Interpreting Creative Imagination And The Nature Of Inspiration - A Kaleidoscopic View Through The Lens Of Writers, Psychoanalysts, Psychologists, And Poets

Abstract

This paper attempts to decipher the workings of creative imagination and the nature of artistic and poetic inspiration. This deciphering of the creative imagination is fundamental to all human awakening, questionings, and the striving for creative endeavors. It comprehends the nature of the creative imagination in a matrix of varied encounters. To divulge into the personality of the creative individual and the development of creativity is an ongoing in-depth inquiry with many facets to its findings. It makes inspiration and creative imagination a great scientific, literary, psychological, and philosophical enterprise. In his treatise The Making of a Poem, Stephen Spender discusses the experience of being a poet. He reveals that genius works in different ways to achieve its ends. He states the fact that there are many kinds of geniuses like there are many kinds of bits of intelligence. A kind of genius we are attempting to decipher here in this article is one for which we have to delve deeper to look into the confines of a poet’s inner being and consciousness. In each case, what matters, in the end, is the revelation of the ineffable vision which sees and pursues and attains the goal of the artistic purpose. The outcome is the artistic endeavor, the poem that feels the inner workings of the mind and heart of man. It brings forth Wordsworth’s Daffodils, John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale, Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. The splendid creative workings of the human imagination dazzle the human mind with its spontaneous outpourings of creative genius. It’s an introspective journey into the nature of creativity and inspiration.