... occasional shorter ones intervening, builds up a grave and massive rhythmic feeling and imparts even a poetic motion to the unified whole. In free verse the difference of prose movement and poetic rhythm tends to disappear; poetry steps down to or towards the level of rhythmic, sometimes a very poorly rhythmic prose; but it is too often a rhythm which misses its aim at the ear and is not evident... modernistic tendency—to step back to the level of prose, sometimes to the colloquial level, both in language and in sound movement; the tendency, the aim even, is to throw away the intensities of poetic rhythm and poetic language and approximate to a prose intonation and to a prose diction; one intensity only is kept in view and that too not always, the intensity of the thought substance. It is the thought... and of utterance and things uncommon with their own native and revealing accent; it expresses them, as no mere prose speech can do, with a certain kind of deep appealing intimacy of truth which poetic rhythm alone gives to expressive form and power of language: the greater this element, the greater is the poetry. The essence of this power can be there without metre, but metre is its spontaneous form ...
... arriving age to find a full rhythmic basis for its own way of self-expression. And so we find too the attempt to initiate a violent and unprecedented revolution in the whole fundamental method of poetic rhythm. This tendency in some writers goes no farther than an irregular use of metre which does not really carry us any farther towards the desired result and is in no way an improvement on the past... accommodate its power to new needs or any sign that it can only survive in an arrested senility or fall into a refined decadence. The most considerable representatives of this new and free form of poetic rhythm are English and American, Carpenter and Whitman. Tagore's translations of his lyrics have come in as a powerful adventitious aid, but are not really to the point Page 163 in the question... fixed measures of another language not only substitutes another mould for the original movement, but by the substitution gives it almost another soul, so powerful, distinct and creative a thing is poetic rhythm; but the more flexible, less insistent cadence of poetic prose does not so seize on and recast the spirit of the original movement; it may even give a far-off minimised shadow, echo, illusion of ...
... threw out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic Page 458 style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at all. Also, he weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house... fall. What the modernists very often fail to achieve is here: "true poetic greatness and beauty"—but with "a certain straightforwardness and directness of style" and always mindful of "poetic rhythm." and with no loss of "the habit of intuitive sight". Mr. Ezekiel has stressed Sri Aurobindo's "linguistic habits". There are actually no such trends in Sri Aurobindo: his language varies as ...
... of free verse is to find a rhythm in which one can dispense with rhyme and the limitations of a fixed metre and yet have a poetic rhythm, not either a flat or an elevated prose rhythm cut up into lengths. I think this poem shows how it can be done. There is a true poetic rhythm, even a metrical beat, but without any fixity, pliant and varying with the curve or sweep of the thought and carrying admirably ...
... Technique Letters on Poetry and Art Rhythm Two Factors in Poetic Rhythm If your purpose is to acquire not only metrical skill but the sense and the power of rhythm, to study the poets may do something, but not all. There are two factors in poetic rhythm,—there is the technique (the variation of movement without spoiling the fundamental structure of the ...
... lists in vers libre in France and Italy,—denies this tradition and sets aside metre as a limiting bondage, perhaps even a frivolous artificiality or a falsification of true, free and natural poetic rhythm. That is, it seems to me, a point of view which cannot eventually prevail, because it does not deserve to prevail. It certainly cannot triumph, unless it justifies itself by supreme rhythmical ... Page 22 been active; but the one thing that is lacking, except in moments or brief periods of inspiration, is the soul behind creating and listening to its own greater movements. Poetic rhythm begins to reach its highest levels, the greater poetic movements become possible when, using any of these powers but rising beyond them, the soul begins to make its direct demand and yearn for a ...
... But there is one thing I should add here. The counting of the syllables nowhere makes poetry. It is the suggestive vibrations of sound produced by the sequence of letters that give us the poetic rhythm. Quite apart from the variations of metrical length or quantity, each letter and every word used in poetry has a peculiar vibration of its own. The poet in his inner hearing depends on that for... enlarged its scope to a surprising degree; in variety as in scope it has grown almost immeasurably. But that is another story. Ezra Pound has made an astonishing remark on this question of poetic rhythm. He says that the rhythm or music of poetry is beyond the realm of words and their meaning; it has an existence quite apart and almost independent of them. Poetry in a foreign language, a language ...
