Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
18 January 1940
Nirodbaran: We had once heard from you that Blake is greater than Shakespeare.
Sri Aurobindo: I didn’t say that. It is Housman who says Blake has more pure poetry than Shakespeare.
Nirodbaran: What does he mean by that?
Sri Aurobindo: He means that Blake’s poetry is not vital or mental, it is not intellectual but comes from beyond the mind, expressing mystic or spiritual experiences.
Nirodbaran: Can one really compare Blake and Shakespeare? They have two quite different spheres. But if Blake has more pure poetry, is he greater?
Sri Aurobindo: Shakespeare is greater in some ways, Blake in other ways. Shakespeare is greater in that he has a larger poetic power and more creative force, while Blake is more expressive.
Nirodbaran: What difference do you intend to make between “creative” and “expressive”?
Sri Aurobindo: “Creative” is something which brings up a convincing picture of life, sets before us a whole living situation of the Spirit. “Expressive” is just that which communicates feeling, vision or experience. In Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”, for instance, you get a true creative picture. Blake was often confused and was a failure when he tried to be creative in his prophetic poems.
Nirodbaran: You wrote to X that where life is concerned, Shakespeare is everywhere and Blake nowhere.
Sri Aurobindo: Quite true.
Purani: That is almost like Tagore’s stand, his plea for variety, covering a lot of life.
Nirodbaran: But can one compare two or more poets and decide who is greater?
Sri Aurobindo: How can one?
Nirodbaran: You have said that Yeats is considered greater than A.E. because of his greater poetic style.
Sri Aurobindo: Yeats is more sustained.
Nirodbaran: Then there is some standard?
Sri Aurobindo: What standard? Some say Sophocles is greater than Shakespeare. Others favour Euripides. Still others say Euripides is nowhere near Sophocles. How can one decide whether Dante is greater or Shakespeare?
Purani: It is better to ask what the criterion of great poetry is.
Nirodbaran: All right. What is the criterion?
Sri Aurobindo: Is there any criterion?
Nirodbaran: Then how to judge?
Sri Aurobindo: One feels.
Nirodbaran: But different people feel differently. We say Nishikanto is a great poet. Tagore may not concede it.
Sri Aurobindo: So can there be any standard? Doesn’t each one go by his own feeling or liking or opinion?
Purani: Abercrombie tries to give a general criterion. One point of his I remember: if the outlook of a poet is negative or pessimistic, his poetry can’t be great. For example, Hardy’s.
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t see why. Usually, of course, great poets are not pessimistic. They have too much life-force in them. But generally every poet is dissatisfied with something or the other and has an element of pessimism. Sophocles said, “The best thing is not to be born.” (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: Our Satyendra here will like this.
Satyendra: There is no harm in being born after one has had liberation in the previous birth. But for people like Nirod and myself …
Nirodbaran: How do you know I had no liberation in my previous birth?
Satyendra: If you believe that, it is all right.
Purani: When Sri Aurobindo said that Y has a remarkable mind, Nirodbaran said: “I have a remarkably thick physical crust.”
Sri Aurobindo (smiling): It is good to be remarkable in some way.
Nirodbaran: I fully agree.
Purani: Nirodbaran doesn’t seem to be satisfied with your answers.
Sri Aurobindo: “Sarvadharman parityajya.” (“Abandon all dharmas, all standards.”) (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: You don’t complete the sentence.
Sri Aurobindo: Because you haven’t left all standards.
Nirodbaran: As regards poetry, I have. I want to know what your opinion is and I just abide by it.
Sri Aurobindo: Then why not be satisfied with what I have said?
Nirodbaran: The trouble is that some of us are always comparing Nishikanto and J. One party says the former is greater because of his mastery of rhythm, expression and variety, while others say no such comparison is possible, because the two have different domains. J is as great in the mystic field: one has to see if J has reached as great a height of perfection in that field as Nishikanto in his field.
Sri Aurobindo: All one can say is that Nishikanto has a greater mastery over the medium and greater creative force. Why not be satisfied with that?
Nirodbaran: What precisely did you say about creative poetry?
Sri Aurobindo: That a complete picture of life is given. Thus “The Hound of Heaven” brings intensely before us the picture of the life of a man when pursued by God.
Satyendra: Thompson had some experience of what he has written.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, yes.
Nirodbaran: It seems to me that Nishikanto is not quite a success in what is called mystic poetry.
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by “mystic”?
Nirodbaran: I can’t define it – it is, say, Blake’s poetry or J’s.
