The Ilion Mystery – Part 1
When one approaches Sri Aurobindo’s poem Ilion, one may be captivated by the poem’s epic breath, by its particular musicality, or by some mysterious inner resonance. Indeed, the subject of the poem is the last day of the Trojan War sung almost 3000 years ago by the Greek poet Homer in the Iliad. Although one may be more captivated by the adventures of Odysseus in the Odyssey, the various attempts to end a conflict given the psychology of the characters and the interventions of outside forces can keep one on the edge of one’s seat. Or, if the reader is a poetry enthusiast, he may be surprised by a musicality and rhythm unfamiliar to English poetry, that of ancient Greek poetry. Or he may sense that this poem is not only about a war of the past, relatively modest and usual after all, but also about the uncertain present time, especially since Sri Aurobindo makes many unexpected references to it.
But a multitude of questions arises that confront the reader.
- Why did Sri Aurobindo compose a poem of nearly 5000 lines in dactylic hexameters, a versification also known as quantitative metre and used by ancient Greek poets such as Homer?
- Why did he leave it unfinished, as he himself stated in a note when the first extract of 371 lines from Ilion was published in 1942, devoting most of his time to Savitri and his correspondence with his disciples?
- Why did he choose as the theme of the poem the last day of the Trojan War, sung in the Iliad by Homer?
- Why did he devote so much time and energy to this poem when he knew that no one would understand its meaning for a long time?
- And above all, why did he never give the slightest indication of its deeper meaning?
After 30 years of study devoted to the interpretation of Greek mythology in relation to the writings of Sri Aurobindo, I am willing to share some answers in this and the following articles.
We must first recall Sri Aurobindo’s relationship with European culture and his Greco-Latin roots. Sri Aurobindo’s father, Dr. Ghose, wanted his sons to be raised as perfect Englishmen. At home, only English speaking was allowed, and Sri Aurobindo had to relearn his native language on his return to India. Dr. Ghose also wanted high positions for them. To this end, he sent his sons to England for their studies when Sri Aurobindo was just seven years old. Sri Aurobindo first received his education which included Latin from the couple to whom his father had entrusted them. Then, in 1884, at the age of 12, Sri Aurobindo was admitted to St. Paul’s School in London. The headmaster was so pleased with his mastery of Latin that he took it upon himself to teach him Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school.
Afterwards, Sri Aurobindo joined King’s College in Cambridge. In June 1890, when he was not even 18, he took the Indian Civil Service qualifying examination and scored record marks in Greek. Thus Sri Aurobindo had developed early on a perfect command of the so-called Classics which traditionally refers to Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Sri Aurobindo could read Greek in the original and even composed poetry in Greek poetry being a subject of special interest to him since a young age.
But could this passion for poetry alone justify writing a poem of nearly 5000 lines in dactylic hexameters? It is certain that Sri Aurobindo admired the rhythm of the ancient Greek and Latin poets. He himself said: “The rhythm that was so great, so beautiful or, at the lowest, so strong or so happy in the ancient tongues, the hexameter of Homer and Virgil…” (CWSA 26: 322). But he had found that all attempts to transpose the ancient rhythms to the English language had failed. Thus, in his essay On Quantitative Metre, we read:
A definitive verdict seems to have been pronounced by the critical mind on the long-continued attempt to introduce quantitative metres into English poetry. It is evident that the attempt has failed, and it can even be affirmed that it was predestined to failure; quantitative metre is something alien to the rhythm of the language… Accentual metre is normal in English poetry, stress metres are possible, but quantitative metres can only be constructed by a tour de force. (CWSA 26: 317)
A poet trying to naturalise in English the power of the ancient hexameter or to achieve a new form of its greatness or beauty natural to the English tongue must have absorbed its rhythm into his very blood, made it a part of himself, then only could he bring it out from within him as a self-expression of his own being, realised and authentic. If he relies, not on this inner inspiration, but solely on his technical ability for the purpose, there will be a failure; yet this is all that has been done. (CWSA 26: 321)
Sri Aurobindo took up the challenge, achieving this tour de force. He mentioned that it was one of his Cambridge contemporaries, H.N. Ferrar, who had first given the clue to the hexameter in English by reading out a line from Arthur Hugh Clough. Sri Aurobindo was thus the first to successfully adapt this very ancient Greek quantitative metre to the English language. But was it necessary for him to write a poem of nearly 5,000 lines to demonstrate this? The ten or so short poems at the end of his essay would probably have been sufficient.
We must then examine the purpose of writing this poem when Sri Aurobindo knew full well that no one would understand its meaning for a long time. In fact, no study on t