Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Philosophers, Intellectuals, Novelists and Musicians

Shaw’s Personality and Place in Literature [1]

The Shavian assertiveness is not offensive (as the Hugoesque tends to be) because it is full also of a smiling self-mockery, an irony that out of a form of deliberate self-praise cuts at itself and the world in one lump. It is curious that so many people seem to miss this character of Shaw’s self-assertiveness and self-praise, its essential humour.

28 August 1932