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The Poet and The Seer PLATO has exiled the poet from his Republic – in his ideal society there is no place for the poet – this is a stern condemnation. It is a matter of surprise to us, even of disbelief. Especially when we notice that there is no dearth of poetry in Plato himself – he was no dry-as-dust reasoner like his disciple Aristotle. In genius and temperament he was a true poet. The literary grace that expresses itself in his style is still regarded as something of an ideal. But why is he then so averse to the poets? Plato's charge is that poets are no worshippers of truth. They are but servitors of imagination, of pseudo-truth or falsehood. Not only that. Their entire skill is to make falsehood appear as truth and imagination as reality; they give to an airy nothing a local habitation and a name – and, what is worse, they make this falsehood and imagination as far as possible beautiful and attractive. What then is the consequence? Men are easily deluded and fascinated by the false beauty of a visionary world and depart from truth, good and real beauty. Poetry, the sweetheart, is the enchantress, the Circe, whose only work is to delude men and turn them into pigs or at least lambs.¹ Do you not see what a low opinion ¹ Whatever may be the case of
the poet, it is not that such a notion does not prevail in Manu enjoins that the householder must abstain from vocal and instrumental music and from the dance. A dancer, a singer and a house-builder have no right to be present in the ceremonies performed for the departed
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of the gods is entertained by such a great poet as Homer? In what respect are such gods superior to men? All the weaknesses of men are found in them, perhaps on a bigger scale, in a more hideous form. These gods are recommended for worship by poets! The poet indulges imagination and is by nature human in the extreme. Poetry has no direct relation or inseparable connection at all with truth. The worshipper of truth will find in poetry no utterance worthy of acceptance. Especially the poet will not be able to furnish any clue to the truth that lies beyond the ken of the human mind, beyond all that can be grasped by the daily experiences and perceptions of men, and that truth which is really the deepest and supreme in men. Plato's reasoning amounts to this in modern terms. What Plato says does not, on reflection, appear to be utterly worthless. The vital world is the source of the poet and all other artists who are creators. When the vital is stirred things spring up from it and take shape. This vital itself is the magic power of the urge for enjoyment and action. For the satisfaction of these two urges towards delight and enjoyment the vital is constantly engaged in creating things. The spell of the vital does not care to find how far they are truth, and how much is their worth in terms of the right and the ultimate good. It is enough if it can build a castle in the air and derive joy from it. But it is not at all necessary that the castle in the air should be a reality.¹ It is enough if it comes within the domain of experience and gives satisfaction. This vital is again the field of all desires and impulses of men. The attractions of the vital keep men confined to an absolutely human plane. Poetry is the unrivalled drug to enslave men to the mortal world. ___________ soul. Chanakya has put the
singer in the same category with the harlot.
It may also be remembered in this connection
that portraiture and image making are prohibited in the Hebrew and the
Mohammedan religions. ¹ Bernard Shaw has given the name of hell to
one such world, vide his play Man and
Superman.
Page – 97 The poet says, The good that is awake in the midst of all conflicts Is the good which Thou approvest. Or, Shadowless is thy Light... The beauty of which is enhanced By my tears. These expressions are wonderful and sweet to the ear. But, the deep spiritual realisation or the highest truth which these words pretend to convey is but happy imagination and pleasant fancy. The true realisation of the spiritual consciousness is quite a different thing. Liberation? Where will ye find liberation, Where does it abide? The Lord Himself has donned the bondage of creation, And is enchained with all. Here the poet for the moment puzzles us by his curious thought and skilful composition. But it is doubtful if to the calm consciousness of the truth-seer there is anything more than the movements of the natural man's complexes behind such an emotion. This very thing is called 'Siren Song' in English. If the poet be such a terrible creature then why is he called a Rishi? The Rishi is the seer of truth. The poet is really a poet only when he is a seer, that is to say, one who has the direct vision of truth. But the question may be asked: "What is this truth?" One may say, as there is a spiritual truth so there is a mundane truth; there is no hard and fast
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rule that the poet should be the seer of the spiritual truth only. He has an insight into the nature of earthly beings; therefore in this respect he is a seer. If he has realised the truth and beauty of the life in nature and gives an expression to them, even then his status as a Rishi will remain quite irreproachable. He will be called a poet and seer even if he fails to see or show the real nature of the Ideal but can unfold the reality of the practical life. It is doubtful if Plato would recognise even a seer-poet of
this type. He might say the. poet whose heart is pure or has been purified,
whose consciousness has transcended the human consciousness, who has direct
vision of truth, that is to say, who seizes the 'Idea' by a vision in the
fourth dimension, he alone deserves to be called a seer-poet, one who can
express in a living manner the truth, the 'Idea' which is at once the supreme
beauty and the supreme good. If Plato had known the poets of our Upanishads he
might have changed his conception of the poet. The poetic genius can manifest
in two ways. The one is artificial imagination, the
other is divine vision or direct experience. The artificial imagination is
nothing but fancy. This fancy may be superbly fascinating but that would be the
restive cleverness of the fickle vital and the outward senses – the delight of
thought, of the critical reason; on the other hand, the divine or direct
experience illumines the thing-in-itself, the truth. This is the truth-vision
of the soul, the Psychic Being. The poet who depends only on fancy may possibly
be a poet but never the seer-poet who sees with the divine vision and creates.
In fact, the seer-poet sees nothing save spirituality. We have shown above the
difference between the spiritual and the mundane aspect of the truth. But in
reality in the eyes of the seer-poet there is no such distinction at all. The
divine sees the Self not only in things spiritual but also in things
terrestrial. Even when the seer-poet speaks of the gross, the body, he speaks
of the truth behind the gross, the truth behind the body-self. The totally
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material and vulgar can never be the object of fine art. Perhaps Plato would not accept this kind of philosophy. He would not be prepared to give an equal importance to the two phenomena – the ardours of the life-process and the pleasures of poetry – balanced side by side as two separate entities of the same value. It is well and good if the poetical work can be made an aid to the discipline of life. Otherwise, just for the sake of creation of beauty, for mere enjoyment, for the skilful and sweet display of the ordinary intelligence and of the unregenerated vital, poetry should not be harboured in our consciousness. Therefore Plato wants us to become hermits of an absolute purity. Not the creation of the poet but that of the philosopher is the thing needed. The
poet wants to snatch beauty from the longings of the natural vital, Plato’s
wisdom is all for the ultimate truth seized out of the moral sense. But there
is no necessity of this duel between the poet and the philosopher. The true
poet will seize beauty through the pure sense of delight in the purified vital
and at the same time intuit the absolute truth with the divine vision. The
vision of the Truth breaks out of the sense of delight, while the sense of
delight finds its foundation in the truth-vision. Thus the poet and the seer become
united and the delightful and the good stand identified.
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