Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
I am not competent in respect to the technique of Bengali poetry. I can only follow my feeling, what I call the inner ear – so on this point I can say nothing beyond my own feeling. In your first poems written here I thought that your rhythmic movement departed sometimes from the norm – I suppose that is what they mean by chhanda bhanga [a break in the metre]? – but on a second reading my impression was, more often than not, that there was a (rhythmic) justification for the departure. I do not know whether Buddhadev is referring to these poems or to others written before the opening of your poetic faculty here, which were poor both in expression and in rhythm. In any case, there can surely be no exception taken to your rhythm now; your mastery seems to me complete. I suppose in this province Tagore’s verdict can be taken as final.
On the general question the truth seems to me to be very simple. It is quite true that fine or telling rhythms without substance (substance of idea, suggestion, feeling) are hardly poetry at all, even if they make good verse. But that is no ground for belittling beauty or excellence of form or ignoring its supreme importance for poetic perfection. Poetry is after all an art and a poet ought to be an artist of word and rhythm, even though necessarily, like other artists, he must also be something more than that, even much more. I hold therefore that harshness and roughness, karkaśatā, are not merits, but serious faults to be avoided by anyone who wants his work to be true poetry and survive. One can be strong and powerful, full of sincerity and substance without being harsh, rough or aggressive to the ear. On one side 
Swinburne’s later poetry is a mere body of rhythmic sound without a soul, but what of Browning’s constant deliberate harshness and roughness which deprives much of his work of the claim to be poetry – it is already much discredited and it is certain that posterity will carefully and with good reason forget to read it? Energy enough there is and abundance of matter and these carry the day for a time and give fame, but it is only perfection that endures. Or if the cruder work lasts, it is only by association with the perfection of the same poet’s work at his best. I may say also that if mere rhythmic acrobacies of the kind to which you very rightly object condemn a poet’s work to inferiority and a literature deviating on to that line to decadence, the drive towards a harsh strength and rough energy of form and substance may easily lead to another kind of undesirable acrobacy and an opposite road towards individual inferiority and general decadence. Why should not Bengali poetry go on to the straight way of its progress without running either upon the rocks of roughness or into the shallows of mere melodies? Austerity of course is another matter – rhythm can be either austere to bareness or sweet and subtle, even luxurious – perfection can be attained in either of these extreme directions if the mastery is there.
As for rules – rules are necessary but they are not absolute; one of the chief tendencies of genius is to break old rules and make departures which create new ones. English poetry of today luxuriates in movements which to the mind of yesterday would have been anarchic license, chhanda bhanga, yet it is evident that has led to discoveries of new rhythmic beauty with a very real charm and power and opened out possible lines of growth,– however unfortunate many of its results may be. Not the formal mind, but the ear must be the judge.
I do not think the appreciation of poetry like yours is dependent on a new technique; it is as you say, something in the composition of the nature which responds or does not respond to the new note that determines the rejection or the acceptance. At the same time the development of this new note – the impression of a deeper yogic or mystic experience in poetry – may very well demand for its fullness new departures in technique, a new turn or turns of rhythm, but subtle in their difference rather than aggressive.