![]() ![]() 'We poets in our youth begin in gladness,' said Wordsworth, 'But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' Consider Franz Kafka's story, 'A Fasting-Artist.' The fasting-artist is an artist dedicated completely to his art. Therefore the artistic vocation has an aura of tragedy and doom about it. “But among the elect, martyrdom is always a possibility and to be an artist is not altogether a choice - the God of Art picks you, not the other way around. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing The well of inspiration is a hole that leads downwards.” Poets know this too they too travel the dark roads. Going into a narrative - into the narrative process - is a dark road. That is why inspiration is thought of as coming in flashes. Where is the story? The story is in the dark. Or it feels like a stone by the sixth draft,' they added. ![]() 'You go, you get the story, you're whacked out, you come back and write it all down on a stone. 'Yeah, that's what it is,' said the writers. ![]() Then he's really, really tired, and then he writes the whole thing down on a stone.' So the only thing he really brings back with him is a couple of stories. 'He wants the secret of life and death, he goes through hell, he comes back, but he hasn't got immortality, all he's got is two stories - the one about his trip, and the other, extra one about the flood. 'Gilgamesh was the first writer,' I said. “I was holding forth about this a while ago at a dinner for a bunch of writers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |