Transcend the bullshit

a-bittersweet-life: “ It makes no difference whether the poet knows that his work is begotten, grows and matures with him, or whether he supposes that by taking thought he produces it out of the void. His opinion of the matter does not change the...

a-bittersweet-life:

It makes no difference whether the poet knows that his work is begotten, grows and matures with him, or whether he supposes that by taking thought he produces it out of the void. His opinion of the matter does not change the fact that his work outgrows him as a child its mother. The creative process has feminine quality, and the creative work arises from unconscious depths–we might say, from the realm of the mothers. Whenever the creative force predominates, human life is ruled and molded by the unconscious as against the active will, and the conscious ego is swept along on a subterranean current, being nothing more than a helpless observer of events. The work in process becomes the poet’s fate and determines his psychic development. It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which creates Goethe…The work of the poet comes to meet the spiritual needs of the society in which he lives, and for this reason the work means more to him than his personal fate, whether he is aware of this or not. Being essentially the instrument for his work, he is subordinate to it, and we have no reason for expecting him to interpret it for us…a great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal…to grasp its meaning, we must allow it to shape us as it once shaped him. Then we understand the nature of the experience.

Carl Jung

“All forms of love, suffering, and madness. He [the poet] searches himself. He exhausts all poisons in himself and keeps only their quintessences.”

– Arthur Rimbaud, from a letter to Paul Demeny c. May 1871 (via writemeanna)