Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Remarks on Individual Poets

Heredia and Swinburne

I don’t think Heredia and Swinburne go very well together; one is a passionate and chaotic imperfection and the other is a passionless perfection, but it is a passion of the music of words only and a perfection of word and rhythm only; for they resemble each other only in one thing, an excess of the word over the substance.

19 August 1932