Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa
On Translating Kalidasa [2]
The choice of meter1 is the first and most pregnant question that meets a translator.
With the growth of Alexandrianism and the diffusion of undigested learning, more and more frequent attempts are being made to reproduce in poetical versions the formal metre of the original.
Such attempts rest on a fundamental misconception of the bases of poetry.
In poetry as in all other phenomena it is spirit that is at work and form is merely the outward expression and instrument of the spirit.
So far is this true that form itself only exists as a manifestation of spirit and has no independent being.
When we speak of the Homeric hexameter, we are speaking of a certain balance [of] spiritual2 force called by us Homer working3 through emotion into the material shape of a fixed mould of rhythmical sound which obeys both in its limiting sameness and in its variations the law of the spirit within.