In that long letter [Letter
dated 4 May 1947 from Sri Aurobindo] on your own poetry, apropos of my
friend’s criticisms, you have written certain influences of the later Victorian
period on you. From Meredith’s Modern
Love I have been unable to trace concretely—unless I consider some of the
more pointed and bitter-sweetly reflective turns in Songs of Myrtilla to be Meredithian. That of Tennyson is noticeable
in only a delicate picturesqueness here and there or else in the use of some
words. Perhaps more than in your early blank verse the Tennysonian influence of
this kind in general is there in Songs of
Myrtilla. Arnold
had influenced your blank verse in respect of particular constructions like two
or three “buts” as in
No despicable wayfarer, but Ruru,
But son of a great Rishi,
or,
but tranquil, but august, but
making easy…
Arnold is also observable in the way you
build up and elaborate your similes in Urvasie
and in Love and Death. Less openly a
general tone of poetic mind from him can also be felt: it persists subtly even in
the poems collected in Ahana, not to
mention Baji Prabhou. I don’t know
whether Swinburne is anywhere patent in your narratives: he probably does have
something to do with Songs of Myrtilla.
Stephen Phillips is the most direct influence in Urvasie and Love and Death.
But as I have said in my essay on your blank verse he is assimilated into a
stronger and more versatile genius, together with influences from the
Elizabethans, Milton and perhaps less consciously Keats. In any case, whatever
the influences, your early narratives are intensely original in essential
spirit and movement and expressive body. It is only unrecptiveness or
inattention that can fail to see this and to savour the excellence of your
work.
Sri Aurobindo Replies
The influences I spoke of were of
course only such influences as every poet undergoes before he has entirely
found himself. What you say about Arnold’s
influence is quite correct; it acted mainly, however, as a power making for
restraint and refinement, subduing any uncontrolled romanticism and insisting
on clear lucidity and right form and building. Meredith had no influence on Songs to Myrtilla; even afterwards I did
not make myself acquainted with all his poetry, it was only Modern Love and poems like the sonnet on
Lucifer and the Ascent to Earth of the Daughter of Hades that I strongly admired
and it had its effect on the formation of poetic style and its after-effects in
that respect are not absent from Savitri.
It is only Swinburne’s early lyrical poems that exercised any power on me, Dolores, Hertha, The Garden of
Prosperine and others rank among his best works,—also Atlanta in Calydon, his later lyrical poetry I found too empty and
his dramatic and narrative verse did not satisfy me. One critic characterized Love and Death as an extraordinarily
brilliant and exact reproduction of Keats: what do you say to that? I think
Stephen Phillips had more to do with it.