SRI AURBINDO AS THE PIONEER INDIAN ENGLISH CRITIC by Dr.Shaleen Kumar Singh

The fact that Sri Aurobindo is one of the pioneers of Indian English critics grows more and more vibrant and authentic when one journeys through the works of him where he appears to be a chief living authority on Indo-English criticism. As he was supposed more a saint or Yogi than a poet or critic, he was not properly evaluated by Indian scholars with a viewpoint of critic but his works like The Future Poetry, On Himself, Essays Divine and Human and Letters on Poetry Literature and Art are replete with scholarly jottings on poetry literature and art. Besides The Future Poetry, the most original and authentic work on criticism, carries practical aspects of poetic criticism. The criticism of Sri Aurobindo is perfect and exemplary because it is never too close to its time nor it neglects the findings of its predecessors but as his more inclination towards spirituality and God, his criticism is fumed with the tinge of spiritual colors also. In his terrestrial existence Sri Aurobindo played many parts the politicians, the poet, the critic, the philosopher, and the Yogi which in sum made him the Rishi Aurobindo. But his part of critic not only set milestones in the world of English criticism but also torch bore the path of new critic and poet. Admitting his importance as critic Iyenger observes:
…………While the creative critic (of Aurobindo) has sensed the rhythm of ‘future poetry’ and described how the new poet will write on the wings of an elemental spirituality and articulate ineluctable rhythms of spirits.
And he adds further:
Considering merely as a poet and critic of poetry, Sri Aurobindo would still rank among the supreme master our time. (Iyenger. 153.)

Another critic P. C. Kotoky judges The Future Poetry as:
In The Future Poetry which may be called the poetic testament, Sri Aurobindo has visualized the poetry of the future, and the specific purpose that it will serve. Besides this book has a large number of letters on literary topics. The variety of the subjects and the lucidity of their treatment speak of his wide interest in literatures of different countries and sound understanding of literary principles.(Kotoky.50.)

His The Future Poetry is the chief work of criticism in which he has discussed various pros and cons of poetry, the Mantra, the Essence of Poetry, Poetic visions, Rhythms and movements, Style and Substance, Characteristics of English Poetry, Poetic Delight and Beauty, Ideal Spirit of Poetry and various global poets like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron Keats, Shelley, Browning, Arnold, Swimburne, Tagore and many others. The book could not be published during Aurobindo’s lifetime, because Aurobindo was desirous of revising many chapters of the book and which he did up to the end of his life. When asked in 1949 about the possibility of publishing The Future Poetry Sri Aurbindo replied that it -
Cannot be published as it is for there must be a considerable rearrangement of its matter since publication from month to month left its plans struggling and ill arranged…….I do not wish to publish it in its present imperfect form(T.F.P., 400).

In 1953, three years after Sri Aurobindo’s passing The Future Poetry was published as a book, which later on became a bed side book of criticism of Indo-Anglian critics for its delineation of English criticism on Indian soil. The opening lines of the book mourn the dearth of ideal criticism in our nation. He says –
It is not often that we see published in India literary criticism which is of the first order, at once discerning and suggestive, criticism which forces us to see and think. (The Mantra, chapter 1, T.F.P., p. 3) the starting point of the book was a review of the book New Ways in English Literature (Ganesh & Co. 1917).

Like an ideal critic, having ‘traveled much’ in the realms of gold, Aurbindo draws an independent and trained judgment on poetry. Likewise judging a critic and elements of art, Aurobindo says:
The critic of a certain type- or the intellectually conscientious artist will on the other hand often talk as a poetry were mainly a matter of a faultlessly correct or at most an exquisite technique. Certainly in all arts, good technique is the first step towards perfection; but there are so many other steps, there is a whole world beyond before you can 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. (T.F.P., 13)

According to him the work of a poet depends not only on himself and his age but on the mentality of the nation to which he belongs to and spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic tradition and environment which it creates for him but should never be that he be limited or confined to the particular environment. Aurobindo deeply investigated the genesis of poetry and its elements of poetic creation. He observes:
Poetry, or at any rate, a truly poetic poetry, comes always from some subtle plane through the creative vital and uses the other mind and other external instruments for transmission only. There are three elements in the production of poetry: there is the original source of inspiration, there is the vital force create a beauty which contributes its own substance and impetuous and often determine the form, except when that also comes ready made from the original source; there is finally the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. (‘Essence of Poetry’ T.F.P., 13)

