Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Part Two. On Literature
On Poetry and Literature

Marginalia on Madhusudan Dutt’s Virangana Kavya [1]

A Virgilian elegance and sweetness and a Virgilian majesty of diction ennoble the finer epistles of these Heroides; there is too a Virgilian pathos sad and noble breaking out in detached lines and passages, as in Shacountala’s sorrowful address to the leaf and the single melancholy line (ei ki re phale phala prema taru-śāthe), but the more essential poetical gifts, creative force, depth or firmness of meditation, passionate feeling, a grasp of the object, consistency and purity of characterisation are still absent. They were not in the poet’s nature and such gifts if denied by Nature, are denied for ever. What exists even faintly can be developed, transformed, strengthened but what does not exist, cannot be produced by labour.

नासतो विद्यते भावो नाभावो विद्यते सतः

nāsato vidyate bhāvo nābhāvo vidyate sataḥ

Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 7, No1 (1983, April)