Fine Frenzies
An Anatomy of Inspiration. By Rosamond E. M. Harding, Ph.D. (Heller. as. 6d.)
Tins is a modest and sensible work on a fascinating but obscure subject: the psychological nature of that moment or process popularly known as " inspiration." Dr. Harding has her own theory, but in the present work she is mainly concerned with a classification of the enormous amount of material which exists in letters, autobiographies, biographies and other historical docu- ments. Scientists have naturally been rather sceptical about this phenomenon, especially when the poet and the mystic have repre- sented themselves as mouthpieces of some external agent, passive instruments merely recording what is dictated to them. But making allowances for a certain amount of hyperbole, what is remarkable about the evidence gathered together by Dr. Harding
is its unanimity. And this unanimity is not confined to poets, but extends to every kind of creative mental activity, including the composition of music and scientific discovery. The best general description, of the many quoted in the book, is perhaps Alphonse Daudet's, as related by his son Leon:
In the case of all creators there are accumulations of sentient force made without their knowledge. Their nerves, in a state of high excitation, register visions, colours, forms, and odours in those half-realised reservoirs which are the treasuries of poets. All of a sudden, through some influence of emotion, through some accident of thought, these impressions meet each other with the suddenness of a chemical combination.
A certain period of conscious preparation may be necessary in some cases, and will then determine the quality of the inspiration; but Daudet's description emphasises the two essential features of the event—a process of unconscious accumulation which may be of considerable duration, and then the sudden explosive release, like the effect of friction on the specially prepared match.
One would think that a likely explanation would be found in that theory of the unconscious mind put forward by psycho- analysts, but in general they do not throw much light on the problem. Dr. Harding seems to regard them with suspicion, and her own theory makes little use of their hypothesis. She sug- gests that ideas bearing on particular interests acquire particular tones, and that in any particular case this tone acts as a sieve preventing irrelevant and incongruous ideas disturbing the mind. The interest gathers round it all kinds of associated ideas which are coloured by the predominant tone, and hang about on the fringe of consciousness. Then in some favourable moment of day-dreaming or even of sleep, two of these fringe-ideas get together in pregnant union, or one of them may even make a marriage with a conscious idea. This happy accident is then submitted to the scrutiny of the fully conscious mind, and accepted or rejected.
This might serve as a description of the process, but it is too simple to solve the essential problem. Dr. Harding does not clIstinguish clearly enough between the inspiration which is the so'ution of a problem (a scientific discovery, for example), and the inspiration which is a " pure gift." When Housman, fortified by his lunch and a pint of beer, went walking along thinking of nothing in particular, there would flow into his mind " with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza at once, accom- panied, not preceded, by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form a part of." There is no preliminary pre- paration here, no tone-sieve, no fringe-ideas, but just a sudden and apparently fortuitous combination of words in the mind of a particular individual, which words happen to have that value we agree to call poetic. Inspiration in itself is a common enough phenomenon, and there is nothing in the experience itself to indicate the value of the inspiration; the degree of clarity or intensity, for example, bears no relation to value, as many of the examples cited by Dr. Harding show. Nor can inspiration be induced or maintained at will. On the other hand, if it were purely fortuitous it would not be confined to a few individuals. It must depend on some physical or mental quality in the
individual comparable to hallucination; indeed, in the painter inspiration would seem to be identical with hallucination. The psychological explanation of hallucination will probably, in due course, lead us to a satisfactory explanation of inspiration.
The data collected by Dr. Harding are so numerous and interesting that it is strange they do not include Henry James's wonderful description of the approach of inspiration quoted by Percy Lubbock in his introduction to the Letters; still more surprising is her neglect of the evidence of the nature of Words- worth's inspiration provided by Dorothy in her journals.
HERBERT READ.
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