Inspiration in artistic composition refers to an irrational and unconscious burst of creativity. Literally, the word means "breathed upon," and it has its origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism in the west. In the earliest discussions of inspiration (in the works of Homer and Hesiod), the ritualistic and divine origins of the breath of a god are important. The oracle of Delphi, for example, as with other sibyls, received divine steam and fumes from a cave sacred to Apollo before she would prophecy. In Odyssey, 22. 347-8, a poet says that his songs were placed within his heart by the gods. Look up Creativity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Hellenistic period of Greek history was the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 BC. Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture, which... For a discussion of Jews as an ethnicity or ethnic group see the article on Jew. ... Homer (Greek Hómēros) was a legendary early Greek poet and aoidos (singer) traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Bust, traditionally thought to be Seneca, now identified by some as Hesiod. ... The word Sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. ... The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. ... Lycian Apollo, early Imperial Roman copy of a fourth century Greek original (Louvre Museum) In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo (Ancient Greek , Apóllōn; or Ἀπέλλων, Apellōn), the ideal of the kouros, was the archer-god of medicine and healing, light, truth, archery and also a bringer of death... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre The Odyssey (Greek: , Odusseia) is one of the two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to the poet Homer. ...

Ancient models of inspiration

In Greek thought, inspiration meant that the poet or artist would go into ecstacy or furor poeticus, the divine frenzy or poetic madness. He or she would be transported beyond his own mind and given the gods' own thoughts to embody. Plato, in Symposium 197a, Phaedrus 244, as well as Theocritus, Pindar, and Aristotle (in Poetics) argue that the poet breaks through to the world of divine truth or divine apprehension temporarily and is compelled by that vision to create. Therefore, the invocations of the muses and the various poetic gods (Apollo and Dionysus, in particular) are earnest prayers for inspiration, for the breath of the god. The only substantially different model for inspiration offered in the Classical world is in the Problemata (of unknown authorship, but from the peripatetic school), which suggests that imbalances in the four humours are the origin of inspiration. Otherwise, Virgil, Ovid, and especially Cicero insist, like the Greek theorists before them, that artistic inspiration is a bestowed gift of the gods. Cicero, in fact, was apparently dissatisfied with the figurativeness "inspiration" had taken and used the term afflatus instead. ecstasy (drug) and religious ecstasy Ecstasy, from the Greek ekstasis, to be outside oneself, is a category of trance or trancelike states in which an individual transcends ordinary consciousness and as a result has a heightened capacity for exceptional thought or experience. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means to drink together) but has since come to refer to any academic conference, whether or not drinking takes place. ... Phaedrus, ¹ (15 B.C. – AD 50), Roman fabulist, was by birth a Macedonian and lived in the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius. ... Theocritus (Greek Θεόκριτος), the creator of Ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC. Little is known of him beyond what can be inferred from his writings. ... Pindar (or Pindarus) (522 BC – 443 BC), perhaps the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. ... Aristotle (Greek: AristotélÄ“s) (384 BCE – March 7, 322 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... In Greek mythology, the Muses (Greek Μουσαι, Mousai : from a root meaning mountain) are nine goddesses who embody the right evocation of myth, inspired through remembered and improvised song and traditional music and dances. ... Dionysus with a leopard, satyr and grapes on a vine, in the Palazzo Altemps (Rome, Italy) This article is about the ancient deity. ... Peripatetic means wandering. The Peripatetics were a school of philosophy in ancient Greece. ... The four humours were four fluids that were thought to permeate the body and influence its health. ... A sculpture of Virgil, probably from the 1st century AD. For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ... Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ... Cicero at about age 60, from an ancient marble bust Marcus Tullius Cicero (IPA: ; Classical pronunciation:  ; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was an orator, statesman, political theorist, lawyer and philosopher of Ancient Rome. ... Afflatus is a Latin term derived from Cicero (in On Divination) that has been translated as inspiration. ...

