COUSINS AND SRI AUROBINDO

 

A Study on Literary Influence

 

Prof. DILIP KUMAR CHATTERJEE

University of Burdwan, Burdwan

 

James Henry Cousins (1873 - 1956) was a follower of George William Russell (AE) and a younger participant in the Irish Revivalist Movement of which W. B. Yeats and AE were the leading members. He wrote plays for the Abbey Theatre and poetry of a mystical kind. In Ireland his primary occupation was that of a journalist. He came to India in 1915 under the Patronage of Annie Besant and settled down in Madras as an active worker of the Theosophical Society. Mrs. Besant, appointed him Sub-editor in the nationalist theosophical Indian journal; The New India, published from Madras. In India, Cousins developed his interest in philosophy, art and music and eventually switched over to educational activities. He became the Principal of Madanapalle College in 1918 and later became the Director of Studies of the Brahmavidya Ashrama (School of Synthetical Study) at Adyar, Madras (1922-1928). He was closely associated with The Oriental Art Movement in Bengal of which Rabindranath Tagore and O. C. Ganguly were the leading exponents. His first contact with this movement began in 1916 when he was invited by Sir John Woodroffe, the President of the Young India Society of Oriental Art, to see the Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Society in Calcutta. In fact Cousins’ career as an art-critic began when the President and other members of the Society requested Cousins to report to The New India on a collection of paintings by the living Bengali artists. Cousins’ remarkable contribution in this sphere is that he gave to this local movement an all-India significance. Since then Cousins took an active interest in writing on Indian and Oriental art and music. He travelled all over India with the purpose of drawing together all creative artists in India for their mutual benefit and wrote in various journals to organise opinion to establish an Indian Academy of Arts.

 

Cousins’ activities were much appreciated in India and he was appointed art-adviser to the Government of Travancore, an appointment which he held till 1948. Cousins opened the first Indian Art Gallery, Sri Chitralayam, at Trivandrum in September 1935, and the Maharaja of Travancore conferred on Cousins the title “Veera Srinkhala” with the Pandits’ Ceremonial Robe. These honours signalised Cousins’ distinctive impacts on the cultural and artistic activities in India.

 

Cousins was also one of those eminent educationists who rendered considerable service towards the growth and development of national education in India. For his significant achievement in the spread of national education in India and his lecture campaign on Indian culture in various universities of India and abroad he was awarded the title of “Kulapati” by the South India Teachers’ Union in December 1934. In his later years Cousins became the Vice-President of the Academy of Arts or Kalakshetra at Adyar, maintaining a school, a publishing house, and other social services with Smt. Rukmini Devi as Director. In the ’Forties of this century Cousins became an eminent persona­lity and was well-known all over India and abroad as an exponent of Oriental Culture and Synthetic Philosophy.

 

Cousins’ interest in Indian thought and Oriental culture started from the Theosophical connection in Dublin. The Dublin Theosophical Lodge which was established in 1886 played a very important role in Celtic Revivalist Circle by promoting interest in Indian spiritual thought. In fact a strong feeling was cultivated that spiritually Ireland belonged to the East. Hence the Irish nationalists developed a bond of spiritual kinship with their Indian counterparts. In 1915 when Cousins came to India, he found the atmosphere of the country alive with the nascent upsurge of the nationalist movement. The Celtic or Irish nationalist movement with its eagerness to establish contact with the spiritual movement of the East had already planted in Cousins the seeds of common interest. They blossomed now in a life of committed service in contact with the Indian nationalists. In fact the situation of India and Ireland as oppressed states in the British empire brought a common interest and outlook among the nationalists of both the countries. So Cousins had no difficulty in identifying himself with the Indian awakening of the post (First) World War years.

 

It is quite interesting that Sri Aurobindo’s early poems reveal a reciprocal interest in the political situation in Ireland. In the last decade of the nineteenth century Ireland captured the imagi­nation of all young radicals and the rise and fall of the great Irish leader Parnell which was a sensation in that period stirred the mind of young Aurobindo. His poems “Charles Stewart Parnell” and “Lines on Ireland 1896” are testimonies to this imaginative attraction of Ireland. In these poems we note the same tone with which the Irish Revivalists lamented the lot of Ireland.

