Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

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

Quantity in Classical and Modern Languages

I can’t agree with your statement about Sanskrit आ [ā], ए [e], ओ [o], that they are long by stylisation only! In fact, I don’t quite understand what this can mean; for in Sanskrit आ [ā] at least is the corresponding long to the short vowel अ [a] and is naturally as long as the devil — and the other two are in fact no better. The difference between ए [e] and ऐ [ai] and ओ [o] and औ [au] is the difference between long and ultra-long, not between short and long. Take for instance the Sanskrit phrase येन तेन प्रकारेण [yena tena prakāreṇa]; I can’t for the life of me see how anyone can say that the ये [ye] ते [te] रे [re] or the का [kā] there are naturally short to the ear, but long by stylisation. The classical languages (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin) are perfectly logical, coherent and consistent in the matter of quantity; they had to be because quantity was the very life of their rhythm and they could not treat longs as shorts and shorts as longs as it is done, at every step, in English. Modern languages can do that because their rhythm rests on intonation and stress, quantity is only a subordinate element, a luxury, not the very basis of the rhythmic structure. In English you can write “the old road runs” pretending that “road” is short and “runs” is long, or “a great hate” — where the sound corresponding to Sanskrit ए [e] (great hate) or that corresponding to Sanskrit ओ [o] (old road) is made short or long at pleasure; but to the Sanskrit, Greek or Latin ear it would have sounded like a defiance of the laws of Nature. Bengali is a modern language, so there this kind of stylisation is possible, for there ए [e] can be long, short or doubtful.

All this, not to write more about stylisation, but only as a protest against forcing modern ideas of language sound on an ancient language. Bengali can go on its way very freely without that, Sanskritising when it likes, refusing to Sanskritise when it doesn’t like.

2 June 1932