Sophocles : (c.497-406 BC), one of the three great tragic playwrights of classical Greece. He wrote some 123 dramas, only seven of which have survived.
... anecdote is told about Sophocles. Towards the end of his life, when he was nearing ninety, his son petitioned the court that his father had been suffering from mental derangement on account of age and in this condition had bequeathed his possessions to a grandson to the exclusion of the son. On being summoned before the court, Sophocles said these words to the judges: "If I am Sophocles, then I cannot have... 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 himself had read out this line to me more than once and given it an extremely beautiful interpretation. It is the opening line of Sophocles' famous play, Antigone, which happened to be the second book I studied while learning... (Murray) The point to note is that whereas in Valmiki a man is made to say that wives are available by the dozen in every land, Sophocles makes a woman declare as if in retort that husbands too are to be had in plenty. (3) Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the three supreme creators of drama in ancient Greece, each of them is different from the others. Aeschylus the senior most ...
... the highest degree, beauty, grace, self-contained dignity and grandeur, which we associate with the highest genius. Cultural events such as public performances of the great plays of Aeschylus, 15 Sophocles 16 and Euripides 17 formed part of the developing Page 14 GREECE 362 BC Page 15 urban lifestyle. All citizens, rich or poor, could enjoy these events together... philosophy, Pheidias, Myron, and Polycletus, the sculptors, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, the painters, Pericles, the great orator and statesman, Herodotus and Thucydides, the historians, and Euripides and Sophocles, the tragedians. This empire, however, did not last long; a conflict with the Greek city-state of Sparta, Athens' rival throughout Greek history, grew into the long Peloponnesian War... (525-456 Be) was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict between them; previously, characters interacted only with the chorus. Unfortunately, only seven of the estimated ...
... they have said than by what they have made. 31 March 1932 Is the omission of Vyasa deliberate? It was you who omitted Vyasa, Sophocles and others—not I. Page 368 Yes, I plead guilty. But that, I hope, will be no reason why Vyasa and Sophocles should remain unclassified by you. And "the others"—they intrigue me even more. Who are these others? Saintsbury as good as declares... and other plays) is a greater poet than Racine whom you want to put in the first ranks. If you want only the very greatest, none of these can enter—only Vyasa and Sophocles. Vyasa could very well claim a place beside Valmiki, Sophocles beside Aeschylus. The rest, if you like, you can send into the third row with Goethe, but it is something of a promotion about which one can feel some qualms. Spenser ...
... control and a shaping propriety over the elan of assertive individuality. The chief names usually listed in Graeco-Roman Classicism are Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil and Lucretius. These six, all things considered, are indeed greater than the brilliant sextet: Pindar, Simonides, Sappho, Horace, Catullus... and understands life. As a result, his effect on the cultural consciousness of ancient Greece through his two epics was different from that of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides through their dramas. To quote Sri Aurobindo again: "The epic poems revealed the Hellenic people to itself in the lucid and clear nobility and beauty of an... Homer's humbler folk. Not that the later mind of Greece was divorced from laughter or from depiction of low life; the Greeks of the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles "staged a burlesque after each tragic trilogy", 25 but they never mixed the genres. What, however, akins Homer to them is that nothing in his epics is allowed ...
... - it is something in the manner of the vision, the disposition of the word, the run of the rhythm. The distracted Oedipus of Sophocles may resemble the mad Lear of Shakespeare, but they are caught in poetry of two distinct orders and neither theme nor mood can make Sophocles Romantic or Shakespeare Classical. Similarly, Dante rests Classical for all his poignancy and sensitivity. Lucas 23 himself... eyes, but the creation is always out of the poet's self and not out of what he externally sees: "that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work." 22 The Classical poet - a Sophocles or a Virgil - no less than the Romantic has his mind environed by much more than the immediate physical reality, by even much more than the physical universe he imagines in his drama or epic: invisible ...
