Read The Act of Creation Online
Authors: Arthur Koestler
The Act of Creation (43 page)
association by sound affinity
-- punning --
is one of the notorious games of the underground, manifested in dreams,
in the punning mania of children, and in mental disorders. The rhyme
is nothing but a glorified pun -- two strings of ideas tied in an
accoustic knot. In normal, rationally controlled speech, association
by pure sound is prohibited, for, if given free rein, it would destroy
coherence and meaning. Thus, on re-reading the previous sentence, it
occurs to me that 'des-troy' lends itself to a pun (Helen was fated to
destroy Troy); once one 'tunes in' to the matrix of sound-associations,
a number of quite idiotic puns and rhymes will invade the mind. No effort
is required to produce them; on the contrary, when concentration flags,
and the rational controls are relaxed, thinking has a tendency to revert,
by its own gravity as it were, to matrices governed by more primitive
rules of the game. Among these, association by sound-affinities plays a
prominent part; the free associations of the patient on the analyst's
couch belong as often as not to this category. Let us also remember
(pp. 186 f.) that other games based on sound-affinity have exercised a
perennial attraction on the most varied cultures; anagrams, acrostics,
and-word-puzzles; incantations and verbal spells; hermeneutics and Cabala,
which interpreted the Scriptures as a collection of the Almighty's hidden
puns, combining letter-lore with number-lore.
ornaments of speech; the whole evidence indicates that their origins go
back to primitive -- and infantile -- forms of thought and utterance,
in which sound and meaning are magically interwoven, and association
by sound -- affinities is as legitimate as association based on
other similarities. Rationality demands that these matrices should be
relegated underground, but they make their presence felt in sleep and
sleeplike states, in mental illness and in the temporary regression --
the reculer-pour-mieux-sauter -- of poetic inspiration. But before we
come to that, let me once more quote additional evidence from neurology,
more precisely, from brain surgery -- a field rarely bisociated with
the poetic faculty.
was first observed by Förster, a German surgeon, in 1929, when he was
operating on a patient suffering from a tumour in the third ventricle --
a small cavity deep down in the phylogenetically ancient regions of the
mid-brain, adjacent to structures intimately concerned with the arousal of
emotions. When the surgeon began to manipulate the tumour, affecting those
sensitive structures, the (conscious) patient burst into a manic flight
of speech, 'quoting passages in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He exhibited
typical sound associations, and with every word of the operator broke into
a flight of ideas. Thus, on hearing the operator ask for a
Tupfer
[tampon] he burst into
Tupfer . . . Tupfer, Hupfer, Hüpfer,
hüpfen, Sie mal . . .
On hearing the word
Messer
, he
burst into
Messer, messer, Metzer, Sie sind ein Metzel, das ist ja
ein Gemetzel, metzeln Sie doch nicht so messen Sie doch Sie messen ja
nicht Herr Professor, profiteor, professus sum, profiteri
. These
manic responses were dependent on manipulation of the tumour and could
be elicited only from the floor of the third ventricle.' [3]
the poet's brain -- in an unexpectedly literal sense of the word. The
first flight of ideas,
Tupfer, Hupfer
, etc. -- 'tampon, jumper,
go and jump into the air' -- has a gruesome kind of humour coming from
a man tied face down to the operating table with his skull open. The
second flight, translated, runs as follows:
Messer, Metzer
,
etc. -- 'Knife, butcher, you are a butcher in a butchery; truly this is
a massacre [
Gemetzel
]; don't go on butchering [
metzeln
],
take measurements [
messen
]; why don't you measure, Herr Professor,
profiteor, professus sum
,' and so on.
meaningful message to the surgeon -- his fear of being butchered, and his
entreaty that the surgeon should proceed by careful measurements, that is,
in a more cautious, circumspect way. His train of thought seems to move
under dual control. It is controlled by alliteration and assonance --
for he has regressed to the level of sound-association and must abide
by its rules. But it is also controlled by his intermittent, rational
awareness of his situation on the operating table. Without this, his
flight of words would become meaningless (and does so at times). Without
the tyranny of the other code, he would address the surgeon in simple,
sensible prose. As it is, he must serve both masters at the same time.*
Let us take a blasphemous short-cut from patient to poet. We have
seen that the creative act always involves a regression to earlier,
more primitive levels in the mental hierarchy, while other processes
continue simultaneously on the rational surface -- a condition that
reminds one of a skin-diver with a breathing-tube. (Needless to say,
the exercise has its dangers: skin-divers are prone to fall victims
to the 'rapture of the deep' and tear their breathing-tubes off -- the
reculer sans sauter
of William Blake and so many others. A less
fatal professional disease is the Bends, a punishment for attempting to
live on two different levels at once.)
