In Conversations with Goethe With Johann Peter Eckermann, Goethe says, People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us and goes on to the end. What can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? If I could give anContinue reading “Goethe On The Artist’s Supposed ‘Originality’”
Tag Archives: creativity
‘Prison Literature: Constraints And Creativity’ Up At Three Quarks Daily
My essay, ‘Prison Literature: Constraint and Creativity,’ is up at Three Quarks Daily. Here is an introduction/abstract: In his Introduction to Hegel’s Metaphysics (University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp 30-31), Ivan Soll attributes “great sociological and psychological insight” to Hegel in ascribing to him the insight that “the frustration of the freedom of act results in the search ofContinue reading “‘Prison Literature: Constraints And Creativity’ Up At Three Quarks Daily”
George Steiner On The ‘Unvoiced Soliloquy’ And Collaborative Creativity
In Grammars of Creation (Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 84-85), in making note of the ‘anxiety of influence,’ and the valorization of solitary creativity, George Steiner writes: I want to point to the elected presences which makers construe within themselves or within their works, to the “fellow-travellers,” teachers, critics, dialectical partners, to those other voices withinContinue reading “George Steiner On The ‘Unvoiced Soliloquy’ And Collaborative Creativity”
Freud As Writing Stylist And Pedagogy Instructor
In Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Master and Victims in Modernist Culture¹(Oxford University Press, New York, 1978), Peter Gay writes: All of Freud’s biographers devote an obligatory page to the efficiency and beauty of his prose–not without reason. Freud’s stylistic achievement is all the more remarkable considering the spectrum of his publications…Freud’s case published caseContinue reading “Freud As Writing Stylist And Pedagogy Instructor”
Taming The Beast: Writing By Deleting Text
Some six or so years ago, I began work on a book. I’m still not done and the end isn’t in sight either. I’ve alluded to this state of affairs on this blog before: on my About page where I make note of the extremely impressive and portentous title the book bears, and once, inContinue reading “Taming The Beast: Writing By Deleting Text”
Freidrich Hebbel’s ‘Profound Question’
In ‘Notebook 11, February 1817’ from Writings From The Early Notebooks (eds. Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2009, p. 81), Nietzsche cites “a profound question of Friedrich Hebbel” [link added]: If the artist made a picture, knowing that it would last for ever, ButContinue reading “Freidrich Hebbel’s ‘Profound Question’”
V. S. Naipaul On The Supposed ‘Writing Personality’
In The Enigma of Arrival (Random House, New York, 1988, pp. 146-147) V. S. Naipaul writes: It wasn’t only that I was unformed at the age of eighteen or had no idea what I was going to write about. It was that idea given me by my education–and by the more “cultural,” the nicest, part of thatContinue reading “V. S. Naipaul On The Supposed ‘Writing Personality’”
G. H. Hardy On The Supposedly ‘Second-Rate Mind’
In A Mathematician’s Apology G. H. Hardy wrote: It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists,Continue reading “G. H. Hardy On The Supposedly ‘Second-Rate Mind’”
An Anxiety-Provoking Description Of The Creative Process
There are many, many, descriptions of the stages of the creative process. Some have been memorialized into pithy, quasi-inspirational, meme-worthy statements that can be shared on the net, all the better to encourage anxious, insecure, doubt-ridden procrastinators, distracting themselves from their creative ‘tasks’ by incessantly checking their social media feeds. Roughly, they amount to this:Continue reading “An Anxiety-Provoking Description Of The Creative Process”
The Pleasures Of Books Never To Be Written
In ‘The Flaubert Apocrypha’ (from: Flaubert’s Parrot, Vintage International, New York, 1990, pp. 115-116), Julian Barnes writes: If the sweetest moment in life is a visit to a brothel which doesn’t come off, perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, whichContinue reading “The Pleasures Of Books Never To Be Written”
Samir Chopra 