... poetic style. SRI AUROBINDO: Yeats is more sustained. NIRODBARAN: Then there is some standard? SRI AUROBINDO: What standard? Some say Sophocles is greater than Shakespeare. Others favour Euripides. Still others say Euripides is nowhere near Sophocles. How can one decide whether Dante is greater or Shakespeare? PURANI: It is better to ask what the criterion of great poetry is. NIRODBARAN:... Usually, of course, great poets are not pessimistic. They have too much life-force in them. But generally every poet is dissatisfied with something or the other and has an element of pessimism. Sophocles said, "The best thing is not to be born." (Laughter) NIRODBARAN: Our Satyendra here will like this. SATYENDRA: There is no harm in being born after one has had liberation in the previous birth ...
... etc. Sri Aurobindo : If one has .all form and no substance, is he greater than one who has substance and no form? Some say Sophocles is greater than Shakespeare, others say Euripides is greater. There are others, again, who say Euripides is nowhere near Sophocles. How can you say whether Dante is greater than Shakespeare? Disciple : It is better to ask what is the criterion of great... of course, great poets are not pessimistic, – they have too much life-force in them; but generally every poet is dissatisfied with something or other and has some element of pessimism in him. Sophocles said, "The best thing is not to be born." (Laughter) Disciple : But we want you to give us the criterion or criteria by which one can decide the greatness of poetry. Page 242 ...
... teachers of poetry, music and general education: it required, as Sophocles 2 p uts it: The rudder's 3 guidance and the curb's 4 restraint. And so he sent for Aristotle, 5 the most famous and learned of the philosophers of ________ 1 To exult: to be joyful or jubilant, esp. because of triumph or success; rejoice. 2 Sophocles was born in Athens in 496 B.C. He was one of the most farnous ...
... intelligible." 63 60 poems, if they have beauty, are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet's work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only 7 plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets. He says that "Mallarmé's verse is acquired and intricate" i.e. a thing not of spontaneity... but quite out of the question. His prose-poems are not good, if you have seen any. Is it because his grey matter has become greyer by age? It is quite natural—he is fagged out. It is true Sophocles wrote one of his grandest dramas when he was—well was it 70 or 80 years old? Or is it because you don't support him any, longer with your force? ?[ Sri Aurobindo put a question mark .] ...
... consciousness and in his outer social life. The problem—Man versus Society, the individual and the collective—the private and the public sector in modem jargon—is not of today. It is as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the individual against the law of the State and sacrificed Page 40 herself for that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed... tragic sensitivity, a nostalgia woven into the fabric of the utterance, its rhythm and imagery, its thought and phrasing. "The eternal note of sadness" which Arnold heard and felt in the lines of Sophocles, we hear in the verses of Pasternak as well. Almost echoing the psalmist's cry of Vanity of vanities, Pasternak sings: But who are we, where do we come from When of all those years ...
... Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite ...
... sheer first class, but even these he distributes into three rows. In the top row he puts Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer and Shakespeare as equals. In the middle' row come Dante, Kalidasa; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton. In the third stands in solitary grandeui:Goethe.1 Those in the first- row have supreme imaginative originality and expressive power and creative genius, the widest scope and... built their worlds and peopled them by an energetic constructiveness of the personal poetic mind. Aeschylus is a seer and creator but his scale of creation is much smaller: the same may be said of Sophocles. Virgil and Milton command a still less spontaneous breath of creative genius, though their expressive power is immense. Where in their works do we meet a teeming world like that of the Shakes-pearean ...
... consciousness and in his outer social life. The problem – Man versus Society, the individual and the collective-the private and the public sector in modern jargon – is not of today. It is as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the individual against the law of the State and sacrificed herself for that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed his personal individual claims... toute existence attend Sa chaleur d'un peu de souffrance." Page 188 and imagery, its thought and phrasing. "The eternal note of sadness" which Arnold heard and felt in the lines of Sophocles, we hear in the verses of Pasternak as well. Almost echoing the psalmist's cry of Vanity of vanities, Pasternak sings: But who are we, where do we come from When of all those years Nothing ...
... Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by , the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite ...
... own temperament or those which are quite abnormal and therefore easily drawn; the latter are generally bad women, the Clytaemnestras, Vittoria Corombonas, Beatrice Joannas. The women of Vyasa & of Sophocles have all a family resemblance; all possess a quiet or commanding masculine strength of character which reveals their parentage. Other poets we see succeeding in a single feminine character & often ...
