Murry, Middleton : John Middleton Murry (1889-1957), his romantic & biographical approach to literature defied prevalent tendencies among fellow British critics.
... 294,334,338, 416, 420,426,438,458; 459 Mukerjea, S.V. 253 Muller,Max267 . Munshi,K.M.17 Murray, D.L. 5 Murray, Gilbert 55 Murry, Middleton 308, 355,412,414 Myers, F.W.H. 334,436 AWa256,458 Nehru, Jawaharlal 17 Nevinson, Henry 29 Newbolt, Sir Henry 412 Nidhu,Babu45 Nietzsche 30,400 Nirodbaran358,386,416 Noyes, ...
... he would be writing only poetry! But Middleton Murry himself makes an exception in the case of Dante (even as Highet did): "The essential condition of philosophical poetry is that the poet should believe that there is a faculty of mind superior to the poetic; that was possible for Dante; but since Shakespeare lived and wrote it is not possible." 91 What is Murry driving at? Does he not mean to say... intractable subject for poetry. If mystical experiences are ineffable by their very nature, philosophical systems or statements may prove too arid or too severely logical for poetical transplantation. Middleton Murry, for example, takes Sir Henry Newbolt to task for thinking that McTaggart's philosophy of Time and Eternity 89 could provide a future poet with an inspiring faith to enable him to give solace... poetic aesthesis, and the result was the Divina Commedia. Were there comparable circumstances in Sri Aurobindo's life so that we may legitimately look for a repetition of the great miracle? Highet and Murry, starting from different premises, come nevertheless to the conclusion that Dante is the unique exception; Allen Tate says that Dante's poem, "is a vast paradigm of the possibility of the Beatific Vison" ...
... that case what is the solution? Their life seems to have been a tragedy because Blake loved someone else. PURANI: I thought that they were a very happy pair. SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know why Middleton Murry says that. His wife was an ordinary Christian and it took her a long time to come to his standpoint. It was because she could not chime in with him that there was the tragedy. All the Christian ...
... peg the square hole, as it were, of the English language. In support of this subtle standpoint the name of Page 18 that famous interpreter of literature, Middleton Murry, was invoked. Murry had delivered himself on poems not precisely of a mystical type: he had read in them as typically Indian and typically un-English a luxuriant effeminacy, a backboneless love-reverie... alone. But Middleton Murry would not complain that here there is something forced into the words, which they do not naturally tend to hold: their basic genius and tradition have been harmoniously pressed to a particular end, not contradicted and baulked by a meaning, an attitude, a psychology that are un-English. If there were an un-Englishness of mind, then according to Murry the words would... be at once brushed aside. Nor did the author on whom Murry passed judgment Show such , Indianness. But the fact is significant that Murry jibbed at the poems of Manmohan Ghose on the score of temperament , Manmohan Ghose had been taken to England in his early boyhood and had ' passed through an English school and university. Reading him, Murry praised his knowledge of English verse-technique and ...
... he was with the momentousness of his own message. Here I may touch on a point once raised by the critic Middleton Murry. He said that what offends us as bad poetry is not really lines like the one on Mr. Wilkerson, which is quite evidently empty of poetic quality. What offends us, in Murry's view; is falsetto. Falsetto means literally a forced shrill voice above one's natural range and we may in... promise it holds out is of a glimmering profundity. Perhaps Murry is over-critical, but there is sufficient truth in his remark to keep us aware of the obligations of poetic speech. Phillips stands convicted, even though we may not condemn him very harshly. However, while finding Phillips guilty under the conditions im-posed by Murry, we must not fall into the mistake of passing final judgment... in our context understand it as a use of poetic-sounding language to cover up mere fancifulness. One of the worst lines of poetry, to Murry's mind, is this from Stephen Phillips's Marpessa: Page 101 The mystic yearning of the garden wet... Let us reflect on the verse. Is Phillips indeed pretentious? The feeling that he records seems to have nothing false in it. When a garden is ...
