinch the appeal of melodic or harmonic recurrence which is a principal element in the measured movement of poetry, its habit of opening sealed doors... The Future Poetry The Future Poetry The Future Poetry Chapter III Rhythm and Movement The mantra, poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality, is only possible when three highest intensities of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a highest intensity of rhythmic movement, a highest intensity of interwoven verbal form and thought-substance... Nevertheless, mere force of language tacked on to the trick of the metrical beat does not answer the higher description of poetry; it may have the form or its shadow, it has not the essence. There is a whole mass of poetry,—the French metrical romances and most of the mediaeval ballad poetry may be taken as examples,—which relies simply on the metrical beat for its rhythm and on an even level of just tolerable ...
... The poets of the time have a tendency to the false or conventional pastoral; i.e. to say a mechanical imitation of Latin & Greek rural poetry, & especially when they try to write love poetry, they use Latin & Greek pastoral names; but these pastorals have nothing to do with any real country life past or present, nor do they describe any rural surroundings and scenery... French civilisation. Even of the classics, little was known of Greek literature though it was held in formal honour; French & Latin and Latin rather of the second best than the best writers were the only foreign influences that affected Augustan literature to any appreciable extent. The main characteristics of eighteenth-century poetry may therefore be summed up as follows;—a rational & intellectual... Literature On Literature On Poetry and Literature Early Cultural Writings Characteristics of Augustan Poetry Relation of Gray to the poetry of his times The poetry of Gray marks the transition from the eighteenth century or Augustan style of poetry to the nineteenth-century style; i.e. to say almost all the tendencies of poetry between the death of ...
... greatest and completest work either in philosophy or in Science. The age of developed intellectualism in Greece killed poetry; it ended in the comedy of Menander, the intellectual artificialities of Alexandrianism, the last flush of beauty in the aesthetic pseudo-naturalism of the Sicilian pastoral poetry; philosophy occupied the field. In the more rich and complex modern mind this result could not so easily... hardily predicted that since the modern mind is increasingly scientific and less and less poetically and aesthetically imaginative, poetry must necessarily decline and give place to science,—for much the same reason, in fact, for which philosophy replaced poetry in Greece. On the opposite side it was sometimes suggested that the poetic mind might become more positive and make use of the materials of... for a first strong and provisionally adequate view. Poetry following this movement takes on the lucid, restrained, intellectual and ideal classic form, in which high or strong ideas govern and develop the presentation of life and thought in an atmosphere of clear beauty and the vision of the satisfied intelligence; that is the greatness of the Greek and Latin poets. But afterwards the intelligence sets ...
... Aurobindo have written a poem in the metre of Greek epic poetry? Of course it can be done as an exercise - a piece of virtuosity (which Ili on is) but I do not find in that poem its raison d'etre, It is like a prize-poem set in a Public School or University, to write a poem in a certain language (Greek for example) and a certain metre. It is an imitation of poetry. Page 73 not the newly... is of course a tour-de-force, reveals (even though I imagine an early work) a tremendous mental energy and of course a command of the English language and the Greek hexameter." Read alludes to an extensive stretch of genuine English poetry here: he does not make the least reservation in his praise and considers the work an "achievement" of a most noteworthy order. You refrain from any direct reference... and move with the true gait of poetry? Does the subject weave a significant design in which the poet expresses problems vital to himself as dreamer and doer, values vital to la condition humaine, aspirations and insights vital to the world's future?" Secondly, it is an error to say that Sri Aurobindo is Page 93 repeating in English the Greek hexameter. Homer wrote his epics ...
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