Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 27
Fragment ID: 6741
Examples from Classical and Mediaeval Writers [2]
What exactly is Dante’s style? Is it the forceful adequate (of course at an “inevitable” pitch)? Or is it a mixture of the adequate and the effective? A line like –
e venni dal martiro a questa pace –
is evidently adequate; but has this the same style –
sí come quando Marsia traesti
della vagina delle membra sue?
The “forceful adequate” might apply to much of his writing, but much else is pure inevitable; elsewhere it is the inspired style as in the last lines quoted. I would not call the other line merely adequate; it is much more than that. Dante’s simplicity comes from a penetrating directness of poetic vision, it is not the simplicity of an adequate style.
3 November 1936