Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
SABCL 26
Fragment ID: 7970
Q: In your sonnet “The Human Enigma” occurs the magnificent line:
His heart is a chaos and an empyrean.
But I am much saddened by the fact that the rhythm of these words gets spoiled at the end by a mis-stressing in “empyrean”. “Empyrean” is stressed currently in the penultimate syllable, thus: “empyre’an”. Your line puts the stress on the second syllable. It is in the adjective “empyreal” that the second syllable is stressed, but the noun is never stressed that way, so far as I know. Perhaps you have a precedent in the Elizabethans? Or have you deliberately taken liberty with the accentuation? The same mis-stressing occurs also in Book II, Canto 11, of Savitri:1 page 270, line 6:
Surprised in their untracked empyrean.
But you certainly do not always stress the noun like the adjective. In Book I, Canto III, line 5 from below on page 25 is the splendid verse:
An empyrean vision saw and knew.
Here the penultimate syllable gets the ictus. May I have some explanation? Perhaps there are acknowledged alternative accentuations and I am just ignorant? I really hope so, for otherwise, while the line from Book II of “Savitri” can easily take a noun after “empyrean” or get its “empyrean” changed to “empyreal” and then take a noun, the sonnet-line will not have the same absolute grandeur of phrase as now if it is rewritten:
His heart is a chaos and an empyreans span.
If it is to rhyme with “man”, “plan” and “scan” in your sonnet-scheme it must bring in “span” – mustn’t it?
A: I find in the Chambers’s Dictionary the noun “empyrean” is given two alternative pronunciations, each with a different stress,– the first, “empyre’an” and secondly, “empy’rean”. Actually in the book the accent seems to fall on the consonant “r” instead of the vowel. That must be a mistake in printing; it is evident that it is meant to fall on the second vowel. If that is so, my variation is justified and needs no further defence. The adjective “empyreal” the dictionary gives as having the same alternative accentuation as the noun, that is to say, either “empyre’al” with the accent on the long “e” or “empy’real” with the accent on the second syllable, but the “e” although unaccented still keeps its long pronunciation. Then? But even if I had no justification from the dictionary and the noun “empy’rean” were only an Aurobindonian freak and a wilful shifting of the accent, I would refuse to change it; for the rhythm here is an essential part of whatever beauty there is in the line.
P.S. Your view is supported by the small Oxford Dictionary which, I suppose, gives the present usage. Chambers being an older authority. But Chambers must represent a former usage and I am entitled to revive even a past or archaic form if I choose to do so.
4-8-1949
1 Centenary Edition, 1972.