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
Appreciation of Poetry

Spiritual Poetry and Popular Taste [1]

In a recently published lecture on art, Tagore writes [in Bengali]:

The question naturally arises, “Why has this [mathematical delight] not been made the subject of poetry?” The reason is that the experience of it is confined to very few people, it is out of the reach of the general public. The language through which it can be known is technical, it has not been made into a living material by contact with the hearts of the people.

Put “yogic poetry” in place of mathematics and you will at once understand why he cannot accept yogic poetry as poetry proper. Khagendra Mitra has echoed this identical view in his rather obscure term অনুভাবের স্বাজাত্য [anubhābera sbājātya].

Mathematical delight be blowed! What does he mean? that you can’t write mathematics in verse? I suppose not, it was not meant to be. You can’t start off

Oh, two by three plus four plus seven!

To add things is to be in heaven.

But all the same, if one thinks it worth while to take the trouble, one can express the mathematician’s delight in discovery or the grammarian’s in grammatising or the engineer’s in planning a bridge or a house. What about Browning’s Grammarian’s Funeral? The reason why these subjects do not easily get into poetry is because they do not lend themselves to poetic handling, their substance being intellectual and abstract and their language also, not as the substance and language of poetry must be, emotional and intuitive. It is not because they appeal only to a few people and not to the general run of humanity. A good dinner appeals not to a few people but to the general run of humanity, but it would all the same be a little difficult to write an epic or a lyric on the greatness of cooking and fine dishes or the joys of the palate and the belly. Spiritual subjects on the other hand can lend themselves to poetic handling because they can be expressed in the language of high emotion and radiant intuition. How many people will appreciate it is a question which is irrelevant to the merit of the poetry. More people have appreciated sincerely Macaulay’s Lays or Kipling’s Barrack Room Ballads than ever really appreciated Timon of Athens or Paradise Regained — but that does not determine the relative value or appropriateness of these things as poetry. Artistic or poetic value cannot be reckoned by the plaudits or the reactions of the greatest number. I am only just reading Khagen Mitra’s স্বাজাত্য [sbājātya] — this is only a splenetic comment on your quotation from Tagore.

2 November 1936