Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
SABCL 26
Fragment ID: 7950
Q: According to your five kinds of poetic style – the adequate, the effective, the illumined, the inspired and the pure inevitable which is something indefinable – how would you class Dante’s style? It has a certain simplicity mixed with power which suggests what I may call the forceful adequate – of course at an inevitable pitch – as its definition. Or is it a mixture of the adequate and the effective? A line like –
E venni dal martirio a questa pace1 –
is evidently adequate; but has this the same style –
Si come quando Marsïa traesti
Della vagina delle membra sue?2
A: The “forceful adequate” might apply to much of Dante’s 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.
3-11-1936
1 And came from that martyrdom into this peace.
2 As when you pulled Marsyas out of the scabbard of his limbs.