On symbols in poetry

Like many other lovers of Sri Aurobindo's poetry, I too have been 'under the influence' of his symbol-rich poetry over the years. Only recently, however, I came across a book by A.B.Purani1 on Sāvitrī, which in its introductory chapter, threw light on what a 'symbol' represents. These wonderful passages made me want to try and learn what else the Master may have said on this subject; hence this short note.

Before we turn to what symbols represent, it could be worthwhile to breathe a few lines of poetry that are rich in the use of symbols

“It lit the thoughts that glow through the centuries” 2
“..An eye awake in the voiceless heights of trance” 3
“Lulled by Time’s beats eternity sleeps in us” 4
“The Adorer and Adored self-lost and one“5
“A blazing eye of Time watching the motionless day” 6

- A description of the Sun, in whose sight and to which, the ‘day’ is eternal. To have written this line, the poet would perhaps have experienced being the Sun – it is not a symbol that can ordinarily leap to an abstracting or even brilliantly imaginative mind.

On to the passage itself from Purani-ji's book :
“All language is symbolic“7

In poetry, symbols come naturally as very effective means for expressing the poet’s experience, besides being economical. According to C.Day Lewis, the special faculty of the poet is the “power of creating images”. These “images” that a poet creates are a kind of sign-language which forces itself on him under the stress of the creative impulse or in the moments of intensity of his creative faculty. The “image” created by the poet is effective and therefore authentic in proportion as it conveys the experience or the state of consciousness, without diminution or distortion. When the image is authentic it is a symbol, that is to say, it does not merely represent the experience but conveys the experience and is the most effective expression of it in language. Sri Aurobindo calls this “the finding of the inevitable word” and “inspired phrase“.
“Vision is the characteristic power of the poet, as is discriminative thought the essential gift of the philosopher and analytic observation the natural gift of the scientist”.

It is the faculty of vision, the power of seeing the truth of one’s experience or even some supra-intellectual Truth embodied as a symbol that gives the poet his special expressive power. It is true that a poet can create, or rather construct with the help of his imagination, an intellectual symbol which conveys his import to other people by a figure of symbol which represents rather than is the experience. Kalidas can use the “Cloud” as a “messenger” and Shelley convey the poet’s Truth through the “Skylark”.

With regard to the function of the symbol in expression Sri Aurobindo says in another letter:
” A symbol expresses not the play of abstract things or ideas put into imaged form but a living Truth or inward vision or experience of things, so inward, so subtle, so little belonging to the domain of intellectual abstraction, and precision that it cannot be brought out except through symbolic images – the more these images have a living truth of their own which corresponds intimately to the living truth they symbolise, the greater becomes the art of the symbolic expression.”

In his letters on poetry8, Sri Aurobindo also clarified how a poetic rendering of a symbolic vision could be different from a mystic poem; that a poem could be symbolic and mystic at the same time, but this was not a given:

"It is when the thing seen is spiritually lived and has an independent vivid reality of its own which exceeds any conceptual significance it may have on the surface that it is mystic.

..In the more deeply symbolist — still more in the mystic-poem the mind is submerged in the vividness of the reality and any mental explanation falls far short of what is felt and lived in the deeper vital or psychic response."

"A symbol must always convey a sense of reality to the feeling (not the intellect)"
"Mystic symbols are living things, not abstractions"

A disciple wrote to him, saying "If I try to understand the thing every bit seems ridiculous."
To which Sri Aurobindo replied:

"Because you are trying to find a mental meaning and your mind
is not familiar with the images, symbols, experiences that are peculiar to this realm. Each realm of experience has its own figures, its own language, its own vision and the physical mind not catching the link finds it all absurd."

Suggested follow-up on this subject:
There is a wonderful page or two at the end of the introductory chapter of Purani-ji’s book where he brings out the parallels between the symbolism in the Rig Veda and Savitri. A short excerpt is presented below, should this invite you to look up the original.

Sāvitrī is symbolic and the poetic genius of Sri Aurobindo has been saturated not only with English, Greek and Latin poetry but it has dived deep into the earliest poetry of humanity, the Rig Veda. How the Veda is living poetry and how Sri Aurobindo makes it live again in his translations of the hymns of the Veda is well known to those who have seen his epoch-making researches in the realm of Vedic interpretation embodied in his published book, ‘Hymns to the Mystic Fire’, and the still unpublished work, ‘The Secret of the Veda’. His thesis is that the Rig Veda is symbolic poetry embodying the spiritual wisdom of the early mystics. He himself has been a mystic all along his life and because of his affinity with the spirit of mystic expression it is natural that in Sāvitrī there are passages and lines which echo in their proper setting some of the poetic forms of the Vedic symbolists.
References
1 A.B.Purani, “Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri – An Approach and a Study”, pg 10. 1st pub 1952; ISBN :81-7058-683-6
2,3,4,5 from Sāvitrī
6 "In horis Eternum", Sri Aurobindo
7 Lasceiles Abercrombie
8 Letters on Poetry and Art, Sri Aurobindo
- Uday Arya
(Uday has been a lover of Sri Aurobindo's poetry since he can remember. He currently lives and works in Paris, and writes periodically at aryaputr.wordpress.com)