Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa

On Translating Kalidasa [3]

The mere quantities are but the most mechanical and outward part of metre. A fanciful mind might draw a parallel between the elements of man and the elements of metre. Just as in man there is the outward food-plasm and within it the vital or sensational man conditioned by and conditioning the food-plasm and within the vital man the emotional or impressional man similarly related and again within that the intellectual man governing the others and again within that the delight of the spirit in its reasoning existence and within that delight like the moon within its halo the Spirit who is Lord of all these, the sitter in the chariot and the master of its driving, so in metre there is the quantitative or accentual arrangement which is its body, and within that body conditioning and conditioned by it the arrangement of pauses and sounds, such as assonance, alliteration, composition of related and varying letters, and again within it conditioning and conditioned by this sensational element and through it the mechanical element is the pure emotional movement of the verse and again within these understanding and guiding all three, bringing the element of restraint, management, subordination to a superior law of harmony, is the intellectual element, the driver of the chariot of sound; within this again is the poetic delight in the creation of harmonious sound, the august and disinterested pleasure of the really great poet which has nothing in it of frenzy or rather has the exultation and increased strength of frenzy without its loss of self-control; and within this even is the spirit, that unanalysable thing behind metre, style and diction which makes us feel “This is Homer, this is Shakespeare, this is Dante.”

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 27.- Supplement.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 511 p.