... heard by the human ear. What, then, is the true content of the poetic word? It does have a particular look when written or printed, it does convey a particular sound to the ear, it does communicate something akin to an idea to the mind; but the word is more than what is appears and what it sounds and what it seems to mean. The poetic word is verily a symbol, it is a wave that floats in the ocean of Eternity... become the rule and not merely the rare exception. After laying down the quintessential law that the true creator as also the true hearer of poetry is the soul, Sri Aurobindo maintains that the poetic word acquires its extraordinary intensity and evocative power because "it comes from the stress of the soul-vision behind the word". 3 Words in poetry are not just words picked at random from a dictionary... and sometimes a prayer from man to God. Any word has a fairly definite denotation, and it could also acquire an almost limitless connotation, a potency and mystery and magic of its own. The true poetic word thus strives to catch the inward eye, to reach the inward ear, and to sink into the deeper profundities of the awakening or awakened soul. The real aim of the arts architecture, sculpture, painting ...
... do it by subduing to themselves what makes a communication across their independent existence. That would give rise to sheer verbosity, an excess of sound over sense. The true performance of the poetic word is just to be inseparable from its substance. If you alter the word, the substance ceases to be the same. What a world of difference if Wordsworth came rewritten: Love had he found in huts... or archetypal, which discloses concretely the very source of all magic and mystery, begins. From inevitable imaginative description to inevitable imaginative interpretation or suggestion goes the poetic word from the sthula sarira to the suksma : one may succeed in demarcating the two, though at times there is overlapping. But the borders between the interpretative or suggestive on the one side and ...
... architecture, appeals to the spirit of man through significant images, and it makes no essential difference that in this case the image is mental and verbal and not material. The essential power of the poetic word is to make us see, not to make us think or feel; thought and feeling 1 must arise out of the sight or be included in it, but sight is the primary consequence and power of poetic speech. For the... for another from poets who have a real spiritual vision like Keats and Shelley. English poetry runs, indeed, ordinarily in this mould. But this too is not that highest intensity of the revelatory poetic word from which the Mantra starts. It has a certain power of revelation in it, but the deeper vision is still coated up in something more external; sometimes the poetic intention of decorative beauty ...
... Word and the Spirit A development of the kind of which we are speaking must affect not only the frames of poetry, but initiate also a subtle change of its word and rhythmic movement. The poetic word is a vehicle of the spirit, the chosen medium of the soul's self-expression, and any profound modification of the inner habit of the soul, its thought atmosphere, its way of seeing, its type of feeling... suggestion, at work throughout the rest of the lyric, passes now beyond itself into an illuminative closeness and then we feel, we bear, we ourselves live at the moment through the power of the poetic word the authentic identity of the experience. It comes in luminous phrases emerging from a fine and lucid adequacy and the justice or the delicacy makes place for a lustrous profundity of suggestion ...
... thoroughly poetic way yet by suppression of all imagery, except perhaps for a light indirect touch of it in "sign". Here is Logopoeia—poetic word-thought—in concentrated clarity matching exactly the compact picturesqueness of the preceding verse's Phanopoeia—poetic word-image. This concentrated clarity is intuitive in essence, though it may be intuition taking a mental shape and not acting in ...
... saga or Nibelungenlied, we have to wait till quite recent times for poetic utterance, nor, when it came, was it rich or abundant. In Germany, so rich in music, in philosophy, in science, the great poetic word has burst out rarely: one brief and strong morning time illumined by the calm, large and steady blaze of Goethe's genius and the wandering fire of Heine, afterwards a long unlighted stillness. In... power, is mute in poetry. 1 It would almost seem that there is still something too thick and heavy in the strength and depth of the Teutonic composition for the ethereal light and fire of the poetic word to make its way freely through the intellectual and vital envelope. What has saved the English mind from a like taciturnity? It must have been the mixture of other racial strains, sublimating this ...
... thoroughly poetic way yet by suppression of all imagery, except perhaps for a slight indirect touch of it in "Sign." Here is Logopoeia — poetic word-thought — in concentrated clarity matching exactly the compact picturesqueness of the preceding verse's Phanopoeia — poetic word-image. Page 276 This concentrated clarity — taking almost an epigrammatic form — is intuitive in essence, though ...
