On Inspiration: John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke

Inspiration, as most artists already know, is that rare glimmer that shines at the most random of moments. It is elusiveness personified, utterly indifferent to your summoning and pleading. “Writer’s block,” that is what we modern-day writers call it when it refuses to obey our wishes, leaving us high and dry while the clock is ticking away deep into the night. Classic poets John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke show us what needs to be done if one is to be inspired.

In Keats’ celebrated “Ode to Psyche,” we find the speaker singing the praise of Psyche because she is the “latest born and fairest vision far/Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!” Psyche’s beauty is so astonishing that even Eros, sent by Aphrodite out of sheer jealousy to punish her, injured himself with his love arrow and fell head over heels for her. However, Keats says Psyche, despite her earth-shattering beauty, is without her worshippers: “though temple thou hast none/Nor altar heap'd with flowers/Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan/Upon the midnight hours.” This seems like the most outrageous injustice, and so our speaker decides to pay tribute to this forgotten goddess in his own way:

                       Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

                       In some untrodden region of my mind,

                       Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

                       Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.

These lines tell us that the speaker will build a temple (“fane”) in honour of Psyche, and worship her in “some untrodden region” of his mind – his imagination. Psyche will be remembered and immortalised in the speaker’s imagination, and in turn, she will breathe into the speaker new thoughts, which will grow with “pleasant pain.” The oxymoron indicates that the creative process is both a soothing and agonising experience.

Rainer Maria Rilker’s “Leda” views inspiration through the same lens. Alluding to the notorious rape of Leda by Zeus in the form of a swan, Rilker re-casts the two players in a slightly different light. In the original Greek myth, Zeus is portrayed as the aggressor, the philanderer, and Leda the unwitting victim of his lust. Rilker opts for a different perspective, retelling the famous tale from Zeus’ point of view: “When the god in his need stepped across into him/he was almost shocked to find the swan so beautiful.” This is an utmost abstract start. The reader is invited to witness the transformation of Zeus (“stepped across”) into the form of a swan; the surprising word here is “shocked,” for the last thing the reader would expect is Zeus in shock. The god is shocked and confused because the “dissimulation” is new to him, and he is unprepared for its beauty (note the similarity to Keats’ Psyche). As soon as he becomes a swan, he is “swiftly led to the act/before he could even test the feelings/of this untried state.” The transformation is one that he cannot control. Once it has occurred, he is compelled to go through with the sexual act. In this case, Leda is anything but unsuspecting. She “could already see who it was coming down in the swan/and knew at once: he asked for one thing.” Rilke’s Leda does not resist the way the mythical Leda does; instead she is “confused in her resistance/no longer could hold back.”  

After the god has “released himself into the beloved,” he “took joy in his plumage/and really became a swan in her lap.” This is where Rilke delivers his “coup de grâce.” Zeus only becomes a swan proper after consummation, not before. Insofar as inspiration could be invoked, Zeus had “stepped across” into the form of a swan not knowing what he was getting himself into. In other words, inspiration, when it does strike, is a frightening and confounding thing, like a lightning bolt out of the blue. It is also a seductive something that will consume you whole and take hold of your will. What happens then is that you release all control in order to go where it leads you – even if it is towards some dark destination. It is only after you have experienced, in Keats’ words, “pleasant pain” that you will know the unadulterated power of inspiration.

“Leda” is translated from the German language by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann.