Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Poetry and Art
SABCL - Volume 27
Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 1. Appreciation of Poetry and the Arts
Comparison of the Arts
Music and Poetry
I do not know what to say on the subject you propose to
me — the superiority of music to poetry,— for my appreciation of music is
bodiless and inexpressible while about poetry I can write at ease and with an
expert knowledge. But is it necessary to fix a scale of greatness between two
fine arts when each has its own greatness and
can touch in its own way the extremes of aesthetic Ananda? Music, no doubt, goes
nearest to the infinite and to the essence of things because it relies wholly on
the ethereal vehicle, śabda (architecture by the by
can do something of the same kind at the other extreme even in its imprisonment
in mass); but painting and sculpture have their revenge by liberating visible
form into ecstasy, while poetry though it cannot do with sound what music does,
yet can make a many-stringed harmony, a sound-revelation winging the creation by
the word and setting afloat vivid suggestions of form and colour,— that gives it
in a very subtle kind the combined power of all the arts. Who shall decide
between such claims or be a judge between these godheads?
26 April 1933