~ A VISION TO SHARE

I have travelled the whole world, consumed by an inner fire I cannot decipher yet. But my disquiet and restlessness hasn't abated: I'm still as impulsive, angry, emotional, and discontent as when I was first born into puberty.

But when I compose poetry, oh when I compose! When I write I seem to become universal, in an orgasmic, a-tonic, mental masturbating sort of way that pampers my deeper requisites for sensual freedom and awakens the genius in me.

I am actively thinking, while I write. While I'm writing for you and to you, the anonymous reader.

All active thinking is more than a mere linking together of images and conceptions. Can you intellectually connect with me and perceive the genius?

Genius: his messages take shape in the secret depths of the soul...

Philosopher Galton wrote that "what is generally meant by genius is the automatic activity of the mind, as distinguished from the effort of the will. In a man of genius, the ideas come as by inspiration; he is driven rather than drives himself."

It is a gift of the gods... Plato, himself a genius, suggests that creative thought is a kind of madness sent upon men by the gods in accordance with some purpose of which they and not we are conscious. Being conscious that I am not really a genius, I should be satisfied with my intuitive mind, as intuition is the basis of all thinking. The intuited idea is operative throughout the whole process of the collection of facts, the brooding over them, the gradual heightening of the tension, the sudden release and the slow and steady mastery of the detail by the elaboration of the conceptions and judgments. In any concrete act of thinking mind's active experience is both intuitive and intellectual. If you wish to be my intellectual connection, in turn I should be intuitively your medium for manipulating your higher sense of existence. Accept?

I mean: do you accept that?

It is a mistake to think that the only qualifications for elucidating truth and fulfilment in life are purely intellectual. Only those whose lives are deep and rich light on the really vital syntheses significant to mankind.

Shouldn't we do our part in the synthesis of our life? Let's be creative then, if we cannot be true geniuses. Let's be alive and expressive in all our senses.

Artistic. Yes.

The work of art is the crystallization of a life-process. Grab my hand... shed your skin awhile, and be an artist with me, just like I want to be an artist with you, unlearning to relearn -- just like Socrates said.

Is this my electronic virtual crisis? Since I've just about experienced any sort of intellectual crisis available to man, I may as well have a cyber-crisis online!

(sarcastic laugh)

I've been like this since birth, so no bullshit. It's actual awareness, finally. A wanting for aesthetic achievement. My mind is in labour and craves for sustenance from the whole being. No more crap from others.

Now read a poem, for chrissake! Or write me a poem...

This is the prayer I understand, no other.

True poetry which is rich with a world of suffering and experience, has the fullness and mystery, and depth and authority of life itself. It is because the poet sees so intensely that he is able to communicate to us his feeling and judgment. The creative spirit and its activity are so unlike the conscious mind that the latter feels itself to be inspired and raised above its normal power by the breath of spirit. Can you bear with me a moment about "inspiration"?

The inspired souls speak from a centre of consciousness that has transcended the limits of its finitude and so claim an authoritativeness which is not within the power of the normal individual to bestow. They do not think so much as thoughts come to them. Hey, you see how close we now come to the concept of "genius" as Plato sees it? So, perhaps all hope is not lost. The poet believes that his work is due not to his intellectual skill or imaginative boldness but to what he calls his inspiration.

I feel inspired. My reader, if you do exist, you've got to believe me: I feel soooo inspired I could initiate an atomic fission by just composing a haiku verse!

But DO YOU feel inspired? Well, do you? Ever?

Since inspiration comes to the poet's life and fades out of it regardless of his inclination, he traces it to a power more unconscious than conscious. To the ancient Hindus and the Greeks, the poetic exercise is a religious act, and the poet invokes his muse and begins with a prayer. Ever read Homer? It is always a dialogue between the daimon and the psyche. The authors of the Vedic hymns regarded themselves as channels of something greater than they knew, instruments of a higher soul beyond themselves. They do not so much create the contents as contemplate them in their moments of deepest insight. Plato in his Symposium suggests a similar view. Aristotle says that the poet is either "happily gifted by nature" or "a bit of a maniac". Dante says: "I am one who, when love inspires, take note and as he dictates within me I express myself."

Isn't all this beautiful? Yes, it is.

The poetic experience is but momentary for the veil is redrawn and the mood of exaltation passes. The poet attempts a translation of the ineffable experience into words. While poetry is in the soul, the poem is a pale reflection of the original, an attempt to register in words an impression which has become an image in memory.

Here, dear virtual reader, I falter.
Here I have my tragedy: cannot ever be satisfied with my "registrations". There is something incommensurable in poetry, eluding my expression in words. The poetic temper is in all of us though only a few develop it. The poet has the gift, which fewer still have, of communicating the experience by words of immediate power which compel the wandering mind to respond to his appeal. It is truly difficult to translate states of soul into words and images. The success of art is measured by the extent to which it is able to render experiences of one dimension into terms of another.

The difference between a poet and a non-poet is that the experience of the former is larger and his verbal control greater. And an adequate control of technique is essential to the poet. Even in the act of composition the poet is in a state in which the reflective elements are subordinated to the intuitive. The vision, however, is not operative for so long as it continues, its very stress acts as a check on expression. The experience is recollected but not in tranquillity. Poetry is the language of excitement. For in recollecting the exciting experience, the poet recreates the conditions of its happening and identifies himself with it. The spell of the experience is still on the poet and under its influence he employs intuitive words and images which possess emotional value more than logical meaning. While poetry is not the vision itself, but only the image of it, still its quality depends on the degree with which it calls up the vision.

Let us then be poets together, and call up a vision to share....