Issues in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry: The poems of Sri Aurobindo are not easy to comprehend. Critically they are quite complex and can lead people to form extreme opinions. Many poets and critics, especially modernists have criticized his work. P. Lal goes as far as to divide the readers into two groups – those who love Aurobindo’s poetry and those who hate his poetry. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra also goes too far to suggest that Aurobindo lived his life writing worthless epic of 24000 lines. But on the positive side there are people who look at his writings as if they were some kind of sacred texts.
Therefore it is important for us not to go by what other people say, but by what we feel after reading his poetry and to form our own opinion it is important for us to engage with his poetry in a serious way. So let us look at his four poems, which will certainly give us some perspective towards his works.
A Tree: This is one of Aurobindo’s earliest and seemingly simple poems. But still it contains the quintessence of his philosophy. It is a small poem with two stanza – first being a quatrain and second a couplet. The poem is about a tree, beside a sandy bank, with its branch stretching upwards, towards heaven. Even though the roots of the tree are fixed to the ground, the branches reach toward the sky.
In the couplet the poet compares the human soul with the tree. He says that just like tree our body and brain are earthly bound and therefore they are able to detain our heavenly flight. It is interesting that while talking about the tree, the poet’s tone is positive and while talking about the humans his tone becomes negative. The earthly bounded body and brain stops the human to reach the heavenly heights. The poet blames humans for the urge to be bound to the physical world.
Life and Death: This poem is also short and has a similar structure of a quatrain and a couplet like A Tree. The rhyme scheme that this poem follows is also similar to that of A Tree, which is ababcc. In this poem the poet tries to reconcile the opposite ideas of life and death. According to the poet both of these ideas have been regarded as antinomies ever since but now he has been illuminated by a new knowledge, which seems to him like “long hidden pages/Are opened, liberating truths undreamed.”
The new knowledge which the poet talks about is: “Life only is, or death is life disguised, …”. The first part of this statement claims that there is nothing called death. Everything is life But in the later part of the line, the poet says that even if there is something called death then it is but life in disguise.
This claim is very big as if it can potentially change one’s attitude towards one’s life. If we reject the idea of death then we have to believe that we are immortal which is not what we see in our everyday life. But to see it from the perspective of the second part of poet’s new found knowledge it seems that what may appear as death is but a disguise for people do not die but they pass from one form of life into another.
In the last line of the poem, the poet reverses the entire scheme of thought that we have till now developed. Earlier he discarded the idea of death and now he says that life on earth, the life as we know it, is nothing when compared to the life after death.
Bride of Fire: Bride of Fire is also a short poem but slightly longer than the two poems we have looked at. The poem has four quatrains and follows the rhyme scheme of abab. The rhythm of the poem is something which actually stands out and provides the real power to the poem. In the poem the poet addresses to the bride of Fire. It is interesting to note that every stanza of the poem begins with a request to the bride; clasp me now close,” ‘surround my life”, “thrill and enlace”, and ‘sound in my heart”.
The poet is actually requesting the Bride to all this to him. The poet shows that what he has den to expect the grating of wishes in the third and fourth line of every stanza. These lines also express the dedication of the poet. The poem also presents a paradox. The poet desires the Bride of the Fire but at the same time he also claims that the desire to qualify for the embrace of the bride has been killed by himself. The subtle suggestion runs through the poem that in order to attain higher pleasures, lower must be sacrificed.
The bride of fire is not some physical being for she is a bride made of fire and there is a danger of death which comes with her embrace. And the poet desires for her embrace which suggests that the poet desires for death. But this death is also followed by an entry into a higher life, as Aurobindo believed in the life after death. Only when one has given the earthly and lower desires, one can transcend the physical world and reach the metaphysical. So the bride of fire is that purifying force which will purify the poet to be worthy of the higher world/life.
The Golden Light: Sri Aurobindo wrote a unique series of sonnets during his poetic career. These sonnets are unique in the sense that they are spiritual for no other poet has attempted to write spiritual sonnets. This sonnet is suggestive of a spiritual mood or experience and contains three quatrains which are followed by a couplet.
The movement of the poem suggests a descent from the crown of the brain, the seventh chakra, towards the lower system. And throughout the process this descent purifies the entire system. What we see here is that the idea of descent is quite important to the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. It is important that the descent of the Divine meets the upward movement of the aspiring devotee’s urge to reach the divine. This meeting is important in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo.
The poem tells that the light descends from the top and goes downwards touching the mind, throat, heart and finally the feet. In these four levels, Sri Aurobindo also represents the four planes of consciousness, which are: the mental, the psychic, the vital, and the physical.
Subcribe on Youtube - IGNOU SERVICE
For PDF copy of Solved Assignment
WhatsApp Us - 9113311883(Paid)
0 Comments
Please do not enter any Spam link in the comment box