In a letter to his disciple, Sri Aurobindo tells him three elements of poetry. In his own words:
For poetry three things are necessary. First there must be emotional sincerity and poetical feeling……….next a mastery over the language and a faculty of rhythm perfected by the knowledge of technique of poetic and rhythmic expression………finally there must be the power of inspiration, the creative energy that makes the whole difference between the poet and the good verse writer. (T.F.P., 13)

To Aurobindo, inspiration and efforts are two major elements of poetry in which inspiration is always an uncertain thing, it comes whenever it chooses to come or it may stop before it has to finish its work. Few poets in the world have been able to sustain the highest level of inspiration. He again says:
The very best poetry does not usually does not come by streams except in poets of a supreme greatness…the very best comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes, three or four gleaming drops at a time. Even in the greatest poets, even in those with the most opulent flow of riches like Shakespeare, the very best is comparatively rare.
Sri Aurobindo classifies the world poets in three rows as:
First row: - Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki.
Second row: - Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Virgil, Milton.
Third row: - Goethe. (L.P.L.A., 230)

As the critic in Aurobindo is a mingling of a nationalist as well as spiritual, his observations echo the same when he speaks:
But it is well also for us to ponder and inquire what is the national soul and the soul of Humanity demands from us and on what path we are most likely to give our energies and efforts the maximum power and serviceableness to the great age of mankind and of India on which we are entering. (Essays, Divine and Human. 417.)

Besides Aurobindo emphasizes the poets on the self-assessment and self-judgment. He states frankly:
A poet who puts no value or a vey l0ow value on his own writing has no business to write poetry or to publish it or keep it publication. If I allowed the publication of Collected Poems it is because I judged them worth publishing. (On Himself. 237)
Simplicity and puissant environment are the two basic factors of poetry for the refinement of knowledge makes poetry more and more difficult to pen. According to Sri Aurobindo ‘great poets were usually those ones who either arise out a simple and puissant environment and when become excessively refined in intellect, curious in ‘aesthetic sensibility’ or more minute or exact in aesthetic sensibility, great poetry become too hard to pen.
Sri Aurobindo is a critic with keen introspection and critical eyes who has meticulously assessed the English and Indian and European poets. His wide and in-depth study of English literature is mirrored in his works. B. K. Das observes:
Aurobindo is a critic with original critical insight. His assessment of English and European poets bears the stamp of originality and insight in critical faculty. (Das. 19.)

According to Sri Aurobindo:
Chaucer gives English poetry a first shape by the help of French Roman Models and the work of Italian Masters... Chaucer has his eyes fixed on the object and that object is the visible action of life as it passes before him...he has captured the secret of ease, grace and lucidity from French romance poetry and had learnt from the great Italian more force and compactness of expressions.
“Shakespeare” says Sri Aurobindo, “stands out alone, both in his own age when so many were drawn to the form and circumstances were favourable to this kind of genius, and in all English literature. He stands out too as quite in his spirit, method and quality.” (T.F.P., 66)
The comparative judgment of Sri Aurobindo and these poets is also worth quoting:

Each is a sort of demiurge who has crated the world of his own. Dante’s triple world beyond is more constructed by the poetic seeing mind than by this kind of demiurgic power – otherwise he would rank by their side; the same with Kalidasa. Aeschylus is a seer and creator but on a much smaller scale. Virgil and Milton have a less spontaneous breathe of creative genius; one or two typical figure & expected they live rather by what they have said than by they have made. (T.F.P., 66)

Sri Aurobindo’s observation of Shelly and Keats and Wordsworth is rather different with his predecessors-critics. He considers that- ‘their best work is as fine poetry is written’, but there works are nothing on a larger scale which would place them among the greatest creators. He remarks:
If Keats had finished Hyperion (without spilling it) if Shelly had lived or if Wordsworth had not petered out like a motorcar with insufficient petrol, it might be different but we have to take things as they are. (L.P.L.A., 66)
Comparing Goethe and Shakespeare, he points out:
Yes, Goethe goes much deeper than Shakespeare; he had an incomparably greater intellect than the English poet and sounded problems of life and thought Shakespeare had no means of approaching even……….he wrote out of a high poetic intelligence, but his style and movement nowhere came near the poetic power, the magic, the sovereign expression and profound and settled rhythms of Shakespeare. (L.P.L.A., 232-233)

Sri Aurobindo regards Homer and Shakespeare as one of the greatest poets keeping their essential force and duty – not of the scope of their work as a whole…………The Mahabharta according to him is a far greater creation than the Eliot and (from that viewpoint) the Ramayana, the Odyssey and spread, either and both of them, their strength and achievement over a larger field than the whole dramatic world of Shakeapeare.
“But”, says Aurobindo, “As poets- the masters of rhythm and language and the expression of poetic beauty- Vyasa and Valmiki though not inferior are not greater than either of the English or the Greek poet. “(L.P.L.A., 233)