 

Sri Aurobindo was impressed by the circumstantial and spiri­tual affinity between the Celtic revival and the Indian awakening. In his book called The Renaissance in India (1920) which was written in appreciation of James Cousins’ book of the same title, Sri Aurobindo said that the European Renaissance was not likely to offer a model for India. He said that there was “a closer resemblance of Indian awakening to the Celtic movement in Ireland.” 1 As it happened in Ireland political nationalism and a renewed interest in Indian religion and philosophy gave new direction to the nationalist movement in India. Sri Aurobindo’s own life was an epitome of this new synthesis.

 

With such a background of interest in Ireland it is not surpris­ing that Sri Aurobindo found in Cousins a kindred spirit. Cousins’ interest in Oriental philosophy and mysticism brought them to a close understanding of each other. Sri Aurobindo commended Cousins’ genuineness of Oriental scholarship in an article called “A Rationalistic Critic of Indian Culture” (1920). Aurobindo says that for the definitive view of Indian culture and civilization one should turn to those who can speak with some authority. He dismisses the works of many so-called authorities on Indian thought and religion as basically anti-Indian.

 

Sri Aurobindo says:

 

“It matters very little to me what Mr. Archer, Dr. Gough or Sir John Woodroffe’s unnamed English Professor may say about Indian philosophy; it is enough for me to know what Emerson or Schopenhauer or Nietzche or what thinkers like Cousins and Schlegel have to say about it”. 2 (emphasis mine)

 

It is quite clear from this statement that he had great admira­tion for James Cousins and did not hesitate to include him among the most celebrated thinkers of the West.

 

Sri Aurobindo found in Cousins a true friend of India. A person who was able to grasp the soul of Indian culture and who was prepared to help in the process of its resuscitation. Secondly what was much closer to Sri Aurobindo’s heart, was Cousins’ synthetic approach to philosophy and culture. Cousins appeared to him not only as a powerful writer of ‘Philosophical and Critical Insight’, but a poet and a visionary. Quite naturally a friendship and philosophical understanding developed between them and Sri Aurobindo was generous enough to own that several of Cousins’ books and essays influenced his thought on literature of the West. We have already mentioned that Sri Aurobindo’s The Renaissance in India was patterned after Cousins’ book of the same title. Sri Aurobindo’s second book on literary criticism The Future Poetry was also inspired by Cousins’ slender volume on the new trends of English poetry.

 

Sri Aurobindo admits that it was Cousins’ New ways in English Literature which originally prompted him to write a series of articles in the Arya under the title of “The Future Poetry.” The essays were written between 1917 and 1920 and were published in book-form only in 1953. Cousins’ book was published in November 1917. Both of them, like many nineteenth century thinkers, spiritualise the theory of evolution and emphasize the evolutionary process of human consciousness which would bring about new modes of poetry with a decisive drift away from the egoistic or merely individualistic states of mind to the universal or cosmic consciousness. It is from this standpoint that Cousins and Sri Aurobindo view the trends of development in literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

 

This change or human consciousness envisaged by Cousins and Sri Aurobindo is a part of a general expectation in a transi­tional period – a hope for a new form of literature which was widely felt all over the world in the first two decades of the twentieth century. There were expectations that a new literary period was about to dawn. In response to the first exhibition of post-impressionistic paintings which was held in London in 1910, Virginia Woolf remarked that this new painting is a witness to the fact that human consciousness has changed. Jacques Riviere, the French critic, wrote in 1913 about the feeling of a new stir all the world over:

 

“A sharp little wind is being blown suddenly through the darkness and boredom of the dying nineteenth century. Once more it is morning. Everything is beginning again”. 3

 

James Cousins who imbibed the spirit of hope from his generation presents this new hope in his New Ways in English Literature. The Irish poets, particularly Yeats and AE, and the Indian Tagore, who became a rage in Europe in 1912 through his Gitanjali, represented, Cousins felt, “the beginning of an age of spiritual inspiration in English poetry.” This new spiritual trend was aided, Cousins maintained, by certain poets of the “recent past” and he listed Meredith Edward Carpenter, Stephen Phillips among them and thought that this new trend was being promoted also by those who were publishing in the Georgian anthologies (1912-1922). In the concluding lines of the same essay Cousins envisages the symptoms of new development in English literature in the following lines:

 

When in some future volume from one or other of the new writers of the West we catch the large accent, the forward vision of the self-realised and ecstatic soul, we shall know that the new ways in English literature are breaking through the obstructions of ignorance, and all that hangs thereon, into the broad highway of literary evolution. 4

 

Sri Aurobindo found this pattern of thought or vision congenial to his own and this new hope and aspiration envisaged by Cousins found a kindred echo in Aurobindo’s concluding remarks of The Future Poetry. Here Sri Aurobindo thinks of future poetry in terms of psychic transformation of man evolving towards a higher consciousness. He thinks that this ascending urge of man’s consciousness must find the inspiring aesthetic form and the reveal­ing language. What Sri Aurobindo calls “future poetry” may roughly be called the poetry of vision, in his own words, of prayer, magic and incantation.

