Poetic Vision and the Mantra 33other powers which are no less necessary to self-knowledge,
— in order to grapple with life and master it. We are seeking
always and in many directions to decipher the enigma of things,
the cryptogram of the worlds which we are set to read, and to
decipher it by the aid of the intellect; and for the most part we
are much too busy living and thinking to have leisure to be silent
and see. We expect the poet to use his great mastery of language
to help us in this endeavour; we ask of him not so much perfect
beauty of song or largeness of creative vision as a message to our
perplexed and seeking intellects. Therefore we hear constantly
today of the “philosophy” of a poet, even the most inveterate
beautifier of commonplaces being forcibly gifted by his admirers
with a philosophy, or of his message, — the message of Tagore,
the message of Whitman. We are asking then of the poet to be,
not a supreme singer or an inspired seer of the worlds, but a
philosopher, a prophet, a teacher, even something perhaps of a
religious or ethical preacher. It is necessary therefore to say that
when I claim for the poet the role of a seer of Truth and find
the source of great poetry in a great and revealing vision of life
or God or the gods or man or Nature, I do not mean that it is
necessary for him to have an intellectual philosophy of life or
a message for humanity, which he chooses to express in verse
because he has the metrical gift and the gift of imagery, or that
he must give us a solution of the problems of the age, or come
with a mission to improve mankind, or, as it is said, “to leave
the world better than he found it.” As a man, he may have these
things, but the less he allows them to get the better of his poetic
gift, the happier it will be for his poetry. Material for his poetry
they may give, an influence in it they may be, provided they are
transmuted into vision and life by the poetic spirit, but they can
be neither its soul nor its aim, nor give the law to its creative
activity and its expression.
The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices
himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the
prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law
or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message;
the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or