The Genius of Valmiki [2]Sri Aurobindo
The Harmony of Virtue
Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910
Section Four. Valmiki and Vyasa
The Genius of Valmiki [2]
The greatest poets are usually those who arise either out of a large, simple and puissant environment or out of a movement of mind that is grandiose, forceful and elemental. When man becomes increasingly1 refined in intellect, curious in aesthetic sensibility or minute and exact in intellectual reasoning, it becomes more and more difficult to write great and powerful poetry. Ages of accomplished intellectuality and scholarship or of strong scientific rationality are not favourable to the birth of great poets or if they are born, not favourable to the free and untrammelled action of their gifts. They remain great, but their greatness bends under a load: there is a lack of triumphant spontaneity and they do not draw as freely or directly from the sources of human action and character. An untameable elemental force is needed to overcome more than partially the denials of the environment. For poetry, even though it appeals in passing to the intellect and aesthetic sense, does not proceed from them but is in its nature an elemental power proceeding from the secret and elemental Power within which sees directly and creates sovereignly, and it passes at once to our vital and elemental parts. Intellect and the aesthetic faculties are necessary to the perfection of our critical enjoyment; but they are2 only assistants, not the agents3 of this divine birth.
(Incomplete)
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.: excessively
2 1997 ed.: were
3 1997 ed.: not the direct agents