... but on the contrary Shakespeare is universally considered greater, standing among the few who are supreme. Theocritus is always perfect in what he writes, but he cannot be ranked with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Why not, if art is the only thing? Obviously, because what the others write has an ampler range, a much more considerable height, breadth, depth, largeness. There are some who say that great and ...
... city, of which Athens was the supreme achievement, a life in which living itself was an education, where the poorest as well as the richest sat together in the theatre to see and judge the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides and the Athenian trader and shopkeeper took part in the subtle philosophical conversations of Socrates, created for Europe not only its fundamental political types and ideals but practically ...
... we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of the elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot then enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of us at any rate, and is ...
... disclosure you make apropos of the lines of Yeats's you quoted in your letter of December 11: "At nearly eighty the evocation of love means to me little or nothing any more..." I am reminded of Sophocles who said on his eightieth birthday: "At last I am free of passion." The case was quite different with Hugo and Goethe. Around eighty Hugo was still a Page 162 skirt-chaser, and Goethe ...
... movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate or vehement, of sensation, passion, emotion is directly expressed); intellectual mind (as in Vyasa, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante and Milton, where the poetic vision markedly brings out thought-values of whatever is caught up from subjective or objective existence). The Future Poetry would be written from ...
... two lines of stanza 1 have a somewhat imaginative turn, and the closing couplet of the final stanza has some power, but the whole of its second line is virtually borrowed from a famous passage of Sophocles and cannot be credited to Bacon. In the rest we have two phrases of a slight felicity: "Curst from the cradle" and "To dandle fools." In a couple of places there is a weak wit. All else is coinage ...
... explanatory phrase: "He moves all things by being their beloved." This is thought working through the heart, and the inner heart besides, not the merely emotion-flushed heart but the heart in which, as Sophocles puts it, are engraved those eternal laws whose home is the high ether. By the way, the famous last line of Dante's Divina Commedia, which we once translated with a slight freedom at the end— ...
... than any other eminent poet, carried the soul of past music mingled with a spirit that makes all things new. In fact, he had the avowed ambition to gather up in his Paradise Lost Aeschylus and Sophocles, Virgil, Lucretius and Dante into a mature mastery of style animated by his own genius and character. A consummate scholar in various literatures, deeply saturated with the great traditions of poetry ...
... conveys with intense word and rhythm an apt amazement, a flush of insight which brings in powers larger, subtler, more gripping than sense and emotion, in the same way as the "high seriousness" of a Sophocles and the profound charm that emanates from a Wordsworth are not intellectual ingredients so much as a wider revelation pitched in the key of the intellect. No doubt, poetry functions in us through ...
... nothing to offer that could be called “spiritual”, and the Greeks, admired as creators of culture and the arts, had no tradition which exceeded the arbitrariness of a world as depicted by Homer or Sophocles’ tragic human destinies. However, true spirituality, fulfilling all the requirements, could be found where the great Romantics had looked for it and where “the new romanticism” followed in their tracks: ...
... which it can illuminate all other things at the same time? This Sun some people call appropriately the light of the World, others its Soul or Ruler. [Hermes] Trismegistos calls it the Visible God, Sophocles’ Electra calls it the All-Seeing. Thus the Sun, sitting on its Royal Throne, guides the revolving family of the stars.” 12 The mentality of Nicolaus Copernicus seems to have been rather different ...
... of Cambridge University. As a classical scholar, Aurobindo was participating in an educational system whose traditions went back to the Renaissance. To master Greek and Latin, to read Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, to absorb the culture of classical Greece and Rome — these were considered the proper training of an English gentleman. And what one learned in the classroom and lecture hall was ...
... depicted by Peter Heehs: ‘As a classical scholar, Aurobindo was participating in an educational system whose traditions went back to the Renaissance. To master Greek and Latin, to read Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, to absorb the culture of classical Greece and Rome – these were considered the proper training of an English gentleman. And what one learned in the classroom and lecture hall was ...
... blossoming should take place. We do not have enough records of what this point meant in the lives of well-known people. But some mixed interesting information is available about a few of them. Sophocles, on becoming an octogenarian, heaved a sigh of relief, saying: "Now at last I am free from passion." A pretty good climax to the human drama - as notable an achievement as having penned Antigone ...