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 Hebrew poetics, inspiration is similarly a divine matter. In the Book of Amos, 3:8 the prophet speaks of being overwhelmed by God's voice and compelled to speak. However, inspiration is also a matter of revelation for the prophets, and the two concepts are intermixed to some degree. Revelation is a conscious process, where the writer or painter is aware and interactive with the vision, while inspiration is involuntary and received without any complete understanding. In Christianity, inspiration is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul said that all of the Bible is inspired by God (2 Timothy), and the account of Pentecost records the Holy Spirit descending with the sound of a mighty wind. For church fathers like Saint Jerome, David was the perfect poet, for he best negotiated between the divine impulse and the human consciousness. The word Hebrew most likely means to cross over, referring to the Semitic people crossing over the Euphrates River. ... // Who wrote it? Amos was a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam ben Joash (Jeroboam II), ruler of Israel from 793 BCE to 753 BCE, and the reign of Uzziah, King of Judah, at a time when both kingdoms (Israel in the North and Judah in the South) were peaking... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... This article is becoming very long. ... In various religions, most notably Trinitarian Christianity, the Holy Spirit (in Hebrew רוח הקודש Ruah haqodesh; also called the Holy Ghost) is the third consubstantial Person of the Holy Trinity. ... Paul of Tarsus (d. ... The word Bible refers to the canonical collections of sacred writings of Judaism and Christianity. ... This article or section should be merged with First Epistle to Timothy The Second Epistle to Timothy is a book of the canonic New Testament, one of the three so-called pastoral epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and the Epistle to Titus). ... Pentecost (symbolically related to the Jewish festival of Shavuot) is a feast on the Christian liturgical calendar that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, and the followers (men and women) of Jesus, fifty days (seven weeks) after Easter, and ten days after Ascension Thursday. ... Saint-Jérôme, Quebec is a town in Quebec, near Mirabel, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Montreal along Autoroute des Laurentides. ... David and Goliath by Caravaggio, c. ...

In northern societies, such as Old Norse, inspiration was likewise associated with a gift of the gods. As with the Greek, Latin, and Romance literatures, Norse bards were inspired by a magical and divine state and then shaped the words with their conscious minds. Their training was an attempt to learn to shape forces beyond the human. In the Venerable Bede's account of Caedmon, the Christian and later Germanic traditions combine. Caedmon was a herder with no training or skill at verse. One night, he had a dream where Jesus asked him to sing. He then composed Caedmon's Hymn, and from then on was a great poet. Inspiration in the story is the product of grace: it is unsought (though desired), uncontrolled, and irresistable, and the poet's performance involves his whole mind and body, but it is fundamentally a gift. Old Norse or Danish tongue is the Germanic language once spoken by the inhabitants of the Nordic countries (for instance during the Viking Age). ... Bede, commonly known as the Venerable Bede, (c. ... Cædmon is one of only two Anglo-Saxon poets whose names are known (the other being Cynewulf). ... Jesus (8–2 BC/BCE to 29–36 AD/CE),[1] also known as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity. ... Look up Grace in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Enlightenment and Romantic models of inspiration

A parody of protestant inspiration from Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub.

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. 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." Download high resolution version (705x1192, 78 KB)Woodcut from the Tale of a Tub illustrating the Three Stages of Humanity, which are the theater, the gallows, and the pulpit. ... Download high resolution version (705x1192, 78 KB)Woodcut from the Tale of a Tub illustrating the Three Stages of Humanity, which are the theater, the gallows, and the pulpit. ... Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish priest, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, and poet, famous for works like Gullivers Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapiers Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. ... A Tale of a Tub (play). ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. ... John Locke (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an influential English philosopher. ... Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish priest, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, and poet, famous for works like Gullivers Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapiers Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. ... A Tale of a Tub (play). ... Look up Bedlam in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Protestantism is one of three main groups currently within Christianity. ...

