July 28, 2002

What is that demon, the inner voice, that compels writers to write to the point of burning themselves out? What is inspiration and why does it suddenly abandon the writer?

“To think is to add flame to fire,” wrote Balzac, mental activity being in his view an “instrument of destruction that deteriorates our nerves and is the cause of our illness and death.” Writing was Balzac’s only true love, the muse for whom he burnt out his life. The exhilaration and pitfalls of creativity run haunting strains through his work including Louis Lambert where a young genius turns mad.

In the The autobiography of Joseph Stalin the author, Richard Lourie, remarks with relief towards the end that the book was dedicated to whatever spirit possessed him to write. He hoped that he was now exorcised of this demon that haunted him.

Creativity is a mystery dissolving into the metaphysics of personality and talent. Is inspiration engendered by the artist’s personality? To be a writer does one have to have certain traits, such as an inner urge to uncover some truth. Even though Elliot disagreed and believed that “the best poetry was not an expression of personality but an escape from personality”, two books on Elliot claim that much of Elliot’s poetry seems to reflect his life. The artist’s persona they believed surfaced in his work in his choice of subjects or words.

A writer or poet has to have certain qualities, such as finely tuned sensibilities and the quality of empathy, which combined with inspiration creates art. An ability to feel deeply, pause and reflect on things others would scarcely notice. Wordsworth’s enthused rhapsodies on the commonly overlooked daffodils turned the direction of English literature. The mundane and the ordinary could reawaken a sense of wonder.

William Maxwell, found grandeur in his small hometown, drawing from the characters of his childhood memories. He realized that life is so remarkably astonishing you simply couldn’t improve on it. It was so full of meaning and possibility, with some moments as works of art in themselves that, he ceased to consciously remould and reorder reality.

To perceive and inject the ordinary with import and significance requires an innate quality. A certain way of thinking, which penetrates beneath and beyond the external surfaces of things. It might be the gift of wonder, imagination or something as abstract as Animism — the belief that all natural things have a soul which is separate from their physical existence.

Another quality is the ability to empathize with the characters — the ability to slip into their shoes and reveal their inherent humanity so that the reader can understand them, which requires a keener sensitivity. William Maxwell was prompted by his delight in the variety and unpredictability of human nature. Balzac announced his intention “to write a history of men, customs, things, life, passion and social ambition”. He died at the age of 51 writing a mere 88 of the 137 books he had planned. Peopled with more than 2400 characters, varying from the rich or humble, high brow or simple, saintly or cynical all are endowed with a humanity in which the reader can recognize the author himself.

Writing can also be a voyage of self discovery as it was for James Boswell who lived through the Enlightenment. His self confessions is an enquiry into human nature itself. He had his own demon, his melancholy temperament which he tried to chase away through his writings. Writing, was for him, a means whereby a man adjusts his character by looking into his journal. Boswell found his intellect forced on to questions before which his spirit quailed. Was there a God? Was there an after life?

Much of mystical poetry is inspired by the love of the Divine and a longing for proximity or an unveiling of His face. The writer considers himself His instrument, His pen, the reed, and the Persian mystic and poet Rumi says,

Harkens to the reed forlorn,/ Breathing, ever since t’was torn/ From its rushy bed a strain of impassioned love and pain.

But how does inspiration cease? Does the quality of thinking and feeling too much lead to emotional burnout? Or the inner critic becomes too overwhelming?

“Our own self-criticism makes us hopeless and depressed. This is masochism in its extreme form,” said a writer. This is what happened to Ernest Hemmingway the author of A farewell to arms. He seemed to have lost it by the 1970s. After a successful For whom the bell tolls (1940) he left the literary world and moved to the tropics isolating himself from anyone who knew him as he really was.

A changed man, according to his son, he struggled to live upto the expectations of his earlier successful works. For ten years he wrote no new fiction as he embarked on a parody of his previous wartime adventures and tried to relive the experiences of his successful times in the hope of inspiration. In the process he lost his identity, confusing his fantasy self (a man of action) with his real self (a man who wrote about action). Though he did find his voice briefly in The old man and the sea (1950) this was part of a trilogy that never came together.

Perhaps the artist kills his own self. The fault lies with his external experiences. Hemmingway’s creative dissolution was conventionally ascribed by scholars to drinking and depression. Fitzgerald’s collapse is narrowed to the 1930s when he was overwhelmed by Zelda’s mental illness. Faulkner’s decline goes back to the 1940s when he dissipated himself while working screenplays for Hollywood

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