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    To A Hero-Worshipper CLASS

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    Kavisha Alagiya
    1) The document discusses Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, yogi, and poet. It describes him as an outstanding figure in Indo-Anglican literature. 2) Sri Aurobindo studied nature like a book, seeking meanings behind natural elements. This reflects an Indian view of nature as a teacher conveying messages, rather than the British romantic view which centered on individual experiences in nature. 3) The poem expresses the poet's feeling that he is pouring out song like a nightingale, without fully understanding why, reflecting the pre-Independence turbulent times of significant change and desire for freedom in India.

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    To A Hero-Worshipper CLASS

    Uploaded by

    Kavisha Alagiya
    291 views11 pages
    1) The document discusses Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, yogi, and poet. It describes him as an outstanding figure in Indo-Anglican literature. 2) Sri Aurobindo studied nature like a book, seeking meanings behind natural elements. This reflects an Indian view of nature as a teacher conveying messages, rather than the British romantic view which centered on individual experiences in nature. 3) The poem expresses the poet's feeling that he is pouring out song like a nightingale, without fully understanding why, reflecting the pre-Independence turbulent times of significant change and desire for freedom in India.

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    To a Hero Worshipper

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    To a Hero-Worshipper CLASS

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    1) The document discusses Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, yogi, and poet. It describes him as an outstanding figure in Indo-Anglican literature. 2) Sri Aurobindo studied nature like a book, seeking meanings behind natural elements. This reflects an Indian view of nature as a teacher conveying messages, rather than the British romantic view which centered on individual experiences in nature. 3) The poem expresses the poet's feeling that he is pouring out song like a nightingale, without fully understanding why, reflecting the pre-Independence turbulent times of significant change and desire for freedom in India.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    291 views11 pages

    To A Hero-Worshipper CLASS

    Uploaded by

    Kavisha Alagiya
    1) The document discusses Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, yogi, and poet. It describes him as an outstanding figure in Indo-Anglican literature. 2) Sri Aurobindo studied nature like a book, seeking meanings behind natural elements. This reflects an Indian view of nature as a teacher conveying messages, rather than the British romantic view which centered on individual experiences in nature. 3) The poem expresses the poet's feeling that he is pouring out song like a nightingale, without fully understanding why, reflecting the pre-Independence turbulent times of significant change and desire for freedom in India.

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    To a Hero-Worshipper

    by Sri Aurobindo

    Kavisha Alagiya
    Visiting Faculty
    Department of English
    M K Bhavnagar University
    Introduction

    • Sri Aurobindo is the one uncontestably


    out-standing figure in Indo-Anglican
    literature.
    • Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was an Indian
    philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and
    Indian nationalist.
    “Tagore, no doubt, holds a comparable
    position in modern Bengali literature, though
    Indo-Anglian literature too can claim him as
    one of its own unique reflected glories. But
    Sri Aurobindo, in so far as he was a writer,
    was not merely a writer who happened to
    write in English but really an English writer -
    almost as much as, say, a George Moore or
    a W. B. Yeats.” (Iyengar)
    Sri Aurobindo was not only the poet, the master of
    the ‘other harmony’ of prose but also the teacher,
    the fighter, the patriot, the Yogi, the philosopher or
    the prophetic engineer of the Life Divine.

    His main literary works are ‘The Life Divine’, which


    deals with the philosophical aspect of Integral Yoga;
    Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with the principles
    and methods of Integral Yoga;
    and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, an epic poem.
    A multi-faceted genius of
    modern India
    There are people who read Sri Aurobindo (or about him) seeking an
    answer to the seeming riddle of his extraordinary career:
    there are many who see in him the promise of the Superman,
    the pro pounder of Integral Yoga,
    the prophet of the Life Divine:
    there are others who feel attracted to the patriot, the fiery evangelist of
    Nationalism:
    there are still others who are drawn to the teacher, the scholar, the
    interpreter of the Veda, the critic of life and literature :
    and there are many more to whom he is a man of letters in excelsis, a
    master of prose art, and a dramatist and poet of great power and
    versatility.
    Sri Aurobindo once wrote:
    “No one can write about my life because it has
    not been on the surface for man to see.”

    Mysticism:
    • According to Aurobindo, all beings are
    united in One Self and Spirit, but divided by
    a certain separate consciousness, an
    ignorance of their true Self and Reality in
    the mind, life and body.
    The Poem

    To a Hero-Worshipper
    I
    My life is then a wasted ereme,
    My song but idle wind
    Because you merely find
    In all this woven wealth of rhyme
    Harsh figures with harsh music wound,
    The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds,
    A ruby carcanet of sound,
    A cloud of lovely words?
    Mine is not Byron’s lightning spear,
    I am, you say, no magic-rod, Nor Wordsworth’s lucid strain
    No cry oracular, Nor Shelley’s lyric pain,
    No swart and ominous star,
    Nor Keats’, the poet without peer.
    No Sinai-thunder voicing God,
    I by the Indian waters vast
    I have no burden to my song,
    Did glimpse the magic of the past,
    No smouldering word instinct with fire,
    No spell to chase triumphant wrong, And on the oaten-pipe I play
    No spirit-sweet desire. Warped echoes of an earlier day.
    II
    My friend, when first my spirit woke,
    I trod the scented maze
    Of Fancy’s myriad ways,
    I studied Nature like a book
    Men rack for meanings; yet I find
    No rubric in the scarlet rose,
    No moral in the murmuring wind,
    No message in the snow.
    No herald of the Sun am I,

    For me the daisy shines a star, But in a moon-lit veil


    The crocus flames a spire, A russet nightingale
    A horn of golden fire,
    Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,
    Narcissus glows a silver bar:
    Who pours like a wine a gurgling note
    Cowslips, the golden breath of God,
    Paining with sound his swarthy throat,
    I deem the poet’s heritage,
    And lilies silvering the sod Who pours sweet song, he recks not why,
    Breathe fragrance from his page. Nor hushes ever lest he die.
    Sense of Freedom
    How is the Indian sense of freedom different from the British
    sense of freedom?

    Indian romanticism vs British Romantic Revival

    Aurobindo has mentioned romantic poets

    The distinctive Indian sense of freedom


    - How is it different from the other ideas regarding freedom
    Aurobindo talks about the Renaissance individual and how it began.

    The Renaissance ideal and the romantic revival- center point - man's
    relationship with nature - observed in British romanticism
    Indian romanticism - nature is treated as a sort of part of that life- a
    kind of a teacher who teaches something
    ..who has a message to convey by itself.
    Nature as a source of knowledge
    .
    “I studIed Nature lIke a Book”

    “Men’ rack for meanings.”

    One look for meanings behind the natural elements and then gather a kind of
    understanding of what one’s role it is in the entire natural world of the earth

    • Renaissance and Individual


    • Who you are as an individual
    • Focus on individual experiences, ideas of individual thoughts, opinions, and putting
    man or human at the center.

    Renaissance and Romanticism


    Stress on knowledge in the Renaissance – revival and
    reawakening

    The Poet talks about the association of sun at the center..

    “we are not the descendants of sun basically, but in a


    moonlight sight…”

    He is referring to himself as he poet….he is writing but he


    doesn't know the pouring a sort of a sweet song in the
    most of a kind of conflict.

    Pre-Independence (turbulent time) – Significant change

    Spirit and freedom

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