The divergent theories of inspiration that Swift satirized would continue, side by side, though 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 Edgar Allen Poe (The Poetic Principle), 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. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's accounts of inspiration were the most dramatic. The story he told about the composition of Kubla Khan has the poet reduced to the level of scribe. William Butler Yeats would later experiment and value automatic writing, and his Æolian Harp was only the best of the many poems Romantics would write comparing poetry to a passive reception and natural channelling of the divine winds. Inspiration was evidence of genius, and genius was a thing that the poet could take pride in, even though he could not claim to have created it himself. This article is about the poet Edward Young. ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ... Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809–October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor and critic. ... Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 -April 27, 1882) was an American author, poet, and philosopher. ... Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822; pronounced ) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) (pronounced ) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. ... Kubla Khan, whose complete title is Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream. ... W.B. Yeats in Dublin on 24 January 1908. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Aeolian harp in the old castle of Baden Baden, from an article in Scientific American Supplement, No. ...

Modernist and modern concepts of inspiration

Sigmund Freud and other later psychologists located inspiration in the inner psyche of the artist. The artist's inspiration came out of unresolved psychological conflict or childhood trauma. Further, inspiration could come directly from the subconscious. Like the Romantic genius theory and the revived notion of "poetic phrenzy," Freud saw artists as fundamentally special, and fundamentally wounded. Because Freud situated inspiration in the subconscious mind, Surrealist artists sought out this form of inspiration by turning to dream diaries and automatic writing, the use of Ouija boards and found poetry to try to tap into what they saw as the true source of art. Carl Jung's theory of inspiration reiterated the other side of the Romantic notion of inspiration indirectly by suggesting that an artist is one who was attuned to something impersonal, something outside of the individual experience: racial memory Jung's artist is the one best able to feel and express the conflict between the "shadow" primitive and the civilized ego and to encode the archetypes of the human mind. Thus, again, inspiration came from a kind of genius, as these memories were present in all persons (thereby accounting for recognition of the archetypes and memories when viewing artwork), but only the artistic genius could get inspiration/memory. Those artists who followed Jung's thought put an emphasis on primitivism and the study of pre-literate art and myth. Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939; IPA pronunciation: []) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... The notion of a subconscious in some branches of psychotherapy is considered to be the deepest level of consciousness, that we are not directly aware of, but still affects conscious behavior. ... Psalm 69, egg tempera and oil on wood by Ernst Fuchs Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a... A typical Ouija board Ouija (pronounced wee-juh or wee-jee) refers to the belief that one can receive messages during a séance by the use of a Ouija board (also called a talking board or spirit board) and planchette. ... Carl Gustav Jung Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the neopsychoanalytic school of psychology. ... The concepts of racial memory and genetic memory refer to related hypotheses that an individual can inherit knowledge, memory, and/or motivational imperatives from his ancestors, even without contact with them. ... An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated. ... Primitivism is an artistic movement which originated as a reaction to the Enlightenment. ...

Materialist theories of inspiration again diverge between purely internal and purely external sources. Marx did not treat the subject directly, but 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. However, in each of these cases, inspiration comes from the artist being particularly attuned to receive the signals from an external crisis. 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. In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ... Marxism refers to the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work on one hand, and to the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand (namely, parts of the First International during Marxs time, communist parties and later states). ...

There is a nice quote on inspiration made by Gerald Grotesque in Fady Bahig's novel, The Journey of The Fool. He says "You are sitting quietly, diving in your turbulent seas of thought. All of a sudden you feel an aura. You feel that you are up to something big. Then you can see it emerge. First, they are many unrelated islets emerging from the depth of your unconsciousness. Then, little by little, you find out that they are all mountains on one island. All those ideas or impressions are making sense after all. Just like the end of a joke, when you are instantaneously illuminated and realize why the joke teller had to mention all those strange details. It is only when you laugh that you get it all. But too bad! You are flying past your ideas at an incredible velocity that the vision becomes quickly absorbed into fog as it falls away from you. That’s why all the genius men had to put their most unique inspirations on paper as soon as they grasped them. Heh… As if inspirations reflect after revealing themselves to humans, and try to remedy their fault with amnesia!"

See also

• Genius (literature) for the development of the concept of the genius from daemon to innate gift.
• Afflatus for the Romantic concept of inspiration.
• Muses for the Classical source of inspiration.

Afflatus is a Latin term derived from Cicero (in On Divination) that has been translated as inspiration. ... For other uses see Muse (disambiguation). ...

References

• 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.