presentation course 4

Sri Aurobindo's prose style
Presented by: Maheta Arati R.
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Roll No: 3.
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M.A-1
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Sem -1
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Year :2013-14.
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Paper- 04
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Submitted to :Department of
English(MKBU)

Born on 15 August 1872.
He had begun the practice of
yoga in 1905 in Baroda.
In 1926 He Founded the Sri
Aurobindo Ashram.
His works Are :The Life Divine,
The Synthesis of Yoga and
Savitri.
He left his body on 05 December
1950.

‘’Spirituality is the master key of the Indian
mind. The sense of infinity is native to it.’’
sri Aurobindo

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It is not in an isolation manner that one
would admire his uniqueness, but by holding a
universality which can become spirituality wild.
•
Sri Aurobindo's prose style ,having a
problem in structuring itself for the modern mind to
appreciate and understand it to value the contents.
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In his prose style‘’ meticulousness and
virtuosity possessing the power, charm and
propriety‘’ that stands out distinctly.
-VK.Gokak

Here is a remarkable chapter-9 entitled Style in
the Major Works: Fusion of Myth and Seven
Kinds of style in Sri Aurobindo’s prose style
published in 1990
• ….he is thus blown along on the hurricane of his
desires and ambitions until he stumbles and is
broken, in the great phrase of Aeschylus, against
the throne of eternal law.
•
• This is new journalist Apollo, our Archer who is
out to Cleave with his arrows the python coils of
Indian barbarisrn, abound in outcries in this
sense.
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We can see seven kinds of Aurobindo’s prose
style in the Pondicherry period
1 . English on the surface but Sanskrit
at bottom
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God to the soul that sees is the path and
god is the goal of his journey, a path in which there is
no self losing and a goal to which his wisely guided
steps are surely arriving at every moment ………….all
that we call existent is he and all that we look upon
as a non-existent still is their secret in the Infinite and
is part of the mysterious being of the ineffable.

2.An inspired style caught in
the periodic structure.
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to make the mind one with the divine consciousness, to
make the whole of our emotional nature one love of God
everywhere, to make all our works on sacrifice to the lord of
the worlds and all our worship and aspiration one adoration
of him and self-surrender ,to direct the whole self God wards
in an entire union is the way to rise out of a mundane into
divine existence.

• This type of writing is very common in his major works
and we often see it in The Life Divine and in Essay on the
Gita.
• The structure is not new, neither is it obsolete.
• Even De Quincy, Ruskin and Burke were the master of the
mode.

3.A synthetic style.
• It is based on a synthesis ofscience,psychology and
literature.
•
The most disconcerting discovery is to find that
every parts of us intellect ,will, sence-mind,nervous or
desire self, the heart the body has each ,as it were, its
own complex individuality and natural formation
independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor
with the others nor with the representative ego which is
the shadow cast by some central and centralizing self on
our superficial ignorance, We find that we are composed
not of one but many personalities and each has its own
demand and differing nature, our being is a roughly
constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the
principle of a divine order.

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Moreover, we find that inwardly too, no less
than outwordly,we are not alone in the world ,the sharp
separateness of our ego was no more than a strong
imposition and delusion; we do not exists in ourselves. we
do not really live apart in an inner privacy or solitude. Our
mind is a receiving, developing and modifying
machine………………….or fed on pressed dominated made
use for the manifestation of their forms and forces.
• The inspiration is camouflaged by a very powerful
intellectual mind.
• The phrase ‘’modifying machine' is absolutely natural in
the context.
• A careful eyes scrutinizes the inspired details: ‘’from above
,from below, from outside’’

• . There is a memory of Eliot’s essay on tradition, but
Eliot could not characterize the plan inside to us .

4.A great rush of eloquence
born of spiritual inspiration.
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A guidance, a governance begins from
within which exposes every movement to the
light of truth, repels what is
false,obscure,opposed to divine
realisation:every region of the being, every
nook and corner of it………………..all is purified
,set right, the whole nature harmonized
,modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual
order's

5.Style of historical novelist
The old Hellenic or Graeco-Roman civilization
perished ,among other reasons, because it only
imperfectly generalized culture in its own society and
was surrounded by huge masses of humanity who
were still possessed by barbarian habits of mind.
civilization can never be safe so long as, confining the
cultured mentality to a small minority,
it………………….The Graeco-Roman culture perished
from within and from without, from without by the
floods of Teutonic barbarism, from within by the loss
of vitality.
• This is a deep visional in look into history.

6.In the social writing he
holds his inspiration tight.
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For nature is slow and patient in
her methods. she takes up ideas and carries
them out, then drops them by the wayside to
resume them in some future era with a better
combination. she tames humanity, her thinking
instrument and tests how far it is ready for the
harmony she has imagined; she allows and
incites man to attempt and fail, so that he may
learn and succeed batter another time.

• The passage is a colorless wonder; its poetry is
concealed by the appearent,barenness.
• Every sentence is a truth-saver and yet there is
no outwards show no glair of rhetoric.
• The metaphor (‘’her thinking instrument’’) is
colorless but fruitful.

7.A sense of thrill and adventure in
Sri Aurobindo’s prose.
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Imagine not the way is easy ;the way
islong,arduos,dengerous,difficult.At every steps is an ambush, at
……..Thou ,find thyself alone in thy anguish, the demons furious
in thy path, the Gods unwilling above thee. Ancient and
powerful,cruel,unvanquished and close and innumerable are
the dark and dreadful Powers that profit by the reign of Night
and Ignorance and would have no change and are hostile .Aloof,
show to arrive far-off and few and brief in their visits are the
Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succor. Each step
forward is a battle. There are precipitous descents, there are
unending ascensions and ever higher peaks upon peaks to
conquer. Each plateau climbed is but a stage on the way and
reveals endless heights beyond it. Each victory thou thinkest the
last triumphant struggle proves to be but the prelude to a
hundred fierce and perilous battles……..

• He can hardly find a better expression than
what is described in the word,’’ Each plateau
climbed is but a stage on the way and reveals
endless heights beyond it,’’.
• The whole thing is a kind of warning or
teaching of an experienced wayfarer regarding
the dangers and perils of the way to the Godprovince.

presentation course 4

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