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
Remarks on English Pronunciation

Some Problems of Stress Accent [1]

Why have you bucked at my “azùre” as a line-ending? And why so late in the day? Twice before I have used the same inversion and it caused no alarm. Simple poetic licence, Sir. If Wordsworth could write

What awful perspective! while from our sight ...

and leave no reverberation of “awful” in the reader’s mind, and if Abercrombie boldly come out with

To smite the horny eyes of men

With the renown of our Heaven,

and our horny eyes remain unsmitten by his topsy-turvy “Heaven” — why, then, Amal need not feel too shy to shift the accent of “azure” just because the poor chap happens to be an Indian. Not that an alternative line getting rid of that word is not possible — quite a fine one can be written with “obscure”. But how does this particular inversion shock you? There is nothing un-English or unpoetic about it — so far as I can see, though of course such things should not be done often. What do you say?

I can swallow “perspective” with some difficulty, but if anybody tried to justify by it a line like this (let us say in a poem to Miss Mayo):

O inspector, why suggestive of drains?

I would buck. I disapprove totally of Abercrombie’s bold wriggle with Heaven, but even he surely never meant to put the accent on the second syllable and pronounce it “hevenn”. I absolutely refuse to pronounce “azure” as “azure”. “Perspective” can just be managed by making it practically atonal or unaccented or evenly accented, which comes to the same thing. “Sapphire” can be managed at the end of a line, e.g. “strong sapphire”, because “phire” is long and the voice trails over it, but the “ure” of “azure” is more slurred into shortness than trailed out into length as if it were “azyoore”. In any case, even if the somersault is admitted the line won’t do.

P.S. It is not to the use of “azure” in place of an iambic in the last foot that I object but to your blessed accent on the last syllable. I will even, if you take that sign off, allow you to rhyme “azure” with “pure” and pass it off as an Abercrombiean acrobacy by way of fun. But not otherwise — the accent mark must go.

2 October 1936