... high rank: Dante figured for him among the giants of poetry. But Sri Aurobindo certainly did not put him at the sheer top. Dante stood on a slightly lower level, along with Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton - just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the elite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki and Vyasa ...
... technique of 6,244 Shāh-Nāmāh 60 Shakespeare, William 42,164,166, 188,205,230,237 Shelley 23,42,67,70,197,334,367 siddha 303,304 silence 87,228,265 of mind 344 Sophocles 205 soul description 115 evolving 81 in ancient scriptures 3,5 liberating 182 life force and 134 poetry and 165 progress and 312 Spenser 46,187 spiritual ...
... arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of the elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty Page 40 of the thing said cannot then enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with ...
... Besides this he considered that the task of training and educating his son was too important to be entrusted to the ordinary run of teachers of poetry, music and general education: it required, as Sophocles puts it The rudder's guidance and the curb's restraint, and so he sent for Aristotle,6 the most famous and learned of the philosophers of his time, and rewarded him with the generosity that ...
... the two has not been found perhaps more than a dozen times since the world began. Because he possessed this harmonious combination, Kālidāsa ranks not with Anacreon and Horace and Shelley, but with Sophocles, Virgil and Milton. 7 There are references to Kālidāsa's greatness as a poet at different times, in our own country from scholars and poets of eminence, even of the stature of Bānabhatta ...
... had some education the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I took up Greek, I began straightaway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone.... I began my Latin with Virgil's Aeneid, and Italian with Dante.... I should tell you what one gains by this method, at least what has been my personal experience. One feels as if ...
... reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I Page 62 took up Greek, I began straightway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone . I began a translation of Antigone into Bengali and Sri Aurobindo offered to write a preface if I completed the translation, a preface where, he said, he would take up the question ...
... basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate ...
... 25, 26, 27, 101, 103 Shakuntala 8 Shelley 104 Shitala 31 Shyama 80 Shyama 80 Siddhas 82 Siddhacharyas 11, 82, 83, 87 Soma 2, 12 Somadevata 37 Sophocles 40, 43 South America 55 Spain 61 Sri Aurobindo 8, 27, 30, 36, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92. 93. I03 Sri Rama 41 Sutra 13 Svarga 34 Swadeshi 89 Swadeshi Movement 98 ...
... basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or ...
... of the Sea, (Sagar-Sangit), Tiff; Sri Aurobindo on Sagar-Sangit, 77-78; and Childe Harold and Perse's Amers, 78; symbolism of the sea, 78 Songs to Myrtilla, 38ff, 68,71, 72 Sophocles, 21 Sorokin, Pitrim A., 751 Spiegelberg, Frederic, 17,20,751 Spinoza, 418 Srinivasachariar, Mandayam, 375ff, 391, 405,525 Standard-Bearer, The, 527 ...
... A great work of art, it must be noted, bears the stamp of its creator. Even in the same field of work each great artist leaves his own stamp on his work. For example, take the Greek dramatist Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus or the French trio. Voltaire, Racine, Corneille —you will find the distinguishing stamp of each on his work. A soul expressing the eternal spirit of Truth and Beauty ...
... had some education, the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I took up Greek, I began straightway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone. I began a translation of Antigone into Bengali and Sri Aurobindo offered to write a preface if I completed the translation, a preface where, he said, he would take up the question of ...
... sane and strong in all its parts. So much did these elements form the basis of Coleridge's own temperament that he could not perhaps imagine a genius in which they were wanting. Yet Goethe, Dante & Sophocles show that the very highest genius can exist without them. But none of the great poets I have named is so singularly masculine, so deficient in femineity as Vyasa, none dominates so much by intellect ...
... classed with the genus irritabile vatum; nor does he square any better with the popular idea that melancholy, eccentricity and disease are necessary concomitants of genius. Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Goethe, the really great poets, were men of high sanity—except perhaps in the eyes of those to whom originality & strong character are in themselves madness. But to arrive at this ...
... paper, an insane hacking of stone and an effeminate daubing of canvas; Vauban, Pestalozzi, Dr. Parr, Vatel and Beau Brummell are then the true heroes of artistic creation and not Da Vinci, Angelo, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Rodin. Whether Mr. Archer's epithets and his accusations against Indian spirituality stand in the comparison, let the judicious determine. But meanwhile we see the opposition ...
