We explain what inspiration is, the origin of the term and its various meanings. Also, beliefs about its causes.
What is inspiration?
The inspiration It is a sudden willingness to carry out an activity especially when it comes to something linked to creativity or matters of the spirit. For example, in art inspiration is an outbreak of creativity, that is, a burst of creative power that pushes the artist to produce his work, and then disappears.
At the same time, one can speak of inspiration to refer to those factors that led someone to create something or the raw material versioned or adapted to other formats. Thus, a film can be “inspired” by a book or someone's life, when it recreates them in a more or less free way, that is, when the book or biography served as raw material for the director's creative process.
The word inspiration comes from Latin inspiration and is made up of the voices in- (“inside”) and I will breathe (“breathe”). Its meaning is applied to the world of creativity in a rather figurative way: just as air enters the lungs, creativity “enters” the artist. This is because the creative rapture was attributed to the action of deities (called “muses” in the Greco-Roman imagination) on the artist's mind.
This idea of inspiration as a divine or supernatural gift also exists in religion. Genius, in fact, comes from that same sense.
Specifically in the Christian imagination, angels or the divine hand could inspire prophets, producing visions, or also artists, whose works are therefore in contact with the essence of God. It was even said to be the “divine breath” (inspiration) the one who awakened said talents in humanity.
Today inspiration remains a mysterious concept, difficult to define. Some artists and thinkers believe that inspiration does not exist or that in any case it is a state of “grace” or “of ease” that can be brought about through work itself. Quoting Pablo Picasso: “May inspiration keep you working.” Others try to reproduce it through stimulants, rituals or even psychotropic drugs.
In any case, inspiration is traditionally understood as something ephemeral, delicate, that the slightest disturbance can destroy, and that is why artists jealously guard it.
Continue with: Vocation
References
- “Inspiration” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Etymology of Inspiration” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- “Artistic inspiration” on Wikipedia.
- “Inspiration (theology)” on Wikipedia.
- “What, really, is inspiration?” by Jesús Alcoba in El País (Spain).
