Posts by Jeremy Rosen

Hello again and happy New Year! This is Altalena and welcome back to An Aesthetic Education. In his deeply moving autobiography, The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig writes about the reasons why he had such a strong desire to collect original manuscripts from the likes of Goethe, Mozart, and Handel. Explaining his need to collect he says the following:

“When I began I had set out only as beginners do, to bring together names – famous names. Then, out of psychological curiosity, I had collected more and more manuscripts, original drafts or fragments of works, which also gave me insight into the creative methods of a much-loved master. The most profound and mysterious of the countless insoluble riddles of the world is surely the mystery of creation. You cannot eavesdrop on Nature here; she will not show you the final secret of how the earth was created and how a little flower grows, how a poem or a man comes into being. Pitilessly, inflexibly, Nature draws a veil over that last secret. Even the poets and musicians cannot account for the moment of inspiration in retrospect. Once the act of creation is complete, the creative artist does not know where it came from or how it grew to fruition. Artists can never, or almost never, explain how, in their heightened state of consciousness, words come together to from a verse, or single notes to make a melody that will echo through the centuries. Nothing can give an idea of the incomprehensible process of creation except, to some slight extent, handwritten pages, particularly those that are covered with corrections and not yet ready to go to press, and the still tentative first drafts from which the final form of a work will emerge.”

As Zweig so eloquently describes, for anyone fascinated by art and creative expression there is this underlying wish to pull back the curtain and see the creative process at its moment of highest expression. While Zweig is correct that we will never really be able to know or see that creative spark fully, we can at least begin to understand some of the elements that help form our recognition and understanding of what is creative, beautiful, and meaningful. So, let’s begin at the beginning of aesthetic philosophy, with the work of the Greek philosopher Plato and how his theory of forms served as a foundation for all future aesthetic thinking.

People have always been fascinated with the notion of creativity. It’s this strange inbuilt desire that we possess, a need to find a form of expression that will show our individual spark. Lord Byron, in his somber and powerful poem on the fate of Prometheus says the following:

“Thy godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less

The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen man with his own mind…”

The myth of Prometheus is one of crime and punishment. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. His punishment was an everlasting physical and mental torture that would renew itself every day. Yet, according to Byron, Prometheus is guilty of a crime committed for the sake of kindness. What is this kindness? It is the act of giving man fire – giving man the ability to strengthen his own mind. It is providing humanity with the spark of creativity. Before Prometheus, the act and ability of creation was left solely in the realm of the gods. They alone had the wherewithal to create and bring light and meaning to the vastness of the universe. Following the acts of Prometheus, humanity received the strength and purpose to create for themselves, molding their existence with expression and meaning.