... city, of which Athens was the supreme achievement, a life in which living itself was an education, where the poorest as well as the richest sat together in the theatre to see and judge the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, and the Athenian trader and shopkeeper took part in the subtle philosophical conversations of Socrates, created for Europe not only its fundamental political types and ideals but p ...
... by Peter Heehs as follows: “As a classical scholar, Aravinda was participating in an educational system whose traditions went back to the Renaissance. To master Greek and Latin, to read Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, to absorb the culture of classical Greece and Rome – this was considered the proper training of an English gentleman. And what one learned in the classroom and lecture hall was ...
... It seems I am not very rich in the faculty of image-making. And without that hardly any creation worth the name is possible. Sri Aurobindo: What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is full of images? Then on April ...
... would place them among the greatest creators." Among the latter, Sri Aurobindo makes three rows: First row - Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Vyasa. Second row - Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Milton. Third row - Goethe. In Sri Aurobindo's view, Dante and Kalidasa would rank beside those in the first row except that they do not have enough of "a kind of elemental ...
... not Classical in style; but when he precedes these lines with The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly, we might be listening to a Sophocles in a truly spiritual instead of merely religious mood. Wordsworth writing Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears Page 197 or even Thou, over whom thy immortality ...
... very high rank: Dante figured for him among the giants of poetry. But Sri Aurobindo certainly did not put him at the sheer top. Dante stood on a slightly lower level, along with Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton — just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the e1ite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki and Vyasa. ...
... we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of elevation or depth or of intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of us at any rate, and is part ...
... fortunes. To deal with a Greek theme is not to be antiquated or obsolete. Much depends on the inner substance of the theme. When we open Herodotus or Thucydides, Plato or Aristotle, Aeschylus or Sophocles, we often light on "modern" figures, situations and attitudes, for the world-drama has many motifs common to its several acts. Besides, we must not forget that Sri Aurobindo is no scholar shut up ...
... the end: There is a darkness in terrestrial things That will not suffer long too glad a note. [ pp. 16-17 ] Are these lines the poetic intelligence at its deepest, say, like a mixture of Sophocles and Virgil? They may be the pure or the intuitivised higher mind. I do not think it is the poetic intelligence any more than Virgil's Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt , which I ...
... le." [p. 20] 60 poems if they have beauty are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet's work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only seven plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets. He says that "Mallarmé's verse is acquired and intricate" i.e. a thing not of spontaneity ...
... ancient Athens have concentrated on thought and beauty and the delight of living. But there were in the Athenian development two distinct periods, one of art and beauty, the Athens of Phidias and Sophocles, and one of thought, the Athens of the philosophers. In the first period the sense of beauty and the need of freedom of life and the enjoyment of life are the determining forces. This Athens thought ...
... revive simultaneously & the continuity of the kamananda has to be confirmed. This has to be done today. Agesilaus = Sn [Saurin]. Agathon, Alcibiades, Pericles, Brasidas Agis, Agesilaus, Sophocles, Pharnabazus. Lysander, Euripides, Pausanias. Two absolutely perfect, the rest mostly defective. That is already done. Now for the physical siddhi. Ananda first of all, Ananda first & foremost ...
... Lafayette. Pompey. T. [Titus] Manlius. Marcellus. Agis. Philip IV. Pausanias. Lysander. B. [Benedict] Arnold Notes - IX χωμοɩ Pericles, Agathon, Alcibiadas, Brasidas.... Agesilaus, Agis, Sophocles, Pharnabazus .. Lysander, Euripides, Pausanias Notes - X 19ṭḥ jagrat developed—except divya. 21ṣṭ thought proved & free from error. 24ṭḥ sarvatragati perfect 27 siddhis perfect. All ...
... Poetry depends on power of thought, feeling, language—not on abundance of images. Some poets are rich in images, all need not be. 18 February 1936 What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not Page 165 full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyasa or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? ...
... arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of elevation or depth or of intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of us at any rate, and is part ...