... onward flow, its movement answering the call of the infinite wash of waters towards which it is for ever flowing. In Rabindranath's poetry the poetic word radiates itself with infinite suggestions striving towards a wider liberation: in Sri Aurobindo the poetic word is harnessed in the cause of a deeper revelation and releases its own inner light tuning itself to the higher rhythm... . Sri Aurobindo's ...
... why and how the poetic statement acts as it does. Unless we accept a divine disclosure by form we shall never have proper insight into the power of poetry. Because there is a divine disclosure the poetic word seizes us and works upon us so magically and because the disclosure is essentially by form it does so even when the meaning is hazy. Richards, though marking the strange satisfying and fulfilling ...
... of consciousness, however weighty or profound, make on us the art-impact that is revelation: the consciousness has to take a particular pat- Page 75 tern before it can become the poetic word. The philosophy of Epicurus is the substance, the matter, of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, but not till it has been stamped with the Lucretian sight and feeling, no less than shaped into the Lucretian ...
... their poems in order to bring out more fully the psychic influence. They knew that the subtle inner melody of love could best be conveyed through music - both the pure music and the music of the poetic word. When we read poems that have a psychic touch, we are at first moved by the musicality of the words. It is the music, more than the meaning, that enters through the ears in the depth of the soul ...
... associated with familiar story Page 127 and legend, fused into a vivid representation of life and thus made a near and living power that all could readily assimilate through the poetic word appealing at once to the soul and the imagination and the intelligence." The Savitri-tale is also written entirely in the same epic spirit and bears witness everywhere to the mission it purports ...
... Besides the substance, we should also recognise that the Yogin was a poet too. The language of a poet breathes differently than the language of a thinker or even that of a contemplator and the poetic word always carries with it several nuances of meaning; it always suggests, through its varied shades and colours, the happy truths of the spirit itself. And then it is the rhythm, the vibrant soul of ...
... incidents. The phrase of Leopardi, a wild indignant pessimism instead of the Virgilian majestic sadness, holds no recognisably spiritual notion, either. As Sri Aurobindo 8 observes about the absolute poetic word and rhythm which in such citations are of the same quality as in the occasional master-articulation of the Spirit in Wordsworth or Shelley: "It is not any strict adhesion to a transcendental view ...
... which become the expressive body of the vision, and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyairutah, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word." * One of the basic calls of the Yogic life on us is to understand that while being omniscient and omnipotent can wait we have to lose no time in being, in a certain preparatory sense ...
... rabie fera corda tument, majorque videri Nec mortale sonans, adflata est numine quando Jam propione Dei. 1 Apart from any difference due to the larger freedom in Latin for poetic word-arrangement, there is here a more outstanding metrical form without yet the least sing-song, a more striking beauty and power in the structure itself. If the classical hexameter could be "En ...
... Overmind, the world of the great Gods who are essentially One Existence and who, from the utterly divine and till now unmanifested Supermind, draw a delegated dynamism for their cosmic functions. The poetic word hailing from the Overmind is the Mantra. We have already spoken of its characteristics. Leading up to its source from the mental plane are the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition. Unlike ...
... become the expressive body of the vision; and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyasrutah, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word." References 1. Savitri , Centenary Edition, p. 383. 2. The Future Poetry, Centenary Edition, p. 220. 3. Savitri , Centenary Edition, p. 258. 4. ...
... expressive paths penetrated. While the former ages gave us something of the world's wonder as seized by the body-sense, the life-gusto, the mental aesthesis, there will be found in the future a poetic word equal to Homer and Shakespeare and Valmiki but packed with a superhuman awareness which is man's profoundest though as yet unrevealed truth of being and the archetype of his body, his vital force ...
... the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen's eye... Here we have two levels of inspiration. The first two lines give us the poetic mot juste, the appropriate poetic word. The next three give us the mot inevitable of poetry, poetry's perfect archetypal word. The whole temper and pitch of utterance undergo a decisive change towards an absolute enchantment. The ...
... he creates a form for his intuitive sight. The full Vedic des-cription of the poetic tribe is kavayah satyasrutah, which Sri Aurobindo elucidates as "seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word". 1 The inspired sound is implicit in the poetic act — and, just as the poet's vision must ultimately have behind it the working of some eternal eye, the poet's word must ultimately have behind ...
