A Plato quote that's pretty ecstatic

[crow]

I found this quote from Plato, which I understand to have been meant as a derision:


"[A]ll good poets . . . compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. . . [T]he lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed . . . . [The composer] is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless . . . .

"[T]hey do not speak . . . by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them . . . ."

[ChristopherSea]

Ha, ha… It’s very amusing. It may be contemptuous, but I find it flattering at the same time.  There was a heated discussion somewhere on site about the subject of the poet’s muse (I think it was between billy and Dale). I have never felt that some goddess of inspiration speaks to me or through me. Writing poetry, like painting, is hard work.

[Brownlie]

Well, this seems like something Plato would say. I think that in some versions of Greek mythology the muses were the omniscient daughters of Zeus. To turn to Plato,  the idea, or ideal if we want to go there with this, of a foresight to the lofty truth beyond the skin on one's knuckle seems like much of what he advocated for in his dialogues. I think he said that the only poetry should be poetry concerning the Gods, or something to that effect. I'm not sure you know exactly how monotheistic he was.

[bena]

Yeah...Plato hated poets. Think he was intimidated by us.

[ChristopherSea]

Yeah...Plato hated poets.  Think he was intimidated by us.

I agree, there is a twinge of jealousy in this ‘play-doh’ diatribe.

[rayheinrich]

Yes, Plato's got this ego thing going. He says that lyric poets are just stooges of the gods
while philosophers (scientists, et. al.) are not. You can't prove gods exist or don't, that free
will exists or doesn't, that somehow you aren't under their sway while others are.
This is just another pissing contest.

Poems require craftsmanship, premeditation, objective reasoning. After years of practice these
skills become a part of our subconscious; and, much like a dancer's movements, they become
instinctive, they become a muse, they become available, in what can seem like another entity,
to the writer.

A mathematical proof, a philosophical argument, a technical invention, is often described as
awkward or elegant, as breathtaking, as having come to one in an instant. The structure of
DNA presented itself in a dream. The objective is subjective and versa vice.
Muses are everywhere.