Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
Quantitative Metre in English and Bengali

English Prosody and Bengali Metrics

You have set me two very intricate subjects to wrestle with — English prosody and the yaugmika–akṣara tangle! English prosody is neither syllabic nor quantitative nor anything else; it is simply English prosody — that is to say, everything together, except what it pretends to be. As to the other, you and Prabodh Sen and Anilbaran and Tagore and the rest are already in such a tangle of controversy from which there seems no hope of your ever getting out that I don’t propose to add any cord of my own to the knot, and probably, if I tried, it would be a very incorrect cord indeed. However I will try to explain myself as soon as possible....

4 June 1934