... of free verse is to find a rhythm in which one can dispense with rhyme and the limitations of a fixed metre and yet have a poetic rhythm, not either a flat or an elevated prose rhythm cut up into lengths. I think this poem shows how it can be done. There is a true poetic rhythm, even a metrical beat, but without any fixity, pleasant and verging with the curve or sweep of the thought and carrying admirably ...
... free verse and keep to a regular form based on the fixed number of stresses in each line and part of a line while yet there shall be a great plasticity and variety in all the other elements of poetic rhythm, the number of syllables, the management of the feet, if any, the distribution of the stress-beats, the changing modulation of the rhythm. In Page 557 Horis Aeternum was meant as a ...
... greatness and beauty of style, he threw out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at all. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house ...
... eternal shores. To converse with Amal is always a great pleasure. As one listens to him, to his distilled thoughts, to his perfect language with the 'mot juste', to his spontaneously poetic rhythm in speech, one is gradually lifted up in consciousness and one begins to respond from a higher level of one's own being. In his company, no matter how short or long, I become a better me. The ...
... from a strong prose only by the compression of the language and the stiffness of the movement—too stiff for prose, in quite another way too stiff for the fineness and plasticity there should be in poetic rhythm—especially needed, it seems to me, in free verse. From the fourth line of the fourth stanza I begin to find what seems to me the real poetic touch. The fifth and seventh have the substance and diction ...
... style and substance. In regard to poetic style we have to make, for the purpose of the idea we have in view, the starting-point of the Mantra, precisely the same distinctions as in regard to poetic rhythm,—since here too we find actually everything admitted as poetry which has some power of style and is cast into some kind of rhythmical form. But the question is, what kind of power and in that kind ...
... translate is the musical rhythm of the sentence—that's impossible. Because the English rhythm and the French rhythm are very different in character, and if you translate literally something that has a poetic rhythm in English, it may not come out poetic at all in French. So a translation is a translation, we have to settle for it.... But there will still be quite enough ideas left to do people some good! ...
... it is sound suggesting the hidden life-throb of a thing as felt by a certain mode of con-sciousness. As long as the mode is one that is accessible to the majority of people every fresh sweep of poetic rhythm goes home to the heart. When an extraordinary mode comes into play, the aesthetic ear needs special tuning in order to catch the whole gamut. 1 When the books were included in Collected ...
... revealing accent; It expresses them, as no 1. Collected Poems, pp. 368-69. Page 38 mere prose speech can do, with a certain kind of deep appealing intimacy of truth which poetic rhythm alone gives to expressive form and power of language: the greater this element, the greater is the poetry. The essence of this power can be there without metre, but metre is its spontaneous form ...
... that sense, it perhaps does not greatly matter; his great contribution was made in the way it was meant to be. I like what you write about Blank Verse, and of course it is the essential poetic rhythm of the English language, and has been used both by Shakespeare and Milton, Keats and Tennyson with great narrative beauty. But I have heard Page 28 Indian music (and Arabinda Basu ...
... And in that gap I fell down! Yes, I had a nasty toss some days back and had to stay at home for a time. What happened? you will ask. Well, as your Professor of Poetry I may say that my life has a poetic rhythm — a falling movement and a rising movement. Also, I am very much like a simile — very much like what I am doing just now, for I am giving you a simile in comparing myself to one. The Romans had ...
... But neither are they pastiche for that matter. He also did some genre paintings of ordinary scenes, including landscapes in the traditional style…Just like the clean and clear resonance of his poetic rhythm, the play of colours and the mode of expression in his art is pleasant and eye-catching. He was quite a master of the subject he handled and aware of the technique of composition… Regarding the ...
