The Bicameral Muse, Part II
I promised several entries ago to discuss the line between muse and man, and it’s high time to whip out Origins and get to it. So, with malice toward none; with charity for all; more on the muse:
Some moderns write without benefit of muse. For example, I’ve never felt that the muse was involved in writing non-fiction, not even when a column of mine all comes together in an unexpected way. Perhaps it is the lifetime of use that blinds me to the muse in such situations, but, there being no general talk of a muse for non-fiction, I’ll assume not. So writing without the muse is possible.
Once upon a time, some muses wrote without the man. To Plato, for example, complete possession by the muse was the sine qua non of artistic merit:
… all good poets, epic as well as lyric, composed their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed … there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer in him.
(All quotes are taken from Jaynes’ book, including the ellipses.) Art in this context means artifice - that is, craft or talent as opposed to inspiration or the muse. Jaynes claims that the muse’s possessiveness in Plato’s day was her last hurrah, yet he goes on to give more recent examples of the muse in action. Milton took dictation from his Celestial Patroness, and even Shelley risked the wrath of fellow poets with blanket statements like the following:
A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness … and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.
Ellipsis again thanks to Jaynes, but I’ve found the original on-line: A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The quote above starts at section 284, but the whole thing looks so interesting that I’ll put off any more muse musing until I’ve read it through.