Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Part Two. On Literature
On Poetry and Literature

Poetry

Poetry I take to be the measured expression of emotion. Of prose one asks, does the matter please, stimulate or instruct the intellect; does the style satisfy a cultured taste and observant literary sense; if it does so, it is good prose, whether it moves the heart or not. Of poetry we ask, does the matter move, stimulate, enlarge, heighten, or deepen the feelings; does it excite emotions of delight, sorrow, awe, sublimity, passionate interest, or if the nature of the subject matter is not such as to excite actual emotions, does it excite certain vague and nameless sensations, the quiet stirring of the heart which attends the perception of beauty, or the august tumult which goes with the sense of largeness and space or the quick delight of increased horizons and heart-searching perceptions, does it give us the sense of power and passion? If it does, we have the material of poetry, but not yet poetry. Prose can and often does create similar effects. Great thoughts, beautiful description, noble narrative will always have this power on the soul. We have also to ask, does the language and verse harmonise with the emotion, become part of it and expressive of it, swell with its fullness and yet bound and restrain it? If it does, then we have poetry, a thing mighty and unanalysable, to usurp whose place prose vainly aspires. Matter by itself does not make poetry; skill in verse and diction is not poetry; striking and brilliant phrases, melodious weavings of sound are not poetry; it is the natural and predestined blending or rather inseparable existence of great matter with great verse producing high emotions or beautiful matter with beautiful verse producing soft emotions that gives us genuine poetry. An identity of word and sound, of thought and word, of sound and emotion which seems to have been preordained from the beginning of the world and only awaited its destined hour to leap into existence, or rather was there from the beginning of the world and only dawned into sight at the right time, this rare identity is what we call poetry.

Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 1, No2 (1977, December)