Poetry must sink into the soul and reach heights

 In Sri Aurobindo's aesthetic and critical judgment, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is significantly "dearer" and more highly regarded than Matthew Arnold. While Aurobindo respected both as intellectual giants, their value to his "Overhead Aesthetics" differs sharply.

1. Coleridge: The Seer of the Supraphysical

Aurobindo viewed Coleridge as a pioneer who opened "a new field in the realms of poetic vision". 

• Authentic Experience: He described Coleridge’s Kubla Khan as a masterpiece because it captured a "genuine supraphysical experience" with absolute "accuracy of vision and authenticity of rhythm".
• Intuitive Genius: Aurobindo placed Coleridge among the "great English poets" like Shelley and Keats, noting that he took "intense pleasure" in Coleridge's work.
• The Limit of Intellect: Although he criticized Coleridge for sometimes being "more a philosopher than a mystic" and squandering his genius in "discursive Metaphysics," he still saw him as a poet who touched the "magical" and "translunary". 

2. Arnold: The Intellectual Moralist

In contrast, Aurobindo’s view of Matthew Arnold was more critical, often using him as a point of departure for what poetry should not limit itself to.

• The "Ineffectual" Label: Aurobindo famously repurposed Arnold’s own critique of Shelley (the "ineffectual angel") to suggest that Arnold himself failed to see the spiritual reality that Shelley was actually conveying.
• Criticism of Life: While Arnold defined poetry as a "criticism of life," Aurobindo found this definition insufficient. He argued that poetry must do more than console or strengthen—it must "sink into the soul" and reach heights Arnold’s intellectual approach could not access.
• Victorian Limitations: Aurobindo viewed Arnold as a "balanced" but ultimately "unbalanced" critic who was often "flagrantly prejudiced" and limited by the "gross and mundane intellectual mind" of the 19th century. 

Summary of Preference

Feature	Coleridge (Favored)	Matthew Arnold (Respected but Limited)
Primary Value	Supraphysical Vision: A pioneer of the "higher realms" of consciousness.	Intellectual Discipline: A source of critical terms, but lacks spiritual depth.
Best Work	Kubla Khan: A rare instance of "absolute accuracy of vision".	Seen more as a critic whose "criticism of life" was too narrow.
Aurobindo's Affection	Took "intense pleasure" in his poetry; a "genuine master".	Influential, but often cited for his "prejudiced" and "personal" opinions.

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Byron and Whitman can be compared effectively through Sri Aurobindo’s aesthetic lens, though he places them on different rungs of his "evolutionary ladder" of poetry. In his seminal work, The Future Poetry, Aurobindo treats them as representatives of two distinct stages in the human spirit’s attempt to find its "soul-voice." 

1. Comparison of Creative Forces

• Byron (The Titan of Personality): Aurobindo characterizes Byron by his "Titanism"—a powerful, elemental force of personality. He views Byron as "intellectually shallow and hurried," a poet who succeeded on "inferior levels" because he was more in touch with the "vivid half-outward, half-inward turn of mind" (the life-soul) than with the spirit.
• Whitman (The Pioneer of the Future): In contrast, Aurobindo sees Whitman as a "pioneer" who moved beyond the intellectual and vital levels. Whitman represents a "large cosmic vision," attempting to realize the "godhead in the world and in man". 

2. Points of Comparison

Feature	Lord Byron	Walt Whitman
Aurobindo's Classification	Titanism: Powerful but focused on the external and the "desire-soul".	Upanishadic Strain: A precursor to the "Future Poetry" of spiritual intuition.
Spiritual Depth	He has "one foot across the borders of the spiritual" but never truly enters that kingdom.	He has a "strong intellectual intuition of the self" and the "large soul of humanity".
Success/Failure	Failed to give an "adequate voice to his highest possibility" due to a lack of artistic discipline.	Succeeded in opening a "new direction" toward a poetry of the soul, despite occasional prosaic lines.

3. The "Future Poetry" Connection

• Whitman as Predecessor: Aurobindo considers Whitman a spiritual ancestor. He even titled his work The Future Poetry as an expansion on Whitman's own essay, The Poetry of the Future.
• The Evolutionary Bridge: For Aurobindo, Byron represents the height of the Romantic energy that focused on individual passion, while Whitman represents the transition to an Intuitive age where the poet becomes a "seer" (Kavi). 

In summary, while Aurobindo appreciated the "elemental force" in Byron, he found in Whitman a much closer relative to the Upanishadic spirit he sought to bring into modern literature. 

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Sri Aurobindo appreciated the ultimate source of the German inspiration that influenced Coleridge's ideas: the Upanishads and ancient Indian thought. While he had little personal attraction for the abstract philosophy of German thinkers like Kant and Hegel themselves, he recognized their ideas as an intellectual development of profound spiritual realities first articulated in ancient India. 

Sri Aurobindo's View of the German Influence

• Intellectual Echoes: Sri Aurobindo noted that "the larger part of German metaphysics is little more in substance than an intellectual development of great realities more spiritually seen in this ancient teaching". He saw the German idealists as attempting to grasp the same truths that the Indian seers perceived directly through spiritual experience.
• Intuition vs. Abstraction: His appreciation was for the "realities" and "intuitive approach" that some Western philosophers hinted at, rather than the abstract philosophizing itself, which he found less direct than yogic experience.
• Coleridge's Intuition: He valued Coleridge for his genuine poetic vision and ability to access "supraphysical worlds and planes" rather than for the specific philosophical terminology he borrowed from German sources like Kant and Schelling.
• Focus on the Poetic Result: For Sri Aurobindo, the German influence on Coleridge's theory of imagination was secondary to the actual poetic achievement—the "new field in the realms of poetic vision" that Coleridge opened up. 

In essence, Sri Aurobindo valued the universal spiritual truths that inspired both traditions, rather than the specific, intellectual German philosophical framework used by Coleridge. 

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Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra