Ilion
Collected Poems
“Ilion”
Sri Aurobindo began work on this epic in quantitative hexameters in 1908 or 1909. The earliest surviving manuscript lines of the poem — then entitled “The Fall of Troy: An Epic” — were dated by the author as follows: “Commenced in jail, 1909, resumed and completed in Pondicherry, April and May 1910.” Between then and 1914, he worked steadily on this 'completed' poem, transforming it from a brief narrative into an epic made up of several books. Subsequently he revised and recopied the completed books, or passages from them, several times. This work continued until around 1917.
It would appear that two factors — the writing-load of the monthly journal Arya (1914 – 21) and the attention demanded by his other epic, Savitri — caused him to stop work on Ilion before completing what presumably was intended to be a twelve-book epic.
(Sri Aurobindo, 1931:) “Ilion is a fragment — and by no means ne plus ultra — only the verse is good; I imagine I have found the solution for introducing the hexameter into English verse which others have tried but, till now, without success. That is all I can say about it at present; we shall see hereafter.”[1]
- ↑ Letters on Poetry and Art, p.226
See also