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Poetry in the Making</TITLE>
	
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<font size="4">The
Poetry in the Making</font></b></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>Is
the artist – the supreme artist, when he is a genius, that is to
say – conscious in his creation or is he unconscious? Two quite
opposite views have been taken of the problem by the best of
intelligences. On the one hand, it is said that genius is genius
precisely because it acts unconsciously, and on the other it is
asserted with equal emphasis that genius is the capacity of taking
infinite pains, which means it is absolutely a self. conscious
activity.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We take a third view of the matter and say that genius
is neither unconscious or conscious but <I>superconscious. </I>And
when one is superconscious, one can be in appearance either conscious
or unconscious. Let us at the outset try to explain a little this
psychological riddle.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one
is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational
intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be
always so. For one can be conscious with other forms of consciousness
or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or normal man the
consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the
rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful
brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is
otherwise. The experiences of the mystic prove the point. The mystic
is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and
reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart
from the normal consciousness, which is named <I>jagrat, </I>waking,
the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of
consciousness, <I>swapna, sushupti </I>and <I>turiya.) </I>And then
one can be quite unconscious, as in <I>samadhi – that </I>can be
<I>sushupti </I>or <I>turiya – or </I>partially conscious – in
<I>swapna, </I>for example,</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 82</FONT><BR>
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external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a
goblin. One can also remain normally conscious and still be in the
superconscience. Not only so, the mystic – the Yogi – can be
conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter
into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in
Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal world,
the plant world and finally the world of dead earth, of &quot;stocks
and stones&quot; too. For all these strands of existence have each
its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind
which is normally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses
himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad
speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in
trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification
of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his
consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and
becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that
superior consciousness the artist's mentality – his ideas and
dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other
words, his normal psychological make-up – serves as a channel, an
instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or
rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be
overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the
withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its
reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret
or subtle world – Words-worth's &quot;recollected in tranquillity&quot;
-and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the
purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words
and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of
the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives
and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune
with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription
becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The
supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the
instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with
absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness.
In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 83</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>consciousness,
the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all
obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with
its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own
substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret
norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's
creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too
critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully
blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to
come down and waited for an opportunity.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their
<I>inspiration: </I>they look upon themselves more or less as mere
instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond
their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls
them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given
shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are,
however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what
extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost
inanimate, instrument – nothing more than a mirror or a sensitive
photographic plate-is illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge.
His <I>Kubla Khan, </I>as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was
a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and
wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the
rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the
poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or
recording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a
common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what
seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on
the brain and are not recalled in memory. </FONT>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Still, it must be noted that Coleridge is a rare
example, for the recording apparatus is not usually so faithful but
puts up its own formations that disturb and alter the perfection of
the original. The passivity or neutrality of the intermediary is
relative, and there are infinite grades of it. Even when the larger
waves that play in it in the normal waking state are quieted down,
smaller ripples of unconscious or half-conscious habitual formations
are thrown up and they are sufficient to cause the scattering and
dispersal of the pure light from above.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 84</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>The
absolute passivity is attainable, perhaps, only by the Yogi. And in
this sense the supreme poet is a Yogi, for in his consciousness the
higher, deeper, subtler or other modes of experiences pass through
and are recorded with the minimum aberration or diffraction.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi
is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his
instruments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them
convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and
realities from the Beyond. Now the question is, is it possible for
the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and
not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry,
as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness
at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously.
The general experience, however, is that of &quot;one at a time&quot;:
if the artist dwells more in the one, the other retires into the
background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness,
he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not
conscious at all – he does not know how he has created, the sources
or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them&quot;
gone through them all as if <I>per saltum. </I>Such seems to have
been the case with the <I>primitives, </I>as they are called, the
elemental poets – Shakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some
others, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on
a par, the instrumental intelligence is strong and active, it helps
in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original
impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses
something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in
correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of
Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and
Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the
rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place
we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose
representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land
in the domain of versification – although here, too, there can be a
good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit:
Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 85</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The three or four major orders I speak of in reference
to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history
of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at
the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not
rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong
self-consciousness that they brought into human culture – that was
their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said,
a <I>primitive, </I>their classical age began with Aeschylus who was
the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three.
Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and
pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished
phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was
exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials,
unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by
the onrush of the poetic <I>enthousiasmos. </I>Sophocles, in spite of
his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just
a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration
– there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil
between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood,
Euripides, we slide lower down – we arrive at a predominantly
mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but
something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that
maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a
subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very
much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of
virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet
then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the
general trend of all literature.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But should there be an inherent incompatibility between
spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a
harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the
normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be
wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the
levels simultaneously – above, he is conscious of the source and
origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of
the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and
embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes
then divalent as</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 86</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>it
were – there is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the
receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also
the sense of dynamism, of conscious. agency as in his secret being he
is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirer – in other
words, the poet is both a <I>seer <FONT FACE="Arial Narrow">(kavih)
</FONT></I>and a <I>creator </I>or <I>doer (poi<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ē</FONT>t<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ē</FONT>s).</I></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Not only so, the future development of the poetic
consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in
which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate
but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human
consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to con&shy;sciousness
and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and
artistic genius too has moved <I>pari passu </I>in the same
direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious,
that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them
spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem
to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know
only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not
yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of
childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more
conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and
initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical
field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is
called &quot;primitives&quot;, the later one, that of conscious
artists, usually goes by the name of &quot;classicists.&quot; Modern
creators have gone one step farther in the direction of
self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full
awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An
unconscious artist in the sense of the &quot;primitives&quot; is
almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are
scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate,
purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has
cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of
utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot command the tide to
roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy
and new orientation discovered.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist
originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is
curiosity – the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, </FONT>
<BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 87</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or
even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen
or unexpected modes of &quot;psychoses&quot; or psychological states.
Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a
movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges
and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot
and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of
the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A
hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like
gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is
intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>
and constitutes almost the whole of Val<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>ry's.
The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also
characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry,
conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The consciously purposive activity of the poetic
consciousness – in fact, of all artistic consciousness – has
shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions.
First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets
took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of
human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning
dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The
modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it
does not accept and admit the &quot;given&quot; as the final and
definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other
norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition
of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new
world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure
poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being
the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an
incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order
of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as
beautiful, – ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects
and scenes and movements of Nature – against God or spiritual life,
the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the
meaningless, the insignificant and the trifling – tins and teas,
bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sickle – he is still a
prophet, a violent</FONT><BR>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page – 88</span><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>one,
an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous
being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and
batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them
something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class
who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are
prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new
beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom
the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means
that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical
executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely'
conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is
doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the
technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns
that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few
major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full
expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some
major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualities – such as truth,
sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity,
straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to
say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully;
but the <I>modus operandi </I>was not such a passion or obsession
with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself
which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life
has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become,
in the Shakespearean phrase, his &quot;be-all and end-all&quot;, even
so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The
subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals
and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight
in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not
for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe,
have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the
ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the
ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a
self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of <I>Homo
Faber, </I>has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has
done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 89</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>The
salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and
not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the
self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the
original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of
consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious,
the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument
for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar,
almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible
to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not
to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure
was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and
reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great
Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient.
Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power,
some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens.
But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be
the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher
spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and
scientific.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>That is what is wanted at present in the artistic
world-the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And
here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution,
the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the
future poet has to be a mystic-in him will be fulfilled the travail
of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the
tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has
sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered,
refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the
aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil.
