When we had recovered enough from the intoxication of reading it and could ask critical questions, the very first and the most general and fundamental that arose were apropos of the line:. They were, "What exactly does the epithet 'romantic' mean here?
And how does it reflect the mind of the movement in English and Continental literature called Romanticism as distinguished from the other called Classicism - Romanticism of which Kubla Khan is itself considered one of the quintessential products? These two questions were immediately followed by a third, "What has Sri Aurobindo written about those movements? As the aim was not to exhaust the contributions of modern critical thought, several pronouncements of fair interest in themselves were bypassed, and mainly an attempt made to put together, develop and apply the leading insights of Sri Aurobindo.
An expanded version of this attempt constitutes the present book. As Sri Aurobindo is not only a scholar in. The complexity of the problem - the approach through Sri Aurobindo - the nature of poetry - the common poetic power, the differences of expression - differences of degree and of kind.
Perhaps more ink has been shed in making a distinction between "Classical" and "Romantic" than on any other prob-lem in literature: already in F. Lucas 1 could count 11, books, including his own.
Once even some blood was about to be shed: on the night of November 25, , the theatre at Paris where Victor Hugo's Romantic play Hernani was first shown became a roaring cockpit of combatant critics. But not always has much light been shed: possibly the heat of the discussion was too great to leave room for sufficient light. This does not mean that no guiding conceptions have emerged. But to give them proper shape we must look more coolly than is done by protagonists of the two schools, more closely than by onlooking commentators.
