Some people are blessed to have the touch of Goddess Saraswati on their fingers and Her kiss in their hearts; as a result they are able to compose remarkable verses. Due to this special blessings, they can dive into the ocean of thoughts and realizations and bring out the most precious pearls which they knit together to form a priceless necklace. This necklace is also known as “poetry”. There are some who think, analyze and evaluate subjects and occurrences of incidents from a different angle or perspective. They are the intellectuals and researchers who not only think but make others think as well. There is another class of people gifted with the special power of speech. They are superb conversationalists who mesmerize the audience whenever they speak. They have the touch of the Goddess of Learning in their tongue. In the fourth category of people there are the seers, the Yogis—who, despite being a part of this world, belong to the Divine. They are here to guide us, help us, lead us from Darkness to Light and from Falsehood to Truth. They enlighten us with their wisdom (practical and spiritual) and we feel secure when we are in their company. But is it possible to have these four traits in a single person? Yes, it indeed is possible. We still have such great men amidst us—K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran, who is not only a great Yogi but also a poet par excellence, a researcher, an Indologist, a prose-writer, a critic and what not! In this article, we shall try to discuss the various aspects of Amal Kiran, the universal genius…   more »

Poetry is truly a complete expression of beauty because it combines many different kinds of beauty: the beauty of sounds, of images, of thought, of emotions and of expression. And yet, unfortunately, the word “poetry” conjures up only images of school life. Those images often have in the background the voice of an unkind teacher or the stress of having to struggle with incomprehensible or archaic words. Most people think that one bids goodbye to poetry when one steps out of the student life. This may be why poems don’t usually form a part of our general reading. A combination of factors has made the poems of Sri Aurobindo so little appreciated. English poetry was a natural part of his education and therefore helped to form his mental make-up. In the late 19th century, a school like St Paul’s taught Greek and Latin from the lowest level of classes, and the entire focus was on literature. Education for the upper classes in England was structured around acquiring general culture, and this is why poetry was given a place of great importance at school level and was also commonly studied at colleges. It was an age when science, commerce and technology were generally considered to be inferior to literature. Having studied poetry so thoroughly, it was a natural step for Sri Aurobindo to compose his own poems. Yet there is a puzzle, and we could continue to look for less evident reasons to justify why so enjoyable a book as Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Poems remains so little known.   more »

There are numerous genre of literature, yet more are the schools of criticism aiming at appreciating and analyzing literature. Like every poet and writer differs from each other, similarly every critic and school of criticism differs from the other. The basis of these differences for the poets and writers may be of that of temperament, style and other techniques; critics differ on the subject and method of appreciation. Even in each school of criticism every critic differs from the other due to the subjective elements and temperamental differences that come in. The focus in the present essay is on the method of appreciation more than the subject, the tool of appreciation being consciousness. We see how consciousness plays an important role in creation and reception of a text. The words, as they have power, create the corresponding vibrations and can deliver this vibration into the creation and subsequently into the recipient if he or she is prepared to receive it. We see how beautifully consciousness binds the author, the text and the reader. All the disputes and differences of opinions end when we find these three (the author, the text and the reader) as parts of a continuum and not as distinct entities.   more »

In the preceding post on Speech versus Writing the following comment was made:

This also seems to be what Derrida means when he refers to the prose book as a corpse of language which must be exited from or transcended [54] -- the delimiting of the multisignificant roots has been pursued to its logical conclusion, and the power of the word has been exhausted. The aim of the project of deconstruction, says Derrida, agreeing with Aurobindo, is to get back to metaphoric, poetic language, where the power for signification has not yet been used up

Here is Sri Aurobindo on prose and the word

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, broad 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....   more »

Reference that prompted this posting is Rich's The Origin of the Words check at http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/6/25/3762846.html   more »