Coaxing the Unconscious
The capacity to regress, more or less at will, to the games of the
underground, without losing contact with the surface, seems to be
the essence of the poetic, and of any other form of creativity. 'God
guard me from those thoughts men think / In the mind alone, / He that
sings a lasting song / Thinks in a marrow bone' (Yeats); or, to quote
A. E. Housman:
A Course in Poetics
(the italics are in the original):
blindfold poet thinking in his marrow-bones while secreting pearls like
an oyster, reflect a too romantic view of the profession; and that I have
put altogether too much emphasis on the role of the unconscious. The
answer is partly to be found in the chapter on 'Thinking Aside', which
shows that the unconscious is neither a romantic nor a mystic fancy,
but a working concept in the absence of which nearly every event of
mental life would have to be regarded as a miracle. There is nothing very
romantic about the wheels of the railway carriage screaming 'I told you
so'; it is simply an observed fact.
In the second place, though unconscious processes cannot be governed by
conscious volition, they can at least be coaxed into activity by certain
tricks acquired at the price of a little patience. Friedrich Schiller
learned to get himself into a creative frame of mind by smelling rotten
apples, Turgenev by keeping his feet in a bucket of hot water, Balzac
by drinking poisonous quantities of black coffee; for lesser mortals
even a pipe or pacing up and down in the study might do.
And lastly, there is the long process of conscious elaboration --
of cutting, grinding, polishing the rough stone which inspiration has
unearthed. Here the range of variations from one writer to another --
and from one work to another by the same writer -- is as enormous as with
the elaboration and formulation of a 'nuclear discovery' in science. An
excellent account of this process is to be found in an essay, far too
little known, by A. E. Housman from which I have already quoted:
To
p. 316
. Less dramatic than Förster's syndrome but equally convincing were experiments by Luria and Vinagradova, which demonstrated that subjects who normally associated words by their meaning regressed to association by sound when they were made drowsy by choral hydrate
(
Br. J. of Psychol.
, May, 1959).
IMAGE
The Hidden Analogy
In Chapters VII-VIII I have spoken at length of the close relatedness
between the scientist seeing an analogy where nobody saw one before,
and the poet's discovery of an original metaphor or simile. Both rely
on the mediation of unconscious processes to provide the analogy. In
the scientist's Eureka process two previously unconnected frames of
reference are made to intersect, but the same description may be applied
to the poet's
trouvaille
-- the discovery of a felicitous poetic
comparison. The difference between them is in the character of the
'frames of reference', which in the first case are of a more abstract,
in the second of a more sensuous nature; and the criteria of their
validity differ accordingly. But the difference, as we have seen,
is a matter of degrees; and often the two overlap. The discovery of
perspective and fore-shortening, for instance, belongs to both geometrical
science and representative art; it establishes formal analogies between
two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, but at the same time has
a direct sensory impact.
Here is another example which I have already mentioned -- the account,
by one of Freud's earlier biographers, of how the master suddenly hit
upon the idea of the sublimation of instinct:
analogy for the Eureka process. But vice versa, the two cartoons may be
regarded as a metaphorical illustration of it. The same reversibility
applies to Kekulé's snake and Faraday's cosmic lines of
force. Lastly, on the third panel of the triptych, the governess or the
snake can be turned into a joke -- as was actually done by malicious
contemporaries.
Emotive Potentials
-- punning --
is one of the notorious games of the underground, manifested in dreams,
in the punning mania of children, and in mental disorders. The rhyme
is nothing but a glorified pun -- two strings of ideas tied in an
accoustic knot. In normal, rationally controlled speech, association
by pure sound is prohibited, for, if given free rein, it would destroy
coherence and meaning. Thus, on re-reading the previous sentence, it
occurs to me that 'des-troy' lