Warrior who hurls his
spirit like a dartSri Aurobindo
Letters on Poetry and Art
SABCL - Volume 27
Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 1. The Sources of Poetry
Examples of Overhead Poetry
Evaluations of 1934 – 1937 [5]
To help me distinguish the planes of inspiration, would you just indicate where the following lines from various poems of mine have their sources?
What visionary urge
Has stolen from horizons watched alone
Into thy being with ethereal guile?
[Second line] Intuitive with overmind touch.
[Third line] Imaginative poetic intelligence.
A huge sky-passion sprouting from the earth
In branchèd vastnesses of leafy rapture.
Ditto with something of the higher Mind.
The mute unshadowed spaces of her mind.
Intuitive with overmind touch.
A sea unheard where spume nor spray is blown.
Intuitive.
Irradiant wing-waft through eternal space,
Pride of lone rapture and invincible sun-gaze.
Higher Mind with mental overmind touch.
Born nomad of the infinite heart!
Time-tamer! star-struck debauchee of light!
Warrior who hurls his
spirit like a dart
Across the terrible night
Of death to conquer immortality!
Illumined Mind with mental overmind touch.
... And to the earth-self suddenly
Came through remote entrancèd marvelling
Of adoration ever-widening
A spacious sense of immortality.
Mixture of higher and illumined mind — in the last line the mental overmind touch.
Here life’s lost heart of splendour beats immense.
Illumined mind with mental overmind touch.
The haunting rapture of the vast dream-wind
That blows, star-fragrant, from eternity.
Ditto.
An ocean-hearted ecstasy am I
Where time flows inward to eternal shores.
Intuitive, illumined, overmind touch all mixed together.
I have analysed but very imperfectly — because these influences are so mixed together that the descriptions are not exhaustive.
Also remember that I speak of a touch, of the mental overmind touch and that when there is the touch it is not always complete — it may be more apparent from something either in the language or substance or rhythm than in all three together.
Even so perhaps some of my descriptions are overhasty and denote the impression of the moment. Also the poetical value of the poetry exists independent of its source.
13 February 1934