Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 7974

Q: Why have you bucked at my “azure” as a line-ending? And why so late in the day? Twice before I have used the same inversion and it caused no alarm. Simple poetic licence. Sir. If Wordsworth could write

What awful perspective; while from our sight...

and leave no reverberation of “awful” in the reader’s mind, and if Abercrombie boldly come out with

To smite the horny eyes of men

With the renown of our Heaven

and our horny eyes remain unsmitten by his topsyturvy “Heaven” – why, then, I need not feel too shy to shift the accent of “azure” just because of poor me happening to be an Indian. Not that an alternative line getting rid of that word is impossible – quite a fine one can be written with “obscure”. But why does this particular inversion shock you? There is nothing un-English or unpoetic about it – so far as I can see, though of course such things should not be done often. What do you say?

Your “through whom” in place of my “wherethrough” in another line is an improvement, but it is difficult to reject that word as a legal archaism inadmissible in good poetry. Your remark about “whereas” in my A.E. essay seemed to me just in pointing out the obscurity of connection it introduced between the two parts of my sentence, but the term itself has no stigma on it of obsolescence as does for instance “whenas”: in poetry it would be rather prosaic, while “wherethrough” is a special poetic usage as any big dictionary will tell us, and in certain contexts it would be preferable to “through which”, just as “whereon”, “wherein”, and “whereby” would sometimes be better than their ordinary equivalents. I wonder why you have become so ultra-modern: I remember you jibbing also at “from out” – a phrase which has not fallen into desuetude yet, and can be used occasionally even in a common context: e.g. “from out the bed”.

A: I can swallow “perspective” with some difficulty, but if anybody tried to justify by it a line like this (let us say in a poem to Miss Mayo):

O ínspectór, why súggestive of drains?

I would buck. I disapprove totally of Abercrombie’s bold wriggle with Heaven, but even he surely never meant to put the accent on the second syllable and pronounce it Hevénn. I absolutely refuse to pronounce “azure” as “azúre”. “Perspective” can just be managed by making it practically atonal or unaccented or evenly accented, which comes to the same thing. “Sapphire” can be managed at the end of a line, e.g. “strong sapphire”, because “phire” is long and the voice trails over it, but the “ure” of “azure” is more slurred into shortness than trailed out into length as if it were “azyoore”.

I didn’t suggest that “whereas” was obsolete. It is a perfectly good word in its place, e.g. He pretended the place was empty whereas in reality it was crowded, packed, overflowing; but its use as a loose conjunctive turn which can be conveniently shoved into any hole to keep two sentences together is altogether reprehensible

None of these words is obsolete, but “wherethrough” is rhetorically pedantic, just as “whereabout” or “wherewithal” would be. It is no use throwing the dictionary at my head – the dictionary admits many words which poetry refuses to admit. Of course you can drag any word in the dictionary into poetry if you like, e.g.:

My spirit parenthetically wise

Gave me its obiter dictum; a propos

I looked within with weird and brilliant eyes

And found in the pit of my stomach the juste mot.

But all that is possible is not commendable. So if you seek a pretext wherethrough to bring in these heavy visitors I shall buck and seek a means whereby to eject them.

P.S. It is not to the use of “azure” in place of an iamb in the last foot that I object but to your blessed accent on the last syllable. I will even, if you take that sign off, allow you to rhyme “azure” with “pure” and pass it off as an Abercrombiean acrobacy by way of fun. But not otherwise – the accent mark must go.

2-10-1936