Nor Sri Aurobindo regards Dante and Milton as mystic poets. He says:
I don’t think either can be called a mystic poet- Milton not at all. A religious fervor or a metaphysical background belongs to the mind and the vital not to a mystic consciousness. Dante writes from the poetic intelligence with a strong intuitive drive behind it (L.P.L.A., 234)

But Sri Aurobindo regards Blake and Mallame as the greatest mystic poets of Europe. Sri Aurobindo emphasizes on the power of expression of a poet. Poets like Wordsworth, Shelley and Shakespeare were devoid of spiritual experience, but in an inspired moment become the medium of expression of spiritual which is beyond them and on the other hand a poet of spiritual experience may be hampered by his medium or by his ‘transcribing brain’ or by an insufficient mastery of language and rhythm and give an impression which may mean much to him, but not convey the power and breath of it to others.
In English literature, Sri Aurobindo finds the Victorian age separately as the age of poetry.
Poetry flourishes best when it is greatest and deepest…… and the poetry of this period suffers by the dull- smoke-laden atmosphere in which it flowered though it profited by the European stir of thought and seeking around and held its own…… achieved beauty, a considerable energy, some largeness occasional heights….. there is still something sickly in its luxuriance, a comparative depression and poverty in its thought a lack in its gifts, in its very accomplishment a sense of something not done.(T.F.P. ,150)

Tennyson, the representative poet of the Victorian Era is also well judged by him when he says:
Tennyson mirrors ordinary cultivated mind as it shaped in English temperament and intelligence, with an extra ordinary fidelity and in a richly furnished and a heavily decorated mirror sat round with all the art and revised that could be appreciated by the contemporary taste (T.F.P. p. 151)
“Browning”, according to Aurobindo, “stands next to Tennyson in the importance of his poetic work………..he surpasses him in the mass and force and abundant variety of his work and the protean energy of his genius.” And “Arnold”, is the third considerable Victorian of the epoch, though he bulks less……..but as time goes on, his figure emerges and assumes in quality………….His poetic work and quality may even be regarded as finer in its essence of poetic value if more tenuous in show of power than that of his two contemporaries. There is a return to the two classic style of poetry in the simplicity and straightforward directness of his diction and turn of thought that brings us back to the way of the earlier poets and a certain seriousness and power which we do not find in the over consciousness and the too studied simplicity or elaborate carefulness and purposeful artistry of the other poets of the time. (T.F.P. p. 158)

In modern age, Aurobindo considers the English and the Americans as the representatives of new and free poetic rhythm. Tagore’s translations have come in ‘as a powerful adventitious aid. He regards Tagore as:
Tagore is what some of the French writers are and Whitman and Carpenter are not, a delicate and subtle craftman, and he has done his work with perfect grace and spiritual fineness. (T.F.P. p. 164)
Whitman is another poet who is acknowledged by him as the ‘most Homeric voice since Homer.’ According to him:
He (Whitman) is a great poet, one of the greatest in the power of his substance, the energy of his vision, the force of his style, the largeness at once of his personality and his universality. (T.F.P. 165)

Besides the comment of Sri Aurbindo on D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Romian Rolland Lowes Dickinson, G.B. Shaw, Dryden, Pope, Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and some Indian authors like Sharat Chandra Chatterji, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Romesh Chandra and Bhatkhande are notable, insightful and analytical.
Aurobindo is a union of Sadhak and critic. His notions in letter form regarding spiritual poetry, the importance of literature in sadhna, utility of literature in Yoga, inner change and artistic self expression, silence and creative activity, innerself development and the growth of poetic power and other related subjects are incorporated at one place which makes clear all the vague doubts of both the sadhaka and the poetry reader. To Sri Aurobindo:
Poetry cannot be substitute for sadhna, it can be accompaniment only……………also poetry must be written in true spirit not for fame or self expression but as a means of contact with the Divine through the inspiration or the expression of one’s own inner being as it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India. (T.F.P. p. 214)

Sri Aurobindo is an advocate of spiritual ecstasy and growing of flowering of lotus of spiritual illumination in everyone’s heart:
The expression in poetry and other forms must be, for the yogi a flowing out from a growing self within and not merely a mental creation or aesthetic pleasure. Like that the inner self grows and the poetic power will grow with it. (L.P.L.A. 218)

Sri Aurobindo pleads for the mantra in his, poetic vision, which is a word of power and light that emanates from the inspiration or from very higher plane of intuition. Aurobindo finds Mantra as follows:
I have spoken in the beginning of the Mantra as the highest and revealing form of poetic thought and expression. What the Vedic poets meant by the Mantrawas an inspired and intense revealing seeing and visioned thinking, attended by the realization, to use the ponderous but necessary modern world.

