The Sources of PoetrySri Aurobindo
The Harmony of Virtue
Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910
Section Three
The Sources of Poetry and Other Essays
The Sources of Poetry
The swiftness of the muse has been embodied in the image of Pegasus, the heavenly horse of Greek legend; it was from the rapid beat of his hoofs on the rock that Hippocrene flowed. The waters of Poetry flow in a current or a torrent; where there is a pause or a denial, it is a sign of obstruction in the stream or of imperfection in the mind which the waters have chosen for their bed and continent. In India we have the same idea; Saraswati is for us the goddess of poetry, and her name means the stream or “she who has flowing motion”. But even Saraswati is only an intermediary. Ganga is the real mother of inspiration, she who flows impetuously down from the head of Mahadev, God high-seated, over the Himalaya1 of the mind to the homes and cities of men. All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.
But there are differences in the manifestation.
The greatest motion of poetry comes when the mind is still and the ideal principle works above and outside the brain, above even the hundred-petalled lotus of the ideal mind, in its proper empire, for then it is Veda that is revealed, the perfect substance and expression of eternal truth.
The2 higher ideation transcends genius just as genius transcends ordinary intellect and perception.
But that great faculty is still beyond the normal level of our evolution.
Usually we see the action of the revelation and inspiration reproduced by a secondary, diluted and uncertain process in the mind.
But even this secondary and inferior action is so great that it can 
give us Shakespeare, Homer and Valmeki3.
There is also a tertiary and yet more common action of the inspiration.
For of our three mental instruments of knowledge, — the heart or emotionally realising mind, the observing and reasoning intellect with its aids, fancy and memory, and the intuitive intellect, — it is into the last and highest that the ideal principle transmits its inspirations when the greatest poetry writes itself out through the medium of the poet.
But if the intuitive intellect is not strong enough to act habitually, it is better for the poetry to descend into the heart and return to the intellect suffused and coloured with passion and emotion than to be formed directly in the observing intellect.
Poetry written from the reasoning intellect is apt to be full of ingenious conceits, logic, argumentation, rhetorical turns, ornamental fancies, echoes learned and imitative rather than uplifted and transformed. This is what is sometimes called classical poetry, the vigorous and excellent but unemotional and unuplifted poetry of Pope and Dryden. It has its inspiration, its truth and value; it is admirable in its way, but it is only great when it is lifted out of itself into intuitive writing or else invaded by the heart. For everything that needs fire rather than Light, driving-force rather than clearness, enthusiasm rather than correctness, the heart is obviously the more potent instrument. Now, poetry to be great must have either enthusiasm or ecstasy.
Yet the poetry that rises up from the heart is usually a turbid stream; our own restless ideas and imaginations mix with the pure inrush from above, and4 turbulent uprush from below, our excited emotions seek an exaggerated expression, our aesthetic habits and predilections busy themselves to demand a satisfaction greatly beyond their due.
Such poetry may be inspired, but it is not always suitable or inevitable.
There is often a double inspiration, the higher or ecstatic and the lower or emotional, and the lower disturbs and drags down the higher.
This is the birth of romantic or excessively exuberant poetry, too rich in expression, too abundant and redundant in substance.
The best poetry coming straight from the right centres may be bare and strong, unadorned and lofty, or it may be rich and splendid; it may be at will romantic or classical; but it will always be felt 
to be the right thing for its purpose; it is always nobly or rapturously inevitable.
But even in the higher centres of the intuitive intellect there may be defects in the inspiration. There is a kind of false fluency which misses the true language of poetry from dullness5 of perception. Under the impression that it is true and inspired writing it flows with an imperturbable flatness, saying the thing that should be said but not in the way that it should be said, without force and felicity. This is the tamasic or clouded stimulus, active, but full of unenlightenment and self-ignorance. The thing seen is right and good; accompanied with the inspired expression it would make very noble poetry. Instead, it becomes prose rendered unnatural and difficult to tolerate by being cut up into lengths. Wordsworth is the most characteristic and interesting victim of tamasic stimulus. Other great poets fall a prey to it, but that superb and imperturbable self-satisfaction under the infliction is his alone. There is another species of tamasic stimulus which transmits an inspired and faultless expression, but the substance is neither interesting to man nor pleasing to the gods. A good deal of Milton comes under this category. In both cases what has happened is that either the inspiration or the revelation has been active, but its companion activity has refused to associate itself in the work.
It is when the mind works at the form and substance of poetry without either the revelation or the inspiration from above that respectable or minor poetry is produced.