Sri Aurobindo: If you mean “occult”, Nishikanto hasn’t tried much in that line. But he has succeeded in what he has tried.
Nirodbaran: But is his work mystic?
Purani: By “mystic” Nirodbaran means perhaps the expression of the essence of things hidden behind.
Nirodbaran: I mean the expression of the spiritual truth behind by means of symbols.
Sri Aurobindo: Symbolic, then. There are various kinds of mystic poetry.
Evening
Nirodbaran: It seems difficult to have creative force in mystic symbolic poetry.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is difficult, but not impossible.
Nirodbaran: Is there any creative force in Mallarmé’s famous sonnet on the swan?
Sri Aurobindo: I have forgotten the poem.
Nirodbaran: It is the poem in which he speaks of the wings being stuck in the frozen ice so the swan can’t fly.
Sri Aurobindo: There is no creative force there. It is descriptive and expressive. In lyrical poetry it is generally difficult to give the creative force. It is more expressive and interpretative. In sonnets too there is the difficulty; only in a series of sonnets can one build up something creative, as in Meredith’s “Modern Love”.
Nirodbaran: Then the creative force can come only in narrative poems?
Sri Aurobindo: In the epic and the drama also, and, as I have said, in a series of sonnets. But the modern poets say that long poems are not poetry, only in short poems you get the essence of pure poetry.
Nirodbaran: Some modern poets themselves have written long poems.
Sri Aurobindo: By “long poems” they mean long like epics.
Purani: Thomas Hardy or somebody else has written some short poems on the French Revolution which seem to have creative force.
Sri Aurobindo: Poems on the French Revolution? Who on earth is the author?
Nirodbaran: I suppose Tagore will score highly in the matter of creative force. He has a lot of it.
Sri Aurobindo: Where? Where has he created? He is essentially a lyrical poet and has no more creative force in his poetry than in his drama. One of his long poems I remember, where a boy was thrown into the sea. It is very finely descriptive, but he has not created anything.
Purani: In “Balaka” and elsewhere he gives only a fine description of universal life and an interpretation of nature.
Nirodbaran: Is X creative?
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t think he is; he is also lyrical.
Nirodbaran: In that poem of his, “Transformation of Nature”, doesn’t he give a creative force? He first describes the aspects of ordinary consciousness and sees the utter futility of it and slowly by turning to the Divine the transformation comes.
Sri Aurobindo: It is the description of an ideal. Does he enable you to enter into that state of consciousness, live in it? Very few poets are creative.
Nirodbaran: But we have heard that people have been helped in their sadhana by reading his poems.
Sri Aurobindo: That is a different matter. You don’t understand what I mean. When you read Hamlet, you become Hamlet and you feel you are Hamlet. When you read Homer, you are Achilles living and moving and you feel you have become Achilles. That is what I mean by creativeness. On the other hand, in Shelley’s “Skylark”, there is no skylark at all. You don’t feel you have become one with the skylark. Through that poem, Shelley has only expressed his ideas and feelings. Take that line of his:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.
It is a very fine poetical statement. But it is not creative in the sense that it doesn’t make you live in that truth or that expression.
Nirodbaran: But in poems of Bhakti, devotion, you do feel the Bhakti.
Sri Aurobindo: It is a feeling only. It doesn’t create a world for you to live and move in. Feeling is not enough in order to be creative.
Purani: Abercrombie also says that a poem should reproduce the experience.
Sri Aurobindo: It depends on what you mean by experience. An idea or a thought may be an experience; feeling is also experience.
Purani: In comparing Shelley and Milton, Abercrombie says that Prometheus Unbound does not have as great a theme as Paradise Lost and so it couldn’t equal the latter in greatness.
Sri Aurobindo: It is not as great because Shelley doesn’t create anything there. But the theme is equally great.
Purani: Abercrombie says that Milton has created living pictures of Satan and Christ.
Sri Aurobindo: Satan is the only character he has created. The first four books of Paradise Lost are full of creative force. But Christ? I disagree with Abercrombie there. Milton has not created Christ.
Purani: About Dante he says he has created Beatrice and her memory was always with the poet.
Sri Aurobindo: What about Dante’s political life in Florence? I am sure he was not thinking of Beatrice at that time.
Purani: Abercrombie also says that a poet passes on his experience to his readers.
Nirodbaran: But there are poets who don’t experience anything they write of, nor do they understand what they write. They are mere transcribers. J has done that. I too have done it.
Sri Aurobindo: Sahana also.