What then is the nature of poetry , its
essential law? what is the highest power we can demand from it, what
the supreme music that the human mind, reaching up and in and out
to its own widest breadths, deepest depths and topmost summits, can
extract from this self-expressive instrument? and how out of that
does there arise the possibility of its use as the mantra of
the Real? Not that we need spend any energy in a vain effort to define
anything so profound, elusive and indefinabie as the breath of poetic
creation; to take the myriad-stringed harp of Saraswati to pieces
for the purpose of scientific analysis is a narrow and barren amusement.
But we stand in need of some guiding intuitions, some helpf-ul descriptions
which wiiJ serve to enlighten our search; to fix in that way, not
by definition, but by description, the esscntial things in poetry
is neither an impossible, nor an unprofitable endeavour.
We meet here two common enough errors, to one of
which the ordinary uninstructed mind is most liable, to the other
the too instructed critic or the too intellectually conscientious
artist or craftsman. To the ordinary mind, judging poetry without
really entering into it, it looks as if it were nothing more than
an aesthetic pleasure of the imagin(1.tion, the intellect and the
ear, a sort of elevated pastime. If that were all, we need not have
wasted time in seeking for its spirit, its inner aim, its deeper law.
Anything pretty, pleasant and melodious with a beautiful idea in it
would serve our turn; a song of Anacreon ora plaint of Mimnermus would
be as satisfying to the poetic sense as the Oedipus, Agamemnon or
Odyssey, for from this point of view they might well strike us as
equally and even, one might contend, more perfect in their light but
exquisite unity and brevity. Pleasure, certainly, we expect from poetry
as from all art; but the externnl sensible and even the inner imaginative
pleasure are only first elements. For these must not only be refined
in order to meet the highest requirements of the intelligence, the
imagination and the ear; but afterwards they have to be still farther
heightened and in their nature raised beyond even their own noblest
levels, so that they may become the support for somethin,g greater
beyond them; otherwise they cannot lead to the height on which
lives the Mantra.
For neither the intelligence, the imagination nor
the ear are the true or at least the deepest or highest recipients
of the poetic delight, even as they are not its true or highest creators;
they are only its channels and instruments: the true creator, the
true hearer is the soul. The more rapidly and transparently the rest
do their work of transmission, the less they make of their separate
claim to satisfaction, the more directly the word reaches and sinks
deep into the soul, the greater the poetry .Therefore poetry has not
really done its work, at least its highest work, until it has raised
the pleasure of the instrument and transmuted it into the deeper delight
of the soul. A divine Ananda,1 a delight interpretative, creative,
revealing, formative, -one might almost say, an inverse reflection
of the joy which the universal Soul felt in its great release of energy
when it rang out into the rhythmic forms of the universe the spiritual
truth, the large interpretative idea, the life, the power, the emotion
of things packed into an original cre3tive vision, -such spiritual
joy is that which the soul of the poet feels and which, when he can
conquer the human difficulties of his task, he succeeds in pouring
also into all those who are prepared to receive it. This delight is
not merely a godlike pastime; it is a great formative and illuminative
power .
The critic- of a certain type -or the intellectually
conscientious artist will, on the other hand, often talk as
if poetry were mail1ly a matter of a faultlessly correct or at most
an exquisite technique. Certainly, in all art good technique is the
first step towards perfection; but there are so many other steps,
there is a whole world beyond before you carl get near to what you
seek; so much so that even a deficient correctness of execution will
not prevent an intense and gifted soul from creating great poetry
which keeps its hold on the centuries. Moreover, technique, however
indispensable, occu- pies a smaller field perhaps in poetry than in
any other art, -first, because its instrument, the rhythmic word,
is fuller of subtle and immaterial elements; then because, the most
complex, flexible, variously suggestive of all the instruments of
the artistic creator, it has more -almost infinite -possibilities
in many directions than any other. The rhythmic word has a subtly
sensible element, its sound
value,
a quite immaterial element, its significance or thought value, and
both of these again, its sound and its sense, have separately and
together a soul value, a direct spiritual power, which is infinitely
the most important thing about them. And though this comes to birth
with a small element subject to the laws of technique, yet
almost immediately, almost at the beginning of its flight, its power
soars up " beyond the province of any laws of mechanical construction
and this form of speech carries in it on its summits an element which
I
draws close to the empire of the ineffable.
Poetry rather determines
its own form; the form is not imposed on it by any law mechanical
or external to it. The poet least of all artists needs to create with
his eye fixed anxiously on the technique of his art. He has to possess
it, no doubt; but in the heat of creation the intellectual sense of
it becomes a subordinate action or even a mere undertone in his mind,
and in his best moments he is permitted, in away , to forget it altogether.
