Vision, experience and experiment in Sri Aurobindo’s poetry and poetics

Abstract

Vision, Experience and Experiment in Sri Aurobindo s Poetry and Poetics newlineThe field of poetics is considerably vast as it attempts to examine, and interpret the concept of literature, its scope and definition, modes of creation and methods and criteria of interpretation in the changing field of literature. This discipline has a long historical legacy both in India and the West. Poets, critics, aestheticians, philosophers and artists have deliberated upon various nuances of poetics. Studying the past, scrutinizing it against the present and extending it to suit the understanding of the poet-critics help the aesthetic and critical movements to carry forward the tradition with additions from the individual talents.Bharata, Bhand#257;maha, Dandin, Udbhatta, Rudrata, and#256;nandavardhana, Abhinavgupta, Jagannath are only few names out of the many who kept the tradition of Sanskrit poetics alive. Poetics was developed in other classical and modern Indian languages from time to time; however, the present study attempts to draw only from Sanskrit poetics for its purpose of comparisons and corroborations. The lineage of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Horace, was carried forth by John Dryden, Dr. Johnson, William Wordsworth, Mathew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, Northrope Frye, Harold Bloom who have made significant contributions to the Western critical traditions. The development of Sanskrit poetics in India and critical traditions are important in the context of comparative poetics. Both the traditions had many similar concepts which were concurrent to each other and distinct that they could be contrasted and contested.Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was a poet-critic and aesthetician who made an intensive and extensive study of poetry and poetics of the West and India. He was also a seer-poet and a yogi. But what is meant by the term and#8213;seer-poetand#8214;? One of the disciples of Sri Aurobindo, Nolini Kanta Gupta describes, and#8213;The vision of the Truth breaks out of the sense of delight, while the sense of delight finds its foundation in the truth.