... young uplifted race. For these are her gifts to those who worship her. Here we have Classical Greece hit off to a nicety. But the typical spirit of the Greece of Pericles and Phidias and Sophocles— "the inspired reason and the enlightened and chastened aesthetic sense", as Sri Aurobindo's Future Poetry 1 has it—is developed not only when a crude vitalism is overpassed: it is developed also ...
... feminity of genius he had in mind certain features of temperament which whether justly or not, are usually thought to count for more in the feminine mould than in the masculine.... Yet Goethe, Dante and Sophocles show that the very highest genius can exist without them. But none of the great poets I have named is so singularly masculine, so deficient in feminity as Vyasa, none dominates so much by intellect ...
... the extension and beautification of the Acropolis, and Phidias, the sculptor, created the statues of the Parthenon. 3 Cultural events such as public performances of the great plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides formed part of the developing urban lifestyle. All citizens, rich or poor, could enjoy these social events together in an atmosphere of critical appreciation. The political and social ...
... images, all need not be. It seems I am not very rich in the faculty of imagination. And without that hardly any creation worth the name is possible. What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? After what you have ...
... catching lice! Factual information about the poet is lacking. It is believed that his home was in Ionia in Asia. Among the front ranking poets of the world we could include Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Virgil, Kalidas, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton and Goethe. From the point of view of essential force and beauty, Homer and Shakespeare stand above all the rest, although Vyasa, the author ...
... Earth, 1991. Mother's Agenda - 13 volumes, Evolution II, 1992. The Great Sense / Sri Aurobindo and the Future of the Earth, 1 996. The Tragedy of the Earth - From Sophocles to Sri Aurobindo, 1998. Neanderthal Looks On, 1999. The Veda and Human Destiny, 1992 Page 157 ...
... QUESTION: It seems I am not very rich in the faculty of image-making. And without that hardly any creation worth the name is possible. SRI AUROBINDO: What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is full of images? Then on April 1st ...
... MYSELF: It seems I am not very rich in the faculty of imagination. And without that hardly any creation worth the name is possible. SRI AUROBINDO: What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? MYSELF: ...
... Shita1a, 180 Siddhacharyas, 164, 221-2, 225 Siddhas, 221 Siva, 31, 278 Socrates, 12, 58, 73, 98, 239, 281 Soma, 23, 28-9, 44-5, 165, 167, 184 Song if Solomon, 66-7 Sophocles, 73, 86, 187, 189 Spain, 205 Spengler, 297 Spenser, 68 Spinoza, 98 Sri Aurobindo, 49, 52, 54, 55n., 58-62, 64-5n., 67n., 75-6n., 81n., 1O2n., 126, 132, 135, 162n., 176, 179, 183-4 ...
... – sunyam – the de-humanised divinity. An exquisite instance of this almost divinised human element – this residuum of humanity raised and taken into Page 254 divinity is given by Sophocles in his Antigone.¹ The very first words that Antigone utters addressing her sister express wonderfully this feeling I am trying to express here – this feeling of union and compassion in an exquisite ...
... had some education, the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I took up Greek, I began straightway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone. I began a translation of Antigone into Bengali and Sri Aurobindo offered to write a preface if I completed the translation, a preface where, he said, he would take up the question of the ...
... language was, not through primers and grammars, but to make the pupil plunge into the living waters of its great literature. Nolini began Greek with the Medea of Euripides and the Antigone of Sophocles. Latin with the Aeneid, and Italian with Dante.** This was also the period when they felt they might indulge a little in the luxury of buying books. With a lavish provision of Rs. 10 per month, ...
... those of the younger generation have had the liberating experience of seeing him in person. They can but gaze at the published photographs (much as they look at the supposed portraits of Homer or of Sophocles or of Shakespeare), and make whatever conjectures or conclusions may seem valid or appropriate. There were, however, those who knew Sri Aurobindo in person, as pupils or as friends or as co ...
... simple as well as sensuous and passionate. Milton himself — as compared to a poet like Homer — was far from simple. I don't believe his construction and his mode of thought were even as simple as Sophocles's or Euripides's. His "simple", therefore, I understand as "unforced" or "fresh" or "alive with a natural vigour": it is opposed not to "complex" but to "mechanically constructed" or "dryly devious" ...
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