For then the perfection of his sound-movement and style come entirely
as the spontaneous form of his soul: that utters itself in an inspired
rhythm and an innate, a revealed word, even as the universal Soul
created the harmonies of the universe out of the power of the word
secret and eternal within him, leaving the mechanical work to be done
in a surge of hidden spiritual excitement by the subconscient part
of his Nature. It is this highest speech which is the supreme poetic
utterance, the immortal element in his poetry , and a little of it
is enough to save the rest of his work from oblivion. Svalpam apyasya
dharmasya! This power makes the rhythmic word of the poet
the highest form of speech available to man for the expression whether
of his self-vision or of his world-vision. It is noticeable that even
the deepest experience, the pure spiritual which enters into things
that can never be wholly expressed, still, when it does try to express
them and not merely to explain them intellectually, tends instinctively
to use, often the rhythmic forms, almost always the manner of speech
characteristic of poetry .But poetry attempts to extend this manner
of vision and utterance to all experience, even the most objective,
and therefore it has a natural urge towards the expression of something
in the object beyond its mere appearances, even when these seem outwardly
to be all that it is enjoying.
We may usefully cast
a glance, not at the last inexpressible secret, but at the first element
of this heightening and intensity peculiar to poetic utterance.
Ordinary speech uses language mostly for a limited practical utility
of communication; it uses it for life and for the expression of ideas
and feelings necessary or useful to life. In doing so, we treat words
as conventional signs for ideas with nothing but a perfunctory attention
to their natural force, much as we use any kind of common machine
or simple implement; we treat them as if, though useful for life,
they were themselves without life. When we wish to put a more vital
power into them, we have to lend it to them out of ourselves, by marked
intonations of the voice, by the emotional force or vital energy we
throw into the sound so as to infuse into the conventional word-sign
something which is not inherent in itself. But if we go back earlier
in the history of language and still more if we look into its origins,
we shall, I think, find that it was not always so with human speech.
Words had not only a real and vivid life of their own, but the speaker
was more conscious of it than we can possibly be with our mechanised
and sophisticated intellects. This arose from the primitive nature
of language which, probably, in its first movement was not intended,
-or shall we say, did not intend, -so much to stand for distinct ideas
of the intelligence as for feelings, sensations, b.road indefinite
mental impressions with minute shades of quality in them which we
do not now care to pursue. The intellectual sense in its precision
must have been a secondary element which grew more dominant as language
evolved along with the evolving intelligence.
For the reason why sound came to express fixed ideas,
lies not in any natural and inherent equivalence between the sound
and its intellectual sense, for there is none, -intellectually any
sound might expI"ess any sense, if men were agreed on a conventional
equi- valence between them; it started from an indefinable quality
or property in the sound to raise certain vibrations in the life-soul
of the human-creature, in his sensational, his emotional, his crude
mental being. An example may indicate more clearly what I mean. The
word wolf, the origin of which is no longer present to our minds,
denotes to our intelligence a certain living object and that is all,
the rest we have to do for ourselves: the Sanskrit word vrka, "tearer",
came in the end to do the same thing, but originally it expressed
the sensational relation between the wolf and man which most affected
the man's life, and it did so by a certain quality in the sound which
readily associated it with the sensation of tearing. This must havegiven
early language a powerful life, a concrete vigour, in have given one
direction a natural poetic force which it has lost, however greatly
it has gained in precision, clarity, utility.
Now, poetry goes back in a way and recovers, though in
another fashion, as much as it can of this original element. It does
this partly by a stress on the image replacing the old sensational
concreteness, partly by a greater attention to the suggestive force
of the sound, its life, its power, the mental impression it carries.
It associates this with the definitive thought value contributed by
the intelligence and increases both by each other. In that way it
succ~eds at the same time in carrying up ihe power of speech to the
direct expression of a high~r reach of experience than the intellectual
or vital. For it brings out not only the definitive intellectual valIle
of the word, not only its power of emotion and sensation, its vital
suggestion, but through and beyond these aids its soul-suggestion,
its spirit. So poetry arrives at the indication of infinite meanings
beyond the finite intellectual meaning the word carries. It expresses
not only the life-soul of man as did the primitive word, not only
the ideas of his intelligence for which speech now usually serves,
but the experience, the vision, the ideas, as we may say, of the higher
and wider sow in him. Making them real to our life-soul as well as
present to our intellect, it opens to us by the word the doors of
the Spirit.
Prose style carries speech to a much higher power
than its ordinary use, but it differs from poetry in not making this
yet greater attempt. For it takes its stand firmly on the intellectual
value of the word. It uses rhythms which ordinary speech neglects,
and aims at a general fluid harmony of movement. It seeks to associate
words agreeably and luminously so as at once to please and to clarify
the intelligence. It strives after a more accurate, subtle, flexible
and satisfying expression than the rough methods of ordinary speecll
care to compass. A higher adequacy of speech is its first object.