Long before Eliot’s observation of comparison and analysis, Aurobindo introduced the same tool of criticism. Besides, the doctrine of translation propounded by Aurobindo is divided into two ways. In his own words:
There are two ways of rendering the poem from one language into another-
1. One in to keep strictly to the turn and manner of the original,
2. The other to take its spirit, sense and imagery and reproduced them freely so as to suit the new language. (L.P.L.A., 141)

He advocates the freedom of translator when he says:
A translator is not necessarily bound to the exact word and letter of the original he chooses; he can make his own poem out of it if he likes, and that is what is very often done. He gives reference of the Holy Bible (English Bible) which is ‘a translation but it ranks among the finest pieces of literature in the world. (L.P.L.A., 142)

Besides, Aurobindo found Indian writers writing better than their contemporary Indian authors. So he has to say ‘many Indians write better than many educated Englishmen’. Yet he found many pitfalls in Indo English blank verse, ‘for blank verse is the most difficult of all English meters; it has to be very skillfully and strongly done to make up for the absence of rhyme and if not very well done, it is better not done at all. He had a strong belief of growing of talent in future for probably he had smelt the ever-widening frontiers of English language and he remarked:
What you say may be correct (that our oriental luxury in poetry makes it unappealing to westerners), but on the other hand it is possible that the mind of the future will be more international than it is not. In that case the expression of various temperaments in English poetry will have a chance. (L.P.L.A., 165)

For the betterment of English poets, Aurobindo suggests three rules. He says:
1. Avoid rhetorical terms and artifices and the rhetorical tone generally. An English poet can use these things because he has the intrinsic sense of his language and keep the right proportion and measure. An Indian using them kills his poetry and produces a scholastic exercise.
2. Write modern English. Avoid frequent inversions or terms of language that belong that belong to the past poetic style. Modern English poetry uses a straight forward order and a natural style not different in vocabulary syntax etc. from that of prose. An inversion can be used sometimes but it must be done deliberately and for a distinct and particular effect.
3. For poetic effect, rely wholly on the power of your substance, the magic of rhythm and the sincerity of your expression- if you can add subtly so much the better but not at cost of sincerity and straightforwardness. Do not construct your poetry with the brain-mind the mere intellect that is not the source of true inspiration: write always from the inner heart, emotions and vision. (L.P.L.A., 168)

These dos and don’ts will create an understanding into the Indian poetic mind to enhance him to a higher plane of consciousness. Aurobindo lays much emphasis on writing one’s own original thoughts and forbids the Indian poets to imitate or follow some particular school of thought, because it was his own conviction that ‘writing in one’s own words what another has said or written is a good exercise or a test for accuracy, clear understanding of ideas, and observant intelligence but it is also imperative to understand English and express oneself in good English.
Undoubtedly most of the observations of Sri Aurbindo on English and Indo-English poetry are sound and valid even today. Unquestionably the capacities of Aurobindo are yet to acquire proper recognition specially in the terms of criticism where he stands alone with the theory of his own. In this term he can be regarded as critics’ critic for he was the first critic who hoped so much with the Indian English poets and authors, yet he considered nothing more futile than for a poet to write on expectation of contemporary fame or praise, however agreeable that may be, if it comes; but it is not of any definitive value. It is none but he who sets ideals before Indian English poets and says:
A poet has to go on his way, trying to gather hints from what people say for or against when their criticisms are things he can profit by, but not otherwise moved (if he can manage it)-seeking mainly to sharpen his own sense of self criticism with the help of others. Difference of estimate need not surprise him at all. (L.P.L.A., 183)

Works Cited
· Iyenger, K. R. S. Indian Writing in English, ‘Sri Aurobindo’, New Delhi: Sterling Pub.4th ed. 1984.
· Kotoky, P. C. Indo English Poetry. Gauhati: Gauhati University Dept. of Publication, 1969.
· Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry. (Abbreviated as T.F.P. in the text) Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 2nd ed. 2000.
· Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry Literature and Art. (Abbreviated as L.P.L.A. in the text) Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 2000.
· Sri Aurobindo, Essays, Divine and Human. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 2000.
· Sri Aurobindo, On Himself. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 2000.
· Das, B. K. Perspective on Indian English Poetry Criticism. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1st. ed.1993.