Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
Examples of Grades of Perfection in Poetic Style

Examples from Classical and Mediaeval Writers [2]

What exactly is Dante’s style? Is it the forceful adequate (of course at an “inevitable” pitch)? Or is it a mixture of the adequate and the effective? A line like —

e venni dal martiro a questa pace —

is evidently adequate; but has this the same style —

sí come quando Marsia traesti

della vagina delle membra sue?

The “forceful adequate” might apply to much of his writing, but much else is pure inevitable; elsewhere it is the inspired style as in the last lines quoted. I would not call the other line merely adequate; it is much more than that. Dante’s simplicity comes from a penetrating directness of poetic vision, it is not the simplicity of an adequate style.

3 November 1936