Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
Metrical Experiments in Bengali

Quantitative Metre in Bengali

This question of quantity is one in which I find it difficult to arrive at a conclusion. You can prove that it can be done and has been successfully done in Bengali, and you can prove and have proved it yourself over again by writing these poems and bringing in the rhythm, the কল্লোল [kallola], which is absent in Satyen Datta. It is quite true also that stylisation is permissible and a recognised form of art — I mean professed and overt stylisation and not that which hides itself under a contrary profession of naturalness or faithful following of external nature. The only question is how much of it Bengali poetry can bear. I do not think the distinction between song and poem goes at all to the root of the matter. The question is whether it is possible to have ease of movement in this kind of quantitative metre. For a few lines it can be very beautiful or for a short poem or a song; that much cannot be doubted. But can it be made a spontaneous movement of Bengali poetry like the ordinary mātrā-vṛtta or the others, in which one can walk or run at will without looking at one’s steps to see that one does not stumble and without concentrating the reader’s mind too much on the technique so that his attention is diverted from the sense and bhāva? If you can achieve some large and free structure in which quantity takes a recognised place as part of the foundation,— it need not be reproduction of a Sanskrit metre,— that would solve the problem in the affirmative.

31 May 1932