My oldest grandson, Orr (Light, in Hebrew) is fifteen years old. Perhaps because he has always seen me at work, for as long as I remember him—and longer than he can remember himself—he has sought to join me by writing a book of his own. I suppose that is why, a few days ago, he came up with what was perhaps the most difficult question I have ever been asked during my seventy-two years. Grandpa, he said, can you tell me what inspiration is?

I must say I was stunned. Having recovered somewhat, I did my best to find an answer. The following is what I came up with.

1. Inspiration is that which enables you to draw a picture, or write a book, or compose music, or design an experiment, or formulate a new equation, or plan. Without it, neither can you start working nor is there much point in doing so. Still that should not keep you from trying.Inspiration on its own is not enough; what you need, in addition, is hard work.

2. Inspiration can come either from outside or from inside. In the former case, which was mostly the case with me, it is called by its proper name. As, for example, when Homer in the famous first line of the Iliad calls on the Muse to help him in his self-imposed task. The idea of inspiration as a divine gift is several thousand years old. By contrast, inspiration that comes from within, known as creativity, only became at all important from about 1920 on. Currently, Ngram tells me, the two words are engaged on a neck-to-neck race as to which one is used more frequently.

3. Both inspiration and creativity have always been, and still remain, phenomena that take the soul by storm, so to speak.Neither can be brought on by force; in my experience, trying to do so will only result in nausea. Both inspiration and creativity often come, or perhaps I should say bubble up, from the most unexpected quarters. The following is a story that will clarify the matter. Back in the spring of 1937 Pablo Picasso, a Spanish painter living in self-imposed Parisian exile, was fifty-six years old and in a funk; vainly looking for inspiration for a painting he had undertaken to do on for an exhibition on twentieth-century technological progress. Like most people, he learnt the details of the German bombardment of Guernica from the media. It shook him awake. The outcome? What some consider the most famous painting done during the entire twentieth century.

4. Subjectively speaking, being caught up by the whirlwind that is inspiration/creativity is one of the most wonderful emotions one can experience. Quite as wonderful as, say, the joy of listening to a good piece of music, or looking at a good painting, or love, or sex at its best. Being seized with it makes one eager to sing and dance over hill and dale.It can even get to the point where the joy becomes altogether unbearable. However,for good or ill it does not last. Normally for each moment of ecstasy there is one of agony or depression. To go through the cycle without going insane—that is a challenge countless inspired/creative people have faced, not seldom without success.

I hope have I made myself clear.  In case I have not, here is what Nietzsche, in my view one of the most inspired men that have ever lived and one of the very few who was both a philosopher and a great poet, has to say about the matter (Ecce Homo, chapter “Thus Spoke “Zarathustra,” section 3, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale):

“Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration?If not, I will describe it. – If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who lives; a thought flashes up like lightening, with necessity, unfalteringly formed—I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself a flood of tears, while one’s steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary color within such a superfluity of light; an instinct for rhythmical relationships which spans forms of wide extent—length, the need for a wide-spanned rhythm is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, ma kind of compensation for its pressure and tension… Everything is in the highest degree involuntary, but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity… The involuntary nature of image, of metaphors, is the most remarkable thing of all;one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression. It really does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra’s, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors… This is my experience of inspiration,”

Note that having written all this, Nietzsche still does not tell us what inspiration is. Only what it feels like. The same applies to me. Anyhow. Thanks, my dearly beloved Orr, for making me think.