Artistic inspiration
Inspiration (from the Latin inspirare, meaning "to breathe into") is an unconscious burst of
In the 18th century
The Marxist theory of art sees it as the expression of the friction between economic base and economic superstructural positions, or as an unaware dialog of competing ideologies, or as an exploitation of a "fissure" in the ruling class's ideology. In modern psychology inspiration is not frequently studied, but it is generally seen as an entirely internal process.
History of the concepts
Ancient models of inspiration
In Greek thought, inspiration meant that the poet or artist would go into ecstasy or furor poeticus, the divine frenzy or poetic madness. The artist would be transported beyond their own mind and given the gods' or goddesses own thoughts to embody.
Inspiration is prior to consciousness and outside of skill (ingenium in Latin). Technique and performance are independent of inspiration, and therefore it is possible for the non-poet to be inspired and for a poet or painter's skill to be insufficient to the inspiration. In
In
In northern societies, such as
Renaissance revival of furor poeticus
The Greco-Latin doctrine of the divine origin of poetry was available to medieval authors through the writings of Horace (on Orpheus) and others, but it was the Latin translations and commentaries by the neo-platonic author Marsilio Ficino of Plato's dialogues Ion and (especially) Phaedrus at the end of the 15th century that led to a significant return of the conception of furor poeticus.[1] Ficino's commentaries explained how gods inspired the poets, and how this frenzy was subsequently transmitted to the poet's auditors through his rhapsodic poetry, allowing the listener to come into contact with the divine through a chain of inspiration. Ficino himself sought to experience ecstatic rapture in rhapsodic performances of Orphic-Platonic hymns accompanied by a lyre.[2]
The doctrine was also an important part of the poetic program of the French Renaissance poets collectively referred to as
Enlightenment and Romantic models
In the 18th century in England, nascent psychology competed with a renascent celebration of the mystical nature of inspiration. John Locke's model of the human mind suggested that ideas associate with one another and that a string in the mind can be struck by a resonant idea. Therefore, inspiration was a somewhat random but wholly natural association of ideas and sudden unison of thought. Additionally, Lockean psychology suggested that a natural sense or quality of mind allowed persons to see unity in perceptions and to discern differences in groups. This "fancy" and "wit," as they were later called, were both natural and developed faculties that could account for greater or lesser insight and inspiration in poets and painters. Imagination, the Romantics argued, is a tool to see things that the intelligence is blind to.[3]
The musical model was satirized, along with the afflatus, and "fancy" models of inspiration, by Jonathan Swift in A Tale of a Tub. Swift's narrator suggests that madness is contagious because it is a ringing note that strikes "chords" in the minds of followers and that the difference between an inmate of Bedlam and an emperor was what pitch the insane idea was. At the same time, he satirized "inspired" radical Protestant ministers who preached through "direct inspiration." In his prefatory materials, he describes the ideal dissenter's pulpit as a barrel with a tube running from the minister's posterior to a set of bellows at the bottom, whereby the minister could be inflated to such an extent that he could shout out his inspiration to the congregation. Furthermore, Swift saw fancy as an antirational, mad quality, where, "once a man's fancy gets astride his reason, common sense is kick't out of doors."
The divergent theories of inspiration that Swift satirized would continue, side by side, through the 18th and 19th centuries. Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition was pivotal in the formulation of Romantic notions of inspiration. He said that genius is "the god within" the poet who provides the inspiration. Thus, Young agreed with psychologists who were locating inspiration within the personal mind (and significantly away from the realm either of the divine or demonic) and yet still positing a supernatural quality. Genius was an inexplicable, possibly spiritual and possibly external, font of inspiration. In Young's scheme, the genius was still somewhat external in its origin, but Romantic poets would soon locate its origin wholly within the poet. Romantic writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Poet), and Percy Bysshe Shelley saw inspiration in terms similar to the Greeks: it was a matter of madness and irrationality.
Inspiration came because the poet tuned himself to the (divine or mystical) "winds" and because he was made in such a way as to receive such visions.
Modernist and modern concepts
In modern psychology, inspiration is not frequently studied, but it is generally seen as an entirely internal process. In each view, however, whether empiricist or mystical, inspiration is, by its nature, beyond control.
An example of a modern study on inspiration is one that was conducted by Takeshi Okada and Kentaro Ishibashi, published in 2016 in the multidisciplinary journal, Cognitive Science.[5] In this three-part study, groups of Japanese undergraduate art students were observed to determine whether copying or simply musing upon example artworks that served as their inspiration would increase their creative output. The results of the first and second experiment revealed that copying artwork enabled the students to produce creative drawings that were qualitatively different, but only when the example—the inspiration—featured a style that was unfamiliar to the students. The third experiment revealed that only musing upon the unfamiliar inspiration produced the same effect as copying it. Okada and Ishibashi suggest that these unfamiliar examples were able to facilitate the creativity of the students because they challenged the students' perspectives on drawing. They admit, however, that it is unclear whether their results can be generalized to professional artists as well, but they cite examples of artists, namely Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, who extensively imitated the work of other artists, which might suggest that "imitation is an effective driver of creativity, even for experts."[5]
See also
- Afflatus, the Romantic concept of inspiration
- Aristic Parfums, an exclusive perfume house
- Automatic writing
- Divine spark
- Epiphany (feeling)
- Genius (literature), the development of the concept of the genius from daemon to innate gift
- Glossolalia(or speaking in tongues)
- Muses, the classical sources of inspiration
References
- ^ a b Grahame Castor. Pléiade Poetics: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Thought and Terminology. Cambridge University Press: 1964, pp. 26–31.
- ISBN 0-521-30008-8.
- ^ From Sight to Vision: a review of Maurice Bowra’s book ‘The Romantic Imagination’ [1]
- ^ Illuminating the Word: Visualisation of Poetic Experiences Through Filmmaking, International Journal of the Arts in Society, Vol. 2, No. 5. [2]
- ^ PMID 28914472.
- Brogan, T.V.F. "Inspiration" in Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan, eds., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. 609–610.