... creative and living figures, associated with familiar story and legend, fused into a vivid representation of life and thus made a near and living power that all could readily assimilate through the poetic word appealing at once to the soul and the imagination and the intelligence." The Vedic Rishis had spoken of life as a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. They had said ...
... its polychrome manifestation. It is almost an axiomatic truth recognised on all hands that vision is the principal, if not the unique, point d'appui of a poet. "The essential power of the poetic word is to make us see, not to make us think or feel; thought and feeling must arise out of or rather be included in the sight, but sight is the primary consequence and power of poetic speech." 11 ...
... brihat and in the highest ether of existence parame vyomani. ¹ The Vedic poet has sight behind the sight, and the ear behind the ear, — chakshushah chakshuh, shrotrasya shrotram, and the poetic word, — its sound, its its music is discovered by the poet somewhere in the high regions of Truth, beyond the limits of the poet's individuality. This is why it is regarded as apaurusheya, even though ...
... figures, associated with familiar story and legend, Page 346 fused into a vivid representation of life and thus made a near and living power that all could readily assimilate through the poetic word appealing at once to the soul and the imagination and the intelligence. The Mahabharata especially is not only the story of the Bharatas, the epic of an early event which had become a national ...
... psychic and spiritual science and religion are found in the ancient Indian culture woven into one unity, and when they turn to the expression of their most intimate experience, it is always the poetic word which they use. The steps of Poetry rise to these heights on her own side of the mountain of the gods. Poetry comes into being at the direct call of three powers, inspiration, beauty and delight ...
... thinker in us: this is Housman's conception of "pure poetry". But he does not say that poets should aim at nothing except such a word-pattern. What he emphasises is that Page 317 any poetic word-pattern is poetry by an element that, however mixed with thought, is really independent of it and can be best considered a stir of emotion. To touch us and move us is the function of poetry. ...
... roads of Dusk... In a slow suffering Time and tortured Space... In the use and choice of words, too, Savitri comes often with highly original gestures. There is the uplifting of a non-poetic word beyond its common connotation into poetic effectiveness, as in Page 385 Then shall the business fail of Death and Night, where the commercial note is fully exploited by "fail" ...
... which become the expressive body of the vision, and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavaya ḥ atya- ś ruta ḥ , seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word." 1 The Future Poetry, p. Page 226 ...
... study of the unknown, for by his intuitive style he was the one poet most gifted to do so; nobody after him has combined his ample scope, his varicoloured energetic beauty and his plucking the poetic word as if from the heart of his object. If he had plunged still beyond the occult and felt too some lasting impression of the mystic truth, we would have had a verse vivid and compact with a ...
... does mere substance of consciousness, however weighty or profound, make on us the art-impact that is revelation: the consciousness has to take a particular pattern before it can become the poetic word." 15 The generally accepted definition of poetry in ancient Indian poetics is that it is the "togetherness" of sound and sense, śab- dārthau sahitau. What Sethna says is something ...
... l" could have no success in uttering the Unutterable and that his wisecrack puts it out of court. No metaphysical had Sri Aurobindo's large and close grip on the Unknown nor his plucking of the poetic word, at even the simplest, as though from the very depths that seem to be beyond speech. Still, the metaphysi-cals had flashes of mystic intuition and experience visiting their undeniable if intermittent ...
... consciousness, the splendour that we are to meet when we happen to climb to these supernal planes? It is only a poet, a supreme Poet, who can fulfil this heavenly role. For, "the essential power of the poetic word is to make us see, not to make us think or feel; ... 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 this ...
... which become the expressive body of the vision; and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyaśrutāh, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word." (Sri Aurobindo - The Poet, 1999, pp. 182-207) _______________ 1 The Future Poetry, SABCL Vol. 9, p. 30. Page 184 ...
... and tortured Space... [pp. 211-18] In the use and choice of words, too, Savitri comes often with highly original gestures. There is the uplifting of a non- Page 112 poetic word beyond its common connotation into poetic effectiveness, as in Then shall the business fail of Death and Night, [p. 633] where the commercial note is fully exploited by "fail" ...
