We may have gone off the rails if we attempt to equate the nuts a
squirrel squirrels away in some hollowed out hole in a tree with the
hypothetically external force hitherto referred to as a Muse who
supplies a poet with ideas. If the poet is a "maker" in the modern
sense of someone who might make a gin and tonic for a guest then
creativity doesn't enter into either the drink or the poem. But if
something very close to ex nihilo is going on, the creating of a poem
out of something the poet could not until the actual writing of the poem
lay claim to, as far as the poet knows the ideas for the poem did come
out of nothing. Freud has composed for us, made perhaps, the
"unconscious." We each have one and though we might think, if we are a
poet, that our ideas come from nothing, they in fact come from our
"unconscious." There is no "force" nor "muse." There is merely
something our mind, our unconscious, which we only have access to (when
we write our poems), and the manner of the writing makes it seem as
though there is an external force at work supplying us with ideas and
words. Freud's location of the unconscious as the source of our poetic
inspiration is certainly scientifically satisfying in this scientific age.
And Borges in his Conversation (with Osvaldo Ferrari) on Plato and
Aristotle said, "And you see that in Socrates' last dialogue where he
uses reason and myth at the same time. Since Aristotle, we use one or
the other system -- we are no longer capable of using both. I,
personally, am almost unable to think by reasoning. It seems that I
reason, knowing it's a dangerous and fallible method . . . I tend to
think through myth, through dreams or my own inventions."
*Ferrari: *Or through intuitions, as in the East.
*Borges: *Yes, or through intuitions. But I know that the other system
is more rigorous. So I try to reason, although I know I am not capable
of it. On the other hand, I am told that I am able to dream and I hope
to continue doing so. After all, I am not a thinker -- I am a mere
short-story writer, a mere poet. I am resigned to my fate but that fate
clearly need not be inferior to any other.
*Ferrari: *But you pointed out that, instead of mysticism and poetry as
a tradition, we have opted for reason and method.
*Borges: *Yes, but we are ruled by mysticism and poetry.
*Ferrari: *Ah, I see.
*Borges: *Of course we are ruled unconsciously but we are ruled.
And so we have Borges invoking Freud's "Unconscious" as the source of
poetry.
Lawrence
