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

Comments on Some Experiments in Metre [1]

I think you failed [in an experiment to write in a classical metre] not for any of the reasons you suggest but because you had no unwritten rhythm behind your mind when you started writing and none came through by accident — or what seems one — as sometimes happens. There is an inspiration of language and there is an inspiration of rhythm and the two must fuse together for poetic perfection to come. As it is, you set out to manufacture your rhythm and piece together its parts — that must be the cause of this result. Your failure does not predestine you to eventual failure. Most people fail at first when they try this kind of departure from the established norms — this rejuvenation of the old in the new. I do not remember my own previous attempts in the classical metres, but I feel sure they were failures of the kind I stigmatise. If I succeed now, it will be by the Grace of God, in other words the established Yoga consciousness, for in that consciousness things come through from behind the veil with ease,— so long as a veil exists at all. Of course with genius too in its moments of inspiration — surer than the layman imagines; but genius also is a kind of accidental Yoga, a contact, an opening into an occult Power.

25 November 1933