 

This view of the future modes of man’s creative expression is the basic assertion of Cousins’ New Ways in English Literature. He assumes that “the creative energy of man is for ever advancing the borders of reality” and “reality” as Cousins understood it is,

 

In the apprehension of ... ... something that is a dim shadowing of the Divine urge which is prompting all creations to unfold itself and to rise out of its limitations towards God­like possibilities. 5

 

The same evolutionary idea spiritualised, a mystical vision concretely postulated as the purpose of all creative writing. Cousins elaborated this idea in his essay “The Future of English Poetry” (1919) almost in a tone which anticipated that of Sri Aurobindo’s group of essays on the same theme:

 

The path of progress moves out of the realm of the physical and emotional. We are approaching the intellectual and the spiritual gives hints that some day the general level of English poetry will not be far below that of the rare superlative masters in song now, the masters ….. who see through life to its meaning; whose ears hear not only “the still sad music of humanity” but the deep glad chant of Divinity in humanity ….. whose thoughts turn ever towards the highest truth and its realizations in life.… 6

 

Here Cousins says that evolutionary process is entering into an intellectual plane of development affecting all humanity. At this stage the general level of consciousness will rise to the level of the poet of genius whose eyes are not “dazzled by the surface glitters of life” and will see into the deeper springs of life. He prophesies that in the writings of these poets concern for humanity and the awareness of Divinity will go hand in hand and in this stage of development everyone would be conscious of the highest truth and the mind and heart of man would be transformed.

 

For Sri Aurobindo this transformation of human psyche or mind into a higher level or spiritual dimension would be the proper subject for future poetry as it is for Cousins, that this realization will open new ways in English literature.

 

Both Cousins and Sri Aurobindo hold that poetry of the future would neither be realistic nor idealistic, “it would be synthetic”. Both envisage that poetry of the future will resolve all the diverse ways and trends into harmony. Unlike Eliot, Pound and other modern poets, both of them lay more emphasis on unity and harmony and on the “authenticities of the synthetic vision”–­the complex delight in the process of realization which the modern poets emphasize. Cousins in his Preface to New Ways in English Literature has made his objective quite clear when he says that his was “a search for a deeper unity in literature that may embrace both idealism and realism.” Cousins’ ideal poet was AE, the poet of achieved vision.

 

It is not only in their views of the future modes of poetry that Sri Aurobindo and Cousins are alike but in their definition of poetry also they seem to echo each other. Both of them consider poetry to be revelation of the inner being or “a soul-vision.” Both of them hold that mere intellection or technique are not sufficient for poetry. It is vision which is of greater importance. For a poet is something more than a verbal artist. The poet, they hold, is a seer who can raise his sight to the level of vision.

 

 

This fundamental similarity between Cousins and Sri Aurobindo has not received sufficient attention from Aurobindo scholars and critics because of the fact that Cousins’ name disappeared from the literary horizon and Sri Aurobindo shot up to an inter­national reputation. Prof. S. K. Prasad in his book called The Literary Criticism of Sri Aurobindo (1974) ignores Cousins’ influence totally and credits Aurobindo for rightly evaluating Meredith, Phillips, Carpenter, AE, Yeats and Tagore. Prof. Prasad says:

           

It is significant that among the pioneers of the modern age Sri Aurobindo gives a place of honour to such neglected poets as Phillips, Carpenter and AE. 7

 

He praises Sri Aurobindo for presenting “a new perspective” of modern poets – in his book The Future Poetry. But Prof. Prasad ignores the simple truth that in this new perspective and critical evaluation of the pioneers of modern poetry Sri Aurobindo was by and large indebted to the critical insights of Cousins’ New Ways in English Literature. Sri Aurobindo admits that he lost all connection with English literature after his “departure from England quarter of a century ago.” He confesses:

 

I had long heard, standing aloof in giant ignorance, the great name of Yeats, but with no more than a fragmentary and mostly indirect acquaintance with some of his work; AE only lives for me in Mr Cousins’ pages. 8

 

Sri Aurobindo affirms that with Cousins’ book a new world was opened before him and exclaimed in joy: “I stand cortez-like, on the peak of the large impression created for me by Cousins’ book.”

