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"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."—Carl G. Jung
"I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life, a process which appears more and more inexhaustible as I go on. . . . It is a turning inside out, a voyaging through X dimensions, with the result that somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself."—Henry Miller
List of contents
INTRODUCTION : Brewster Ghiselin
MATHEMATICAL CREATION : Henri Poincare
LETTER TO JACQUES HADAMARD : Albert Einstein
A LETTER : Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
THE COMPOSER AND HIS MESSAGE : Roger Sessions
THE MUSICAL MIND : Harold Shapero
LETTER TO ANTON RIDDER VAN RAPPARD : Vincent van Gogh
CONVERSATION WITH PICASSO: Christian Zervos
EAST TO WEST : Yasuo Kuniyoshi
BEFORE PARIS AND AFTER : Julian Levi
INSPIRATION TO ORDER : Max Ernst
MAKING PICTURES : D. H. Lawrence
NOTES ON SCULPTURE : Henry Moore
COMPOSITION IN PURE MOVEMENT : Mary Wigman
DEDICATION OF THE RIVAL-LADIES : John Dryden
THE PROCESS OF INSPIRATION : Jean Cocteau
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION OF LYRICAL BALLADS : William Wordsworth
PREFATORY NOTE TO KUBLA KHAN : Samuel Taylor Coleridge
THE NAME AND NATURE OF POETRY : A. E. Housman
THE COURSE IN POETICS: FIRST LESSON : Paul Valery
THREE PIECES ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS : William Butler Yeats
THE THINKING OF THE BODY
PREFACE TO THE KING OF THE GREAT CLOCK TOWER
LONG-LEGGED FLY
THE PROCESS OF MAKING POETRY : Amy Lowell
THE MAKING OF A POEM : Stephen Spender
THE BIRTH OF A POEM : Brewster Ghiselin
NARCISSUS AS NARCISSUS : Allen Tate
REMEMBERING HART CRANE : Malcolm Cowley
PREFACE TO THE SPOILS OF POYNTON : Henry James
WORKING-TOOLS : Rudyard Kipling
A CONVERSATION WITH GERTRUDE STEIN : John Hyde Preston
HOW FLINT AND FIRE STARTED AND GREW : Dorothy Canfield
LETTER TO WARNER TAYLOR : Uewelyn Powys
REFLECTIONS ON WRITING : Henry Miller
THE STORY OF A NOVEL : Thomas Wolfe
NOTES ON WRITING : Katherine Anne Porter
COMPOSITION OF THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA : Friedrich Nietzsche
SUBCONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE UNDERLYING DREAMS : Morton Prince
PSYCHOLOGY AND LITERATURE : Carl Gustav Jung
CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ELIOT : Herbert Spencer
THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF IMAGINATION : R. W. Gerard
About the author
Brewster Ghiselin is Professor Emeritus of English and Doctor of Humane Letters H.C. at the University of Utah.
Summary
This unique anthology brings together material from 38 well-known writers, artists, and scientists who attempt to describe the process by which original ideas come to them. Contributors include Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amy Lowell, Rudyard Kipling, Max Ernst, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry Miller, Carl Gustav Jung, Mary Wigman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Henri Poincaré and many others.
