The creative impulse: A clinical view

Epic poets often pray to the Muse and declare their lofty purpose to compose a poem, on a serious issue relating to human life and destiny.

- DR. JERNAIL SINGH ANAND

Epic poets often pray to the Muse and declare their lofty purpose to compose a poem, on a serious issue relating to human life and destiny. The Muse, in turn, blesses the poet with extraordinary powers to write on that subject. As an epic poet myself, I have often prayed to the Muse and sought inspiration, and I can say with certainty that ideas and words keep flowing like a river and one can write things which he has not even contemplated. If the Muse pleaseth, she connects the poet to that unlimited sources of perception, and creative sources of divinity. It is from this superior connection that sublime poetry issues forth. Let us think of 'Paradise Lost' and 'The Divine Comedy'. Can such works flow from the pen of a poet if he is not blessed by the Muse? A poet used to be called a prophet, because the superior forces blessed him with a sublime vision. Poets who write for marketing and success are shorn of this loftiness and ideality and whatever they write, is fated to have contemporaneity, and yet lack eternal value and the timeless quality which is cardinal virtue of a classic.

THE DIVINE PUSH It is important to watch the movement of a river. The water is flowing. It is not that the ocean is attracting the waters to keep flowing.