Sri Aurobindo as a Poet: A Reassessment

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to say that Aurobindo Ghose (Sri Aurobindo) is one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. Aurobindo the mahayogi, Aurobindo the philosopher, Aurobindo the poet, Aurobindo the interpreter of Indian thought, Aurobindo the critic and Aurobindo the radical politician—all these hats fit him. I would argue that a proper and comprehensive revaluation of Aurobindo’s work and vision as a poet must take into account all aspects of his genius and achievement, for they are integrally related to the making of Aurobindo the poet. In the midst of the manifold twentieth century developments in literary theory and criticism—modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, poststructuralism, sociohistoricism, psychoanalysis and postcoloniality, to name only a few major ones—one must raise the age-old question: what criteria, if any, will determine the greatness of a poet? In a letter Aurobindo comments on the achievements of the world’s greatest poets and classifies them into “three rows”: Homer, Shakespeare and Valmiki are assigned the first row; Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Virgil and Milton the second row; and Goethe the third row.1 The front benchers, Homer, Shakespeare and Valmiki, have, according to Aurobindo, “at once supreme imaginative originality, supreme poetic gift, widest scope and supreme creative genius” (BCL 9.521).