Sri Aurobindo
Essays Divine and Human
Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950
Poetic Genius
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 excessively1 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 were2 only assistants, not the direct agents3 of this divine birth.
Circa 1912
1 1972 ed.: increasingly
2 1972 ed.: are
3 1972 ed.: not the agents