And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain
and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the
how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still
retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are
usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a
spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of
vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not
only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher
consciousness means not only</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 90</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>awareness
but the free and untrammeled activity and expression of the truth and
reality it is.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Genius had to be generally more or less unconscious in
the past, because the instrument was not ready, was clogged as it
were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had
very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials
without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was
awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the
poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared for a
greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A
conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and
enriched instrument in the delivery of superconscious truth and
beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic
creation. We thus foresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense
of creative beauty in man will find its culmination. Such an art was
only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the
background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called
&quot;mystic&quot; to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of
course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.44cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>I have spoken of the source of inspiration as
essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or
over-consciousness. But to be more precise and accurate I should add
another source, an <I>inner </I>consciousness. As the
super-consciousness is imaged as lying <I><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow">above
</FONT></I>the normal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may
be described as lying <I>behind </I>or <I>within </I>it. The movement
of the inner consciousness has found expression more often and more
largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of
the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-world
inspiration, for the inspiration that comes from the inner
consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration,
tends to be naturally more &quot;spontaneous&quot;, less conscious,
since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that
as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.39cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always
been to bring down or instil more and more light and
self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first
result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the
consciousness, a movement of scientific observation and criticism</FONT><BR>
		</P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2> Page-91</FONT><BR>
		</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>which
very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic enthusiasm and
fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All efforts
of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer,
bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail for this transcendence,
including those that seem contradictory to it.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.4cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Whether the original and true source of the poet's
inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the
mediating instrument-the mind (in its most general sense) and
speech-for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing
consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of
these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the
consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual
element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in
the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The
revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a
completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is
meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities
that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend
of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation
of our poets is &quot;the pain of the present and the passion for the
future&quot;: they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets,
but prophets for the moment crying in the wilderness although some
have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead
or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality
which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of
human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated
an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a
mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what human
consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's
evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally
expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is
possible: that is the history of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the
eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the
Upanishadic problem has cropped up:</FONT></P>
<P STYLE="text-indent:0.4cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>By whom impelled does the mind fall to its target, what
is the agent that is behind the eye and sees through the eyes,</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; text-indent:0.4cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page-92</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>what
is the hearing and what the speech that their respective sense organs
do not and cannot convey and record adequately or at all?</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.41cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Like the modern scientist the artist or craftsman too of
today has become a philosopher, even a mystic philosopher. The
subtler and higher ranges of consciousness are now the object of
inquiry and investigation and expression and revelation for the
scientist as well as for the artist. The external</FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>sense-objects,
the phenomenal movements are symbols and signposts, graphs and
pointer-readings of facts and realities that lie hidden, behind or
beyond. The artist and the scientist are occult alchemists. What to
make of this, for example:</FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:0.95cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Beyond the shapes of empire, the capes of Carbonek, over
the topless waves of trenched Broceliande, drenched by the
everlasting spray of existence, with no mind's sail</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:0.95cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>reefed or set, no slaves at the motived oars, drove into
and clove the wind from unseen shores. Swept from all altars,
swallowed in a path of power by the wrath</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:0.95cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>that wrecks the pirates in the Narrow Seas,.. . .
multiple without dimension, indivisible without uniformity, the ship
of Solomon (blessed be he) drove on.<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>Well,
it is sheer incantation. It is word-weaving, rhythm plaiting,
thought-wringing in order to pass beyond these frail materials, to
get into contact with, to give some sense of the mystery of existence
that passeth understanding. We are very far indeed from the &quot;natural&quot;
poets, Homer or Shakespeare, Milton, or Virgil. And this is from a
profane, a mundane poet, not an ostensibly religious or spiritual
poet. The level of the poetic inspiration, at least of the poetic
view and aspiration has evidently shifted to a higher, a deeper
degree. We may be speaking of tins and tinsel, bones and dust, filth
and misery, of the underworld of ignorance and ugliness,</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>All
things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=1 STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>
&quot;The Last Voyage&quot; by Charles Williams-A <I>Little Book of
Modern Verse, </I>(Faber and Faber).</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; text-indent:0.34cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page-93</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>and
the imaginative idealist, the romantically spiritual poet says that
these or</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a
lumbering cart,</FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry
mould,</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>all,
all the dark spots and blotches on the fair face of earth and
humanity</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:0.95cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the
deeps of my heart.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>and
he cries out:</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:1.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be
told;</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>and
declares the ardent aspiration of his heart and soul:</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>I hunger to build them anew, and sit on a green knoll
apart,</FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like
a casket of gold</FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the
deeps of my heart.<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>But
the more truly modern mind looks at the thing in a slightly different
way. The good and the evil are not, to it, contrary to each other:
one does not deny or negate the other. They are intermixed, fused in
a mysterious identity. The best and the worst are but two conditions,
two potentials of the same entity. Baudelaire, who can be considered
as the first of the real moderns in many ways, saw and experienced
this intimate polarity or identity of opposites in human nature and
consciousness. What is Evil, who is the Evil One:</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.38cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>  W. B. Yeats: &quot;The
Lover tells of the Rose in his <I>Heart&quot;-The Wind among the
Reeds.</I></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; font-style:normal; text-indent:0.38cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page-94</FONT><BR>
		</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Une Id<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>e, une
Forme, Un <FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&Ecirc;</FONT>tre</I></FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Parti de l' azur et tomb<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT></I></FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Dans un Sryx bourbeux et plomb<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT></I></FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>O<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&ugrave;</FONT> nul <FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&aelig;</FONT>il
du Ciel ne p<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>n<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&egrave;</FONT>tre;<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>
</I></FONT>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>				(L'Irremediable)</I></FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Arial">I
And </FONT>therefore it is not so irremediable as it appears to be.
