The Visva-Bharati Quarterly May - July 1939 (New Series)

The reader is inclined to lose hiself in the various theories on the origin of art on intuition as the life-giving force of all creation on the synthesis of intellect and emotion in all works of art and on the collaboration of body and mind in creative activity. [...] The poet's use of language can be compared to a psychopathic reaction of the individual to the stresses of exitence ; the "stirred-up memory" and the "fulfilment of his wish" are beyond the average man's understanding ; the poet works with the help of "flashes of insight beyond meanings already stabilized in etymology and grammar. [...] The one is the context in which the word occurs which will add a certain number of different stimuli to the first one and the other is the traditional and cultural setting in which and according to which the word is used by the poet ; the reader therefore has to respond not only to one stimulus but to a complex variety of stimuli all of them expressing attitudes of a new and frequently unexp [...] In oposition to the Logicians they conceived of a language as a dynamic whole subjected to changes which are due to the enviroment that is to the classes and groups of people who use it : "The principle involved in the majority of changes of meaning is to be sought in the division of the speakers into various groups and in the passage of the words from one social group to another." 1 It [...] In The Home and the World he pointed out the dangers of impurity besetting a shift in emphasis from the impersonal to the personal ; as in Four Chapters a much later piece he showed up the falseness of the claim of the terrorist group to demand sacrifice of the individual in the name of the party.