Judgment, memory and imagination may work, command of language may be there, but without that secondary action of a higher than intellectual force, it is labour wasted, work that earns respect but not immortality.
Doggerel and bastard poetry take their rise not even in the observing intellect but from the sensational mind or the passive memory guided only by the mere physical pleasure of sound and emotion.
It is bold, blatant, external, imitative, vulgar; its range of intellectuality and imaginativeness cannot go beyond the vital impulse and the vital delight.
But even in the sensational mind there is the possibility of a remote action from the ideal self; for even to the animals who think sensationally only, God has given revelations and 
inspirations which we call instincts.
Under such circumstances even
bastard poetry may have a kind of worth, a kind of inevitatability6.
The poet in the sensational man may be entirely satisfied and delighted, and even in the more developed human being the sensational element may find a poetical satisfaction not of the highest.
The best ballad poetry and Macaulay's lays are instances in point.
Scott is a sort of link between sensational and intellectual poetry.
While there are men mainly sensational, secondarily intellectual and not at all ideal, he will always be admired.
Another kind of false inspiration is the rajasic or fiery stimulus.
It is not flat and unprofitable like the tamasic, but hasty, impatient and vain.
It is eager to avoid labour by catching at the second best expression or the incomplete vision of the idea, insufficiently jealous to secure the best form, the most satisfying substance.
Rajasic poets, even when they feel the defect in what they have written, hesitate to sacrifice it because they also feel and are attached either to what in it is valuable or to the memory of their delight when it was first written.
If they get a better expression or a fuller sight, they often prefer to reiterate rather than strike out inferior stuff with which they are in love.
Sometimes, drifting or struggling helplessly along that shallow and vehement current, they vary one idea or harp on the same imagination without any final success in expressing it inevitably.
Examples of the rajasic stimulus are commonest in Shelley and Spenser, but few English poets are free from it.
This is the rajasic fault in expression.
But the fiery stimulus also perverts or hampers the substance.
An absence of self-restraint, an unwillingness to restrict and limit the ideas and imaginations is a sure sign of a rajasic ideality.
There is an attempt to exhaust all the possibilities of the subject, to expand and multiply thoughts and imaginative visions beyond the bounds of the right and permissible.
Or else the true idea is rejected or fatally anticipated by another which is or seems to be more catching and boldly effective.
Keats is the principal7 exemplar of the first tendency, the Elizabethans of the second.
The earlier work of Shakespeare abounds with classical instances.
As distinguished from the Greek, English is pronouncedly8 rajasic literature and, though there is much in it that is more splendid than almost anything 
done by the Greeks, — more splendid, not better, — a great deal even of its admired portions are rather rich or meretricious than great and true.
The perfect inspiration in the intuitive intellect is the sattwic or luminous inspiration, which is disinterested, self-contained, yet at will noble, rich or vigorous, having its eye only on the right thing to be said and the right way to say it. It does not allow its perfection to be interfered with by emotion or eagerness but this does not shut it out from ecstasy and exaltation. On the contrary, its delight of self-enjoyment is a purer and more exquisite enthusiasm than that which attends any other inspiration. It commands and uses emotion without enslaving itself to it. There is indeed a sattwic stimulus which is attached to its own luminosity, limpidity and steadiness, and avoids richness, force or emotion of a poignant character even when these are needed and appropriate. The poetry of Matthew Arnold is often though not always of this character. But this is a limited inspiration. Sattwic as well as rajasic poetry may be written from the uninspired intellect, but the sensational mind never gives birth to sattwic poetry.
One thing has to be added. A poet need not be a reflective critic; he need not have the reasoning and analysing intellect and dissect his own poetry. But two things he must have in some measure to be perfect, the intuitive judgment which shows him at a glance whether he has got the best or the second-best idea, the perfect or the imperfect expression and rhythm, and the intuitive reason which shows him without analysis why or wherein it is best or second-best, perfect or imperfect. These four faculties, revelation or prophecy, inspiration, intuitive judgment and intuitive reason, are the perfect equipment of genius doing the works of interpretative and creative knowledge.
Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 12.- Essays Divine and Human.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997.- 519 p.
1 1997 ed.: Himalay
2 1997 ed.: This
3 1997 ed.: Valmekie
4 1997 ed.: a
5 1997 ed.: dulness
6 1997 ed.: inevitability
7 1997 ed.: principle
8 1997 ed.: is a pronouncedly