Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 21019

It is no use applying a Bengali ear to English rhythms any more than a French ear to English or an English ear to French metres. The Frenchman may object to English blank verse because his own ear misses the rhyme or the Englishman to the French Alexandrine because he finds it rhetorical and monotonous. Irrelevant objections both. Imperfect rhymes are regarded in English metre as a source of charm, in the rhythmic field bringing in possibilities of delicate variation in the constant clang of exact rhymes....

One cannot expect to seize in poetry the finer and more elusive tones, which are so important, in a learned language, however well-learnt, as in one’s native and natural tongue – unless of course one succeeds in making it natural, if not native.