craig bickhardt.com

INSPIRATION

"Latin< inspiratio . From spirare , to breathe; in- in. Therefore to inspire is to breathe in. Original meaning- to breathe life into or to infuse life into by breathing." -Webster's New World Dictionary

When we speak of inspiration we are generally referring to that synaptic moment which takes place inside the artist's mind and causes him to be energized into producing a work of art; in other words, his incentive or motivation. But how important is that initial moment of inspiration? Would it be fair to say that without it no amount of craft and industry could produce a work of art? Does that instantaneous burst of vision actually reveal much about the finished work? Does it guide the artist every step of the way through the arduous stages of creation?

"Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine." Democritus (c. 400 BC)

In Democritus' day inspiration was thought to be a kind of Divine Madness that possessed certain individuals and raised their creative minds to exalted heights. The Greek Philosopher's comment on inspiration is one of the oldest written references to that mysterious quality which is at the core of every work of artistic genius; the power by which a human mind can capture some essence of the timeless, universal truth and express it as a unique and enduring work of art.

Fortunately artists have always had a passion for talking and writing about the creative process, and especially the initial spark that is the seed of every great work. I've collected the following quotes from various sources in the hope of shedding some light on this interesting subject. This isn't necessarily a collection of quotes that contain the word "inspiration", but rather, quotes that describe the initiation of the creative process.

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	stephen spender british poet 1909-1995	"My own experience of inspiration is... a dim cloud of an idea which I feel must be condensed into a shower of words."
	robert frost american poet - pulitzer prize winner 1874-1963	"I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from a cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows."
	e. b. white american author 1899-1985	"The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make the occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by."
	thomas wolfe american author 1900–1938	"It was a process that began in a whirling vortex and a creative chaos and that proceeded slowly at the expense of infinite confusion, toil, and error toward clarification and the articulation of an ordered and formal structure."
	a. e. housman british poet 1859–1936	"Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act... the seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach."
	loren eiseley american author-anthropologist 1907–1977	"The creation element in the mind of man...emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts."
	robert graves british poet - author 1895–1985	"The reason why the hairs stand on end, the eyes water, the throat is constricted, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down the spine when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily an invocation of the White Goddess, or Muse, the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust- the female spider or the queen bee whose embrace is death."
	zora neale hurston american author 1891-1960	"Under the spell of moonlight, music, flowers or the cut and smell of good tweeds, I sometimes feel the divine urge for an hour, a day or maybe a week. Then it is gone and my interest returns to corn pone and mustard greens, or rubbing a paragraph with a soft cloth."
	wolfgang amadeus mozart austrian composer 1756-1791	"When I am, as it were completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer- say travelling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. When and how they come I know not, nor can I force them...All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream."
	william wordsworth british poet 1770-1850	"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of re-action, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced..."
	robert henri american painter 1865-1929	"The object, which is back of every work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and...its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state."
	albert pinkham ryder american painter 1847-1917	"It is the first vision that counts. The artist has only to remain true to his dream and it will possess his work in such a manner that it will resemble the work of no other man-for no two visions are alike, and those who reach to the heights have all toiled up the steep mountain by a different route…Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art"
	adrienne rich american poet b. 1929	"There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle."
	friedrich von schlegel german author-philosopher (1772-1829)	"…inspiration is a dissolution of spiritual substances which consequently, before the sudden separation, must have been most intimately intermingled. Imagination must first be filled to the point of saturation with life of every kind before the moment arrives when the friction of free sociability electrifies it to such an extent that the most gentle stimulus of friendly or hostile contact elicits from it lightning sparks, luminous flashes, or shattering blows."
	leonard cohen candian poet-songwriter (1931- )	"...although the good lines come unbidden, they're anticipated and the anticipation involves a patient application to the enterprise... (when) you're in front of the page, or the guitar, or the keyboard under your hands, you have to deal with where the energy is, what arises, what presents itself with a certain kind of urgency. So in those final moments you don't really choose, you go where the smoke is, and the flame and the glow and the fire. You just go there."
	winnie the pooh (a.k.a edward bear, mr. sanders) philosopher, stuffed bear (1926- )	"'But it isn't easy,' said Pooh to himself, as he looked at what had once been Owl's House. 'Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.' He waited hopefully...." -House At Pooh Corner, CH 9. by A. A. Milne.