Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond -- a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art -- which is art.
Joseph Conrad
The Mirror of the Sea. The Fine Art
What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. . . . Should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have yet refreshed the earth.
(Sarah) Margaret Fuller Ossoli
Woman in the 19th Century [circa 1832]
Inspiration, then, is the way we see Nature, the way it speaks to us, and our innate impulse to copy it.
The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
Ralph Waldo Emmerson
"Intellect," Essays: First Series
These likenesses (visual and otherwise) can then inspire more and more art, new ways of thinking about the world, about senses and how they can be expressed.
In days of yore, the poet's pen
From wing of bird was plundered,
Perhaps of goose, but now and then
From Jove's own eagle sundered.
But now, metallic pens disclose
Alone the poet's numbers;
In iron inspiration glows,
Or with the poet slumbers.
John Quincy Adams
The Pen
And, still, inspiration is a deeply personal event, proceeding from the divine or some other sort of origin within each one of us.
As humans, we want others to see as we see, to feel as we feel, and the most basic way of doing that is depicting our impressions. This applies to the the visual, literary, poetic, aural, and edible art that speaks so fundamentally to our spirits.
Art is a higher form of work, of action, of necessity, finely tuned to higher instincts.
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