Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on the Work of Poets of the Ashram

Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) [8]

The Temple-Girl of Mo-Hen-Jo-Daro

Behold her face: unto that glorious smile

All sorrow was an ecstasy of gloom

Fragrant with an invisible flame of flowers.

And never but with startling loveliness

Like the white shiver of breeze on moonlit water

Flew the chill thought of death across her dream...

A far cry fades along her kindled curves

To beauty ineffable: shameless and pure,

The rhythm of adoration her sole vesture,

Upon the wayward heart of time she dawns —

A passion wedded to some glowing hush

Beyond the world, in tense eternity!

Your poem has colour and grace and vision in it, but its rhythm is a colourless monotone. Each line is a good blank verse line by itself — except

Like the white shiver of breeze on moonlit water

which has no rhythm at all,— but together they are flat and ineffective. In blank verse of this type, with few enjambements and even these hardly seem to enjamber at all, it is essential to see to two things.

(1) each line must be a thing of force by itself — it is the Marlowesque type and, although you cannot always command a mighty line, either an armoured strength or a clear-cut beauty must be the form of each decasyllable;

(2) each line must be different from the other in its metrical build so as to give the utmost variety possible — otherwise monotony is inevitable.

It is possible to use either of these methods by itself, but the two together are more effective.

I suppose I ought to give an illustration of what I mean and I can do it best by altering slightly your lines to make them conform to the first rule. I am not suggesting substitutes for them, for these would not be in your style; I only want to make my meaning clear.

Behold her face; unto that glorious smile

All sorrow was an ecstasy of {{0}}gloom,[[These two lines satisfy the rule, so I don’t change them.]]

A rapturous devastating flame of flowers.

Seldom with a rare startling loveliness,

A white shiver of breeze in moonlit waters,

Death flew chill winds of thought across her dream.

A far cry fades along those kindled curves

Into ineffable beauty; shameless-pure,

A rhythm of adoration her sole vesture,

She dances on the wayward heart of time,

And is passion-wedded to some glowing hush,

And is the world caught by eternity.

You will see that the movement of each line is differentiated from that of almost every other and yet there is a sufficient kinship in the whole.

I have done it of course in my own way; yours tends to a more harmonious and coloured beauty and you achieved what was necessary in your Shakuntala’s Farewell, where each line was a cut gem by itself and there was sufficient variation of movement or at least of rhythmic tone; but here the materials of a good poem are there but the effect fails, the chief fault lying in the defect of rhythm which denies the poetry the value to which it has a right.

8 July 1933