... and then merges in the glory of the Sun. (6) We have crossed over to the other shore of this Darkness. Dawn breaks out and creates all manifested form. She smiles as with the beauty of poetic rhythm. She shines out with her perfect face. She unveils herself and brings to us a happy mind. (7) Luminous she leads forth the blissful truths. Daughter of Heaven she is hymned by the most ...
... you, not otherwise. The real difference between a poem and a song is that a song is written with a view to be set to musical rhythm and a poem is written with the ear listening for the needed poetic rhythm or word-music. These two rhythms are quite different. That is why a poem cannot be set to music unless it has either been written with an eye to both kinds of rhythm or else happens to have (without ...
... to a Page 242 regular form based on the fixed number of stresses in each line and part of a line while yet there shall be a great plasticity and variety in all the other elements of poetic rhythm, the number of syllables, the management of the feet, if any, the distribution of the stress-beats, the changing modulation of the rhythm. In Horis Aeternum was meant as a first essay in this ...
... native utterance of the thing seen and conveys by significant sound its natural atmosphere. This passage shows us how much the metrically unrecognised element of intrinsic quantity can tell in poetic rhythm bringing real significations into what would be otherwise only sheer beauty of sound; quantity is one among its most important elements, even though it is not reckoned in the constitution of the ...
... dramatic language of his contemporaries — even contemporaries who have something or other Shakespearean about them. The Cambridge History of English Literature says: "In the mechanical elements of poetic rhythm, Massinger comes very near to Shake-speare; but, when we look deeper, and come to the consideration of those features of style which do not admit of tabular analysis, we find the widest difference ...
... beauty imaginative, beauty intellectual, beauty mystical is the very soul of him and he is in possession of an expressive instrument alive to the demands of the inner ear which is the true maker of poetic rhythm. Sri Aurobindo has well said in general how the inner ear's action takes place. "Technically, we may say that this comes in when the poet becomes, in Keats' phrase, a miser of sound and syllable ...
... and keep to a regular form based on the fixed number of stresses in each line and part of a line while yet there shall be a great plasticity and variety in all the other elements of poetic Page 367 rhythm, the number of syllables, the management of the feet, if any, the distribution of the stress-beats, the changing modulation of the rhythm. In Hons Aeternum was meant as a first essay ...
... and beauty of style, he threw out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at all. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the ...
... and of utterance and things uncommon with their own native and revealing accent; it expresses them, as no mere prose speech can do, with a certain kind of deep appealing intimacy of truth which poetic rhythm alone gives to expressive form and power of language: the greater this element, the greater is the poetry. The essence of this power can be there without metre, but metre is its spontaneous form ...
... e of "seas": it does not harmonise precisely because the very identity of the two sounds prepares us to think of a sea full of keels, so that to say "keelless" is to violate the logic of the poetic rhythm. Besides, the movement of the word is metrically flat: the seas seem to be undisturbed, an unbroken surface of water — a very apt suggestion in itself if the purpose is to bring home the picture ...
... received from Gurudev. And he read it out to me in great delight: "As for acquiring the sense and the power of rhythm, reading the poets may do something, but not all. There are two factors in poetic rhythm, — the technique (the variation of movement without spoiling the fundamental structure, right management of vowel and consonantal assonances and dissonances, the masterful combination of the musical ...
... Ideal Spirit of Poetry; The Sun of Poetic Truth; The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty; The Word and the Spirit; The Process, Form and Substance of Poetry; Sources of Poetic Inspiration and Vision; Poetic Rhythm and Technique; Beauty and Art; Appreciation of Poetry and Art; Poets, Mystics and Intellectuals; Poetic Creation and Yoga; Modern Poetry; Translation of Poetry; The Movement of Modern Literature; ...
... And you say "Ah, it is illumined, that's Intuition!" That you have to train your ear is a surprise inattendu ! Strange point! Who does not know that without rhythm poetry is nothing? If poetic rhythm is unessential, pray why not write in prose? Nishikanta's translation of Amal's poem 151 is really splendid, but is it also from the same plane as the original? Perhaps not, for Nishikanta's ...
