Revisiting Ancient Aesthetics: Poetry of Walt Whitman and Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo found his own integral worldview with Vedic-Upanishadic thought universe as its centre, in Walt Whitman; the vision of the Great Spirit rooted everywhere in the earth, the individual’s capacity to be in contact with that, and the Spirit itself yearning to light up material life. Whitman was the first to realise cosmic consciousness in poetry in lines of miraculous abundance. Sri Aurobindo found in Leaves of Grass “a great revolution in the whole method of poetry”, meaning both the rolling cadence and the stamp of divinity in its large universal substance. He takes a cue from Whitman’s poetry, as also from his theory of poetry, and begins a new era of poetry in the twentieth century, especially between 1930 and 1950. Sarani Ghosal Mondal argues that in this earth affected by war and human disharmonies, the poetry of Walt Whitman and Sri Aurobindo might work as a transfiguring force, initiating an expansion in human consciousness, a growth of love and kindness, paving the way to human unity.