... the world of the great Gods who are essentially One Existence and who, from the utterly divine and till now unmanifested Supermind, draw a delegated dynamism for their cosmic functions. The poetic word hailing from the Overmind is the Mantra. We have already spoken of its characteristics. Leading up to its source from the mental plane are the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition. ...
... which become the expressive body of the vision, and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyaśrutāḥ, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word." 18 Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) 18 The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 30. Page 221 ...
... creative and living figures, associated with familiar story and legend, fused into a vivid representation of life and thus made a near and living power that all could readily assimilate through the poetic word appealing at once to the soul and the imagination and the intelligence." The Savitri-tale is also written entirely in the same epic spirit and bears witness everywhere to the mission it purports ...
... realised that a radical change of consciousness was the one revolution that could solve all problems. He wrote Savitri with the idea that the power of the word—especially the inspired and revelatory poetic word that comes from the heights or the depths and speaks to the inner being, not only to the surface mind—could help to bring about this change. The 1916 version of Savitri already shows the ...
... these facts as a sign of personal experience, his nightly seeing of things not of the earth though very much coloured by physicalities no less than by his own personal attitudes, and hearing the poetic word which conjured them up? Page 30 Ordinarily we should find it difficult to recognise his seeing things not of the earth, so strong is the stamp of the man's mental conception upon ...
... word, if not the inevitable word, there is a much greater difficulty presented by the deep metaphysical and esoteric issues themselves. These are issues of a very fundamental character and the poetic word of the Gita has raised and tackled them with such mastery that to recreate it with that abounding and liberal expository power is well nigh impossible. It has a certain epic sweep and vastness, a ...
... creative and living figures, associated with familiar story and legend, fused into a vivid representation of life and thus made a near and living power that all could readily assimilate through the poetic word appealing at once to the soul and the imagination and the intelligence. ... The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan ...
... 510-1 Fraser, Sir Andrew, 246fn Fry, Christopher, 147 Fuller, Sir Bamfylde, 204, 224, 248 Future Poetry, The, 404,448,511,610ff; the mantra, 610-1, 612; the poetic word, 611; the poet as seer, 611-2; on Chaucer, 613; on the Elizabethans, 613-4; on Paradise Lost, 614; on Byron and Wordsworth, 614-5; on Homer and Whitman, 615; five powers of poetry, 616; Sun of ...
... Goethe's, 425-427; Sri Aurobindo's visionary certainty, 436; Sri Aurobindo's sonnets,440-443; discussion of Sri Aurobindo on the philosophy of Savitri, 451; discussion of Sri Aurobindo's poetic style & word combinations, 455-456; Sri Aurobindo's life-work culminating in Savitri reviewed, 457-465. Bain, F.W. 403,451 Baji Prabhou 12,52,53,340,342,458 Bande... compared, 432; symbolic action in, 432-440; Sri Aurobindo's Sonnets and, 440; views on the length of, 445-447; views on the human interest of, 448-449; views on the philosophic content of, 450-451; word-combinations in, 455-456; Savitri as the fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo's life's work, 457-458; Savitri as a new revelation for a greater Dawn, 464. Schopenhauer 13 Sethna, K.D ...
... to reject that word as a le gal archaism inadmissible in good poetry. Your remark about "whereas" in my essay seemed to me just in pointing out the obscurity of connection it introduced between the two parts of my sentence, but the term itself has no stigma on it of obsolescence as does for instance "whenas": in poetry it would be rather prosaic, while "wherethrough" is a special poetic usage as any... violence purposely done to the language in order to produce a poetic effect. The English language, unlike the French and some others, likes, as Stephen Phillips used to say, to have liberties taken with it. But, of course, before one can take these liberties, one must be a master of the language—and, in this case, of the Latin also. The word "reboant" occurs in The Rishi. Evidently it is a misprint... misprint. What ought to be in its place? Why is it evidently a misprint? It is a recognised (though rare and poetic) English word, from Latin reboans. Reboare in Latin means "to cry aloud again and again". 1931 What do you mean when you write of my poem, "It is very felicitous in expression and taking." I think Shakespeare wrote somewhere "Daffodils that come before the swallow dares and take ...
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