... AUROBINDO: To keep up with the times. Nobody has really succeeded in prose-poetry except to some extent in France. Whitman has succeeded in one or two instances—but only when he has approached nearer poetic rhythm. I read somewhere that modern poets are giving up prose-poetry now and going more towards irregular free verse. PURANI: Tagore says that his works of this kind must be read aloud to catch the ...
... To see the truth of the life in the soul and to convey this truth, the right words in the right order or rhythm are needed. Just as the poetic word is much more than the Dictionary word, the poetic rhythm too is much more than the regular metrical beat; it has to try to "bring out an echo of hidden harmonies, a secret of rhythmical infinities within us". 5 Since the purpose of poetry is to see ...
... what the poem can give you, not otherwise. “The real difference between a poem and a song is that a song is written with a view to be set to musical rhythm and a poem is written with a view to poetic rhythm or word-music. The two rhythms are quite different. That is why a poem cannot be set to music unless it has either been written with an eye to both kinds of rhythm or else happens to have (without ...
... line-units and verse-paragraphs — the macrocosmic regularities find their reflection Page-51 in a microcosm of poetic cadences, the moving worlds make themselves felt in the harmonious words. As in our first group of verses, we have Infinity's rhythm-beats metricised. Then we have the grand finale — the last line which seems to bear in itself both qualitatively and quantitatively... Nature's hidden lords, and even in that of transcendental powers, godheads beyond the universe and not only behind it. Further, side by side with the spirit's linkage with divinity through poetic rhythms brought straight from "above", hieratic or sacred poetry endeavours for a manifestation of divinity "below". It gets into touch with "the heart of life" where a World-Soul toils at evolution... Aurobindo7 our whole exposition: "Sight is the essential poetic gift. The archetypal poet in a world of original ideas is, we may say, a Soul that sees in itself intimately Page 55 this world and all the others and God and Nature and the life of beings and sets flowing from its centre a surge of creative rhythm and word-images which become the expressive body of ...
... appreciation of poetic quality, rhythm-values, mystical tones, the inevitable form. The questions are far from easy to answer, because the analytic mind is not the prime judge in poetry. The critical intelligence can distinguish shades, elucidate imagery, point out technical effects, but all this after something else has felt and recognised inspiration, the divine afflatus. Vision, word, rhythm - these... form what Carlyle would have called the mechanism of rhythm as contrasted with its organism - with the living natural process which is the inspired afflatus taking sound as its medium, its expressive body. No amount of mere skill or mechanical adjustment of words will create inspiration: the outer rhythm cannot live unless there is an inner rhythm, a vibration in the being, caused by the indescribable... of them is Surya! As to rhythm-values, I do not know exactly what my correspondent wants me to say. Surely he is able to mark out power from delicacy, the sound that seizes him by its grandeur from that which steals into him and holds him spellbound, the swift sweeping music from the subtle and melodious and haunting air. Perhaps he means the sifting of the rhythms native to the different planes ...
... that poetry should be written only from the vital (I mean from poetic sensations, not from ideas) and that that is the only pure poetry. The poets of the vital plane seize with a great vivid- ness and extraordinary force of rhythm and phrase the life-power and the very sensation of the things they describe and express them to the poetic sense. What is often lacking in them is a perfect balance between... Is it because it is not good poetry —the images, language, are unpoetic or not sufficiently poetic, the rhythm harsh or flat? Or is it because it is too intellectual, leading in ideas more than visions and feelings ? Or is it that the spiritual genre is illegitimate—spiritual subjects not proper for poetic treatment? But in that case much of Tagore's poetry would be improper, not to speak of Donne... may never take birth at all. Nishikanta's poem on the Bazaar is very good work admirably done—he is evidently a craftsman in language and rhythm. I cannot go so far as to subscribe to your epithet great." There is however some power of developing a poetic subject which is full of promise. The thought-side of the development is not quite flawless—the emergence out of the ethical into the spiritu ...
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