... much of mysticism in relation to poetry. His error lies in making it a direct operator. It is easy to criticise him and show that many poets have no mystical bent, no mystical substance as such. Middleton Murry labours to point out just this fact and thereby convict Bremond of confusion. He coun- Page 343 ters both the propositions of Bremond — that there need be no thought at all in... and with all his mind and with all his soul." We have here a peculiar exhibition of taking away with one hand and giving back with the other. While refusing to grant a mystical quality to poetry Murry is yet driven to talk of soul and religion. But is it not rather ridiculous to boil soul down to a union of thought and feeling — as if "a momentary union of thought and feeling" could create that deep... mystical. And what a poor definition of religion we have in the formula: "not merely think thoughts, but feel them"! Is it because Shakespeare felt his thoughts that we have that passage over which Murry exults, the passage whose thought is the futility of human existence? — Tommorow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded ...
... presence when one snores alone! ( Laughter ) Disciple : We read in the papers about the conversion of John Middleton Murry to theism. It was Hitler's statement after the purage that he "embodies justice and law", Page 107 that, he dispenses with "trials" – which made Murry consider him as the Anti-Christ. It seems Gandhian non-violence has also appealed to Hitler. He wants to become ...
... began quoting from the Sunday Times about Middleton Murry, where it was said that he had come to believe in Gandhi's non-violence and that because of Hitler he had become a believer in God. SRI AUROBINDO: How is that? PURANI: I don't know; he says he finds Hitler an anti-Christ after that murder of eighty people in one night. SRI AUROBINDO: Wasn't Murry a mystic long before Hitler's regime? Does ...
... sensuous images and vivid projections; and the whole complex of ideas and impressions and images builds a picture that delights and informs and carries many layers of meaning. Middleton Murry says that, "metaphor appears as the instinctive and necessary act of the mind exploring reality and ordering experience. It is the means by which the less familiar is assimilated to the more ...
... original of Bremond's thesis. But I remember its central idea. Long ago I gathered it from an essay by Middleton Murry on the Abbe's two little books: La Poesie pure and Poesie et Priere. With Ravindra Khanna's help I traced this essay in our library, but I feel that, excellent in his own way though Murry is, there are shades in Bremond which he strikes me as overlooking. So I shall present Bremond to... to you — briefly, of course, since I am cut off from the original sources — with a mixture of Murry and my own sense of the Frenchman's drift. By the by, I may tell you that in France he has a title to fame which is more special in one sense than even the Abbe Breuil's. Whatever Breuil may be, Bremond is one of those whom the French people call "Immortals". In France an Immortal is he who is elected ...
... significance. I say "sudden" because it is out of a perspective of gloom and perversity and anguish of lost souls that by a peculiar pressure on extreme points he draws his momentary apocalypses. Middleton Murry thinks the Brothers Karamazhov is Dostoievsky's masterpiece. I am going to take a plunge into it and set right the lacuna that has long been glaring in my education. But I have a premonition ...
... The nature of 'overhead' poetry cannot be more vividly brought out; all its immense range is suggested here, and the riot of its imagery Page 305 well illustrates Middleton Murry's remark: "...the greatest mastery of imagery does not lie in the use, however beautiful and revealing, of isolated images, but in the harmonious total impression produced by a succession of subtly ...
... Bangalore, 1959). Muller, Max. Auld Lang Syne : Second Series—My Indian Friends (Longmans, London, 1899). Rammohan to Ramkrishna (Susil Gupta, Culcutta, 1952). Murry, John Middleton. Countries of the Mind, Second Series (Oxford University Press, London, 1931). Nandakumar, Prema. Bharati in English Verse (Higginbothams, Madras, 1958). Noyes, Alfred ...
... is no intellectual content here, nor any emotional content to speak of. There is only a beauty of word-sound with just a touch upon our understanding. What does our understanding discover? As Middleton Murry tells us, we get a sense of the exotic, the out-of-the-way, the rich and rare — an exoticism soft and languorous in the Racine-line, martial and clangorous in the Milton-verses. A distinguishable ...
... used), she is happy about Amal Kiran's finding the Indian soul in Wordsworth but must needs reiterate that English remains a foreign instrument to convey the Indian spirit. She is in sympathy with Middleton Murry who feels that "Indian poets writing in English employ the words for uses they were never born for", and Herbert Read who feels that "poetry is of all things the most localised speech." But she ...
... degrading. Women know this, but men seem to find it hard to believe it; but it is perfectly true. Sex and the New European Mystics The idea of the new European mystics like Lawrence and Middleton Murry etc. is that the indulgence of sex is the appointed way to find the Overself or the Under Self, for that is what it Page 493 really seems to be! Brunton of course knows better. But ...
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