... the manuscript. Its exact place of insertion was not marked: It was perhaps partly as a result of this that none of these poets was able to write much or to write long poems; Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination is the only exception and that is a failure. × Sentence bracketed in the manuscript.—Ed ...

Sri Aurobindo > Books > CWSA > Early Cultural Writings

[exact]

The Future Poetry > The Essence of Poetry

... more perfect in their light but exquisite unity and brevity. Pleasure, certainly, we expect from poetry as from all art; but the external sensible and even the inner imaginative pleasure Page 11 are only first elements. For these must not only be refined in order to meet the highest requirements of the intelligence, the imagination and the ear; but afterwards they have to be still farther... critic or the too intellectually conscientious artist or craftsman. To the ordinary mind, judging poetry without really entering into it, it looks as if it were nothing more than an aesthetic pleasure of the imagination, the intellect and the ear, a sort of elevated pastime. If that were all, we need not have wasted time in seeking for its spirit, its inner aim, its deeper law. Anything pretty, pleasant... beauty, or of truth of thought, or of emotion and pleasure and pain, of this life or the life beyond. It is sufficient that it is the soul which sees and the eye, sense, heart and thought-mind become the passive instruments of the soul. Then we get the real, the high poetry. But if what acts is too much an excitement of the intellect, the imagination, the emotions, the vital activities seeking rhythmical ...