For the miracle happens and is an inevitable natural phenomenon, and
that is why</FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Par l'op<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>ration
d'un myst<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&egrave;</FONT>re vengeur</I></FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Dans
la brute assoupie un ange se r<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>veille.
</FONT><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup2;</FONT></I></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.96cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>				(L' Aube spirituelle)</I></FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>Heaven
and Earth are not incommensurables, divinity and humanity function as
one reality, towards one purpose and end: cruel heaven, miserable
humanity? Well, this is how they appear to the poet's eye:</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Le Ciel! couvercle noir de la grande marmite </I></FONT>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>O<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&ugrave;</FONT> bout
l'imperceptible et vaste Humanit<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;&sup3;</FONT>
</I></FONT>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-left:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>				(Le Couvercle)</I></FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.4cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>In other words, the tension in the human consciousness
has been raised to the nth power, the heat of a brooding
consciousness is about to lead it to an outburst of new creation <I>sah
tapastaptva. </I>Human self-consciousness, the turning of oneself
upon oneself, the probing and projecting of oneself into oneself –
self-consciousness raised so often to the degree of self-torture,
marks the acute travail of the spirit. The thousand &quot;isms&quot;
and &quot;logies&quot; that pullulate in all fields of life, from the
political to the artistic or even the religious and the spiritual
indicate how the human laboratory is working at white heat. They are
breaches in the circuit of the consciousness, volcanic eruptions from
below or cosmic-ray irruptions from above,</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>
An Idea, a Form, a Being left the azure and fell into the mud and
grey of a Styx where no eye from Heaven can penetrate.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup2;</FONT>
An avenging Mystery operating, out of the drowsy animal awakes an
angel.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup3;</FONT>
Heaven! it is the dark lid upon the huge cauldron in which the
imperceptible and vast humanity is boiling.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=2><I>
– Les Fleurs du Mal.</I></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; font-style:normal; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page-95</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="font-style:normal; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>tearing open the normal limit and boundary –
Baudelaire's <I>couvercle</I> or the &quot;golden lid&quot; of the
Upanishads-disclosing and bringing into the light of common day
realities beyond and unseen till now.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.41cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium">If</SPAN><B> </B>so
long the poet was more or less a passive, a half-conscious or
unconscious intermediary between the higher and the lower lights and
delights, his role in the future will be better fulfilled when he
becomes fully aware of it and consciously moulds and directs his
creative energies. The poet is and has to be the harbinger and
minstrel of unheard-of melodies: he is the fashioner of the creative
word that brings down and embodies the deepest aspirations and
experiences of the human consciousness. The poet is a missionary: he
is missioned by Divine Beauty to radiate upon earth something of her
charm and wizardry. The ful1ness of his role he can only play up when
he is fully conscious – for it is under that condition that all
obstructing and obscuring elements lying across the path of
inspiration can be completely and wholly eradicated: the instrument
purified and tempered and transmuted can hold and express golden
truths and beauties and puissances that otherwise escape the too
human mould.</FONT><BR>
		</P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; text-indent:0.41cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 96</FONT></P>
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