 

It is obvious that James Cousins’ contribution as a literary critic is yet to be acknowledged and properly assessed. The fact that he stimulated Sri Aurobindo to take up literary studies anew is a credit large enough for a special mention. Cousins’ other great contribution was his evaluation of Sri Aurobindo and some other Indo-Anglian poets as the pioneer of a new world phenome­non. It may be mentioned that he introduced the word “Indo­Anglian” into the critical vocabulary in his book called Modern English Poetry. (p. 117) It was Cousins who first also wrote of the genius of Sarojini’s brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay. What is more, Cousins sought to establish a link between those Indo-Anglian poets with the poets, of the Irish Literary Revival. He speculated on the “insularity” of English poetry and thought that English poetry would be free from its narrowness of vision if it submitted to two potent influences – one, by absorbing the spirit of the Irish or Celtic Revival and the other, the assimilation of the spirit of the East, particularly Indian spiritual thought. Writing about Sri Aurobindo’s poetry, Cousins says:

 

For a companion to Mr. Ghose’s double-sightedness, the glimpsing simultaneously of norm and form, we have to pass beyond the confines of Europe, and listen to the Spiritual Songs of AE. The Irish poet has not the patience and expan­siveness of his Aryan brother, but in heart and vision they are kindred. 9

 

Cousins was obviously the first critic to have compared so authentically Aurobindo with western poets. Cousins also pointed out the spiritual affinity that existed between Yeats and Tagore. He says “one of the most fascinating speculation as to the future develop­ment of English poetry is the influence that Tagore will exert on English literature.” He further remarked that Tagore’s influence will be felt all over the West “not simply as a translation, but as a powerful original.”

 

Cousins’ autobiography, We Two Together records several encounters between himself and Sri Aurobindo. Cousins shared Sri Aurobindo’s mystic vision and found in each other a kindred spirit. Sri Aurobindo’s autobiography, On Himself, makes it evident that he owed much to Cousins’ comments and suggestions in giving the final shape to his poem called “In the Moonlight”.10 This is only one instance but it shows the intimacy and regard with which each held the other. We have already referred to Sri Aurobindo’s direct acknowledgement to Cousins’ influence in The Renaissance in India and The Future Poetry.

 

Sri Aurobindo praised Cousins’ critical insight and subtlety of thought and accepted Cousins’ rating of the modern poets of the late nineteenth century. In fact there is no difference between Cousins and Sri Aurobindo in terms of their critical positions and this point of concord is creatively reflected in their critical writings. Cousins’ criticism of modern English poetry in New Ways in English Literature stirred Aurobindo’s contemplation of the future modes of poetry and he brought his deep philosophical insight, and knowledge of continental literature, to elaborate points raised by Cousins in his pioneering work on English literary history which included literature from all English-speaking world. He pointed out that it was the new literature produced in Ireland and India which would give a new direction to the development of English literature in the twentieth century. That Aurobindo was drawn to a serious study of literature at this phase of his career was due to the powerful impact that Cousins made on him. Sri Aurobindo also owes it to Cousins that he was discussed seriously as a poet of equal importance with Tagore and as a spiritual force to be reckoned within the development of poetry in the English-speaking world. The mutual inspiration which these two writers received from each other is an ideal example of studies on influence that one writer can have upon another.

 

Notes and References

 

1 Sri Aurobindo: The Renaissance in India, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. 1920. P. 2.

2 Sri Aurobindo Centenary Volume XIV, De Lux Edition (1971) P.46.

3 Robson: Modern English Literature, O. U. P. xiv.

4 James H. Cousins: New Ways in English Literature, Ganesh & Co. Madras. 1917. P. 15.

5 James H. Cousins: New Ways in English Literature, P. 122.

6 James H. Cousins: Modern English Poetry: Its Characteristics and Tendeneies. Ganesh & Co. Madras. 1921. Pp. 213-214.

7 S. K. Prasad: The Literary Criticism of Sri Aurobindo (D. Litt. thesis) P.403.

8 Sri Aurobindo: The Future Poetry, 1953. P. 4.

9 James Cousins: New Ways in English Literature, P. 28.

10 Sri Aurobindo: On Himself, P. 371.

 

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