Beyond this adequacy it may aim at a greater forcefulness and effectiveness
by various devices of speech, by many rhetorical means for heightening
the stress of its intellectual appeal. Passing beyond this first limit,
this just or strong, but always restrained measure, it may admit a
more emphatic rhythm, more directly and powerfully stimulate the emotion,
appeal to a more vivid aesthetic sense. It may even make such a free
or rich use of images as suggest an outward approximation to the manner
of poetry; but it employs them decoratively, as ornaments, alaniktira,
or for their effective value in giving a stronger mtellectual
vision of the thing or the thought it describes or defines; it does
not use the image for that profounder and more living vision for which
the poet is always seeking. And always it has its eye on its chief
hearer and judge, the intelligence, and calls in other powers only
as important aids to capture his suffrage. Reason and taste, two powers
of the intelli- gence, are rightly the supreme gods of the prose stylist,
while to the poet they are only minor deities.
If it goes beyond these limits, approaches in its measures
a more striking rhythmic balance, uses images for sheer vision, opens
itself to a mightier breath of speech, prose style passes beyond its
normal province and approaches or even enters the confines of poetry.
It becomes poetical prose or even poetry itself using the apparent
forms of prose as a disguise or a loose apparel. A high or a fine
adequacy, effectivity, intellectual illuminativeness and a carefully
tempered aesthetic satisfaction are the natural and proper powers
of its speech. But the privilege of the poet is to go beyond and discover
that more intense illumination of speech, that inspired word and supreme
inevitable utterance, in which there meets the
unity of a divine rhythmic movement with a depth of sense and a.
power of infinite suggestion welling up directly from the fountain-
heads of the spirit within us. He may not always or often find it,
but to seek for it is the law or at least the highest trend of his
utterance, and when he can not only find it, but cast into it some
deeply revealed truth of the spirit itself, he utters the mantra.
But always, whether in the search or the finding,
the whole style and rhythm of poetry are the expression and movement
which come from us out of a certain spiritual excitement caused by
a vision in the soul of which it is eager to deliver itself. The vision
may be of anything in Nature or God or man or the life of creatures
or the life of things; it may be a vision of force and action, or
of sensible beauty, or of truth of thought, or of emotion and pleasure
and pain, of this life or the life beyond. It is sufficient that it
is the 3oui which sees and the eye, sense, heart and thought-mind
become the passive instruments of the soul. Then we get the real,
the high poetry. But if what acts is too much an excitement of the
intellect, the imagina- tion, the emotions, the vital activities seeking
rhythmical and forceful expression, without that greater spiritual
excitement em- bracing them, or if all these are not sufficiently
sunk into the soul, steeped in it, fused in it, and the expression
does not come out purified and uplifted by a sort of spiritual transmutation,
then we
fall to lower levels of poetry and get work of a much more doubtful
immortality. And when the appeal is altogether to the lower things
in us, to the mere mind, we arrive outside the true domain of poetry;
we approach the confines of prose or get prose itself masking in the
apparent forms of poetry , and the work is distinguished from prose
style only or mainly by its mechanical elements, a good verse
form
and perhaps a more compact, catching or energetic expression than
the prose writer will ordinarily permit to the easier and looser balance
of his speech. It will not have at all or not sufficiently the
true essence of poetry .
For in all things that speech can express there are two elements,
the outward or instrumental and the real or spiritual. In thought,
for
instance, there is the intellectual idea, that which the intelligence
makes precise and definite to us, and the soul-idea, that which exceeds
the intellectual and brings us into nearness or identity with the
whole reality of the thing expressed. Equally in emotion, it is not
the mere emotion itself the poet seeks, but the soul of emotion, that
in it for the delight of which the soul in us and the world desires
or accepts emotional experience. So too with the poetical sense of
objects, the poet's attempt to embody in his speech truth of life
or truth of Nature. It is this greater truth and its delight and beauty
for which he is seeking, beauty which is truth and truth beauty and
therefore a joy for ever, because it brings us the delight of the
soul in the discovery of its own deeper realities. This greater element
the more timid and temperate speech of prose can sometimes shadow
out to us, but the heightened and fearless style of poetry makes it
close and living and the higher cadences of poetry carry in on their
wings what the style by itself could not bring. This is the source
of that intensity which is the stamp of poetical speech and of the
poetical movement. It comes from the stress of the soul-vision behind
the word; it is the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery
among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer
worlds.
| 1.
Ananda, the language of Indian spiritual experience, is the essential
delight which the Infinite feels in itself and in its creation.
By the infinite Selrs Ananda all exists, for the Ananda all was
made. |
