Sing, Muse!
The Hunt for Divine Inspiration
Welcome to another Dropout Classicist post! I felt uninspired, took a week off, then started re-examining my own relationships to creativity through ancient poetry (nothing out of the ordinary).
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Abandoned by Inspiration
This piece started when I decided to take a week off. I was feeling a little tired and running low on ideas, so I decided to go away for the week, read and recapture my creativity. I packed my suitcase, stuffed my rucksack with books, and hopped on a train to the Lakes.
The Lake District has always been a hotspot for writers seeking to spark ideas, especially the romantic poets. What better place to rekindle my own inspiration? And what better place to sit and read than the dramatic hills? I had brought my copy of Hesiod with me too.
Hesiod is a fantastic poet. A shepherd in the foothills of Mount Helicon, he claims to have been taught by the Muses themselves to sing and compose. Nature and divine creativity are vital themes in his works, so no poet could have been more thematically appropriate to my own journey.
And once they taught Hesiod fine singing, as he tended his lambs below holy Helicon —Hesiod, Theogony tr. M. L. West
Every artist has their muse, so we are told. Homer opens the Iliad, the cornerstone of western literature, addressing a muse, most likely Kalliope who is the muse of Epic, before he even mentions the name of Achilles. He does address her as θεα - goddess - though we know it is her.
Though one of the first, Homer is not the last to invoke the muses. In fact, their invocation in poetry has deep roots in the religion of the early Greeks.
Ancient Religion
The Homeric Hymns, a set of songs attributed to Homer, are one of the best surviving examples we have of early Greek religious practices. Each is in praise to a god or goddess, and tells us a story relating to them. It is from these hymns that we have the oldest version of the kidnapping of Persephone and the birth of Hermes. These hymns follow a specific structure, which helps us get a better idea of how they operate. They begin with an invocation, introducing the subject deity. This is followed by a story, some spanning up to 25 verses. Finally, a farewell to the god in question, and a wish for their grace.
The introductory verses of these hymns often invoke the muses, and it is from this that we can piece together their place in the pantheon. Often they are called upon in prayers for other gods to act as a sort of intermediary. They are the ones delivering the song, fully formed, to the mouth of the singer. Very rarely do we see an entire hymn devoted to just the muses, but their presence is unmistakable in many others. We see this in Homer’s invocation too, he asks for the song to be delivered to him, and several times returns to invoking her when he needs to recall long lists of names. I find it insanely beautiful that the Ancient Greeks believed their art was this linked to these goddesses. What creative cannot relate? There is something magical about an idea, one that strikes you when you least expect. No wonder we picture it to be divine.
Whats more, it is easier to understand this divinity when you have to go without it. In my week off, it was this divine inspiration I was hunting for, hoping it would strike me as if sent from above. My time offline was amazing, but inspiration didn’t come flooding back to me like I hoped. I got back as creatively starved as I left.
The Poet
Our word ‘poet’ comes from the Ancient Greek ποιητης. In its transition through time to our language, it loses a lot of beautiful context. The word is linked to ποιεω which means either ‘I make’ or ‘I do’. Thus, a poet is a maker, a creator, a person of action. The poet instantiates, channeling the divine to bring something into the world. A poet is a craftsman, one constantly at work.
This idea of toil, of the artist having to construct and revise, felt somewhat at odds to me when I was hunting for inspiration. How could the Greeks view their song as both a divine gift and a mortal creation? It felt almost counterintuitive to me. Yet, while I read Hesiod’s splendid verses amongst hills as dramatic as his own Helicon, I felt abandoned, deserted by the divine.
When I returned home, I was spiritually still in the same place I had started in. Perhaps I had been looking at it all wrong. It was then that I decided to re-examine this link between the toil of the poet and the holiness of the song. I sat and I thought. Then it hit me. I had been looking at my creativity all wrong.
As a non-fiction writer, I have often found it almost pretentious to call myself a ‘creative’. I did not see the divine in things, I was not inspired to create worlds and stories from nothing. But, in re-examining my drive to write, I had a little revelation. I needed to put in work. Waiting for inspiration to strike me was like waiting to win the lottery without even buying a ticket. I needed to write, to use my brain again to jostle it back into gear. Perhaps this realisation was long overdue. Perhaps there are other writers who are shaking their heads in disappointment at me for not thinking about this sooner. To me though, it felt powerful.
It had been there all along, if I had only known to look for it. The distinction in Greek between the divine nature of inspiration and the manual work of the poet, the dichotomy that confused me, was the very ingredient I was missing. The work of the artist is to find that divinity, it is always there if you know where to look. Yes, it is sometimes incredibly difficult, but inspiration is for anyone and comes from anywhere.
Now, looking back, I am starting to re-evaluate my own work. Sure, I am not spinning tales or striking emotions like the brilliant fiction writers. But that surge of excitement I feel when I look at these ancient works, when I write about obscure pottery or literature, was that divinity I was searching for all along. My muses were whatever I chose. Maybe it was even the divinity felt by Hesiod, when he kept his flocks on Mount Helicon. The power to see the divine in things was not taken from me. It was a tool I had forgotten to sharpen. While I hadn’t clambered out of that void of despair, and ideas were not leaping fully formed into my head, I didn’t feel quite so stuck. Am I still not feeling overly inspired? Yes. But will that stop me writing? No. After all, it may not be my magnum opus, but I wrote this. That is certainly something.
Post Scriptum
Yes, this post is late. I do apologise. Hopefully, the reasons why are self explanatory. I took a week off and came back with less ideas than I left. I will be resuming weekly newsletters though!
A lovely piece, I too have been subject to the lack of divine inspiration, but what a fascinating and optimistic take! Our muses are artefacts and song, the objects that spark that little bit of hope within us. I will definitely be taking this idea forwards, thank you!