Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 21021

Of course, X is right about the desirability of inventing new chhandas and metres. Your friend who combats this view probably means that the very greatest poets seldom invented a metre. I suppose they were too royally lazy to give themselves the trouble and preferred stealing other people’s rhythms and polishing them up to perfection,– just as Shakespeare stole bodily all his plots from wherever he could find any worth the lifting. But if that applies to Shakespeare or Virgil, still there are others whose achievements made a consummate metrical invention a companion of a high poetic genius – Alcaeus, Sappho, Catullus, Horace. These poets did a great thing in inventing or transferring from other tongues metres new to the language or introducing Greek metrical forms into Latin or perfecting them’ in the direction of a more careful balance or a more flawless elegance. But, apart from such illustrious precedents, a good thing such as the combination of metrical invention with perfect poetry would still be worth doing even if no one had had the good sense to do it before.