Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Guidance in Writing Poetry

Suggestions for Indians Writing English Poetry [2]

Why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to {{0}}them?[[This is the revised version of a letter that is printed in its unrevised form (with the omission of one paragraph) on pages 467 – 68. — Ed.]] I would suggest to you not to be bound by either [of two models], but to write as best suits your own inspiration and poetic genius. I imagine that each poet should write in the way suited to his own inspiration and substance; it is only a habit of the human mind fond of erecting rules and rigidities that would like to put one way forward as a general law for all. If you insist on being rigidly simple and direct as a mental rule, you might spoil something of the subtlety of the expression you now have, even if the delicacy of substance remained with you. Obscurity, artifice, rhetoric have to be avoided, but for the rest follow the inner movement.

I do not remember the precise words I used in laying down the rule to which you refer,— I think I advised sincerity and straightforwardness as opposed to rhetoric and artifice. In any case it was far from my intention to impose any strict rule of bare simplicity and directness as a general law of poetic style. I was speaking of “twentieth century” English poetry and of what was necessary for an Indian writing in the English {{0}}tongue.[[Sri Aurobindo is referring here to the advice he gave in the letter of 17 November 1930 published on pages 567 – 68. — Ed.]] English poetry in former times used inversions freely and had a law of its own — at that time natural and right, but the same thing nowadays sounds artificial and false. English has now acquired a richness and flexibility and power of many-sided suggestion which makes it unnecessary for poetry to depart from the ordinary style and form of the language. But there are other languages in which this is not yet true. Bengali is in its youth, in full process of growth and has many things not yet done, many powers and values it has still to acquire. It is necessary that its poets should keep a full and entire freedom to turn in whichever way the genius leads, to find new forms and movements; if they like to adhere to the ordinary norm of the language to which prose has to keep and do what they can in it, they should be free to do so; but also they should be free to depart from it, if it is by doing so that they can best liberate their souls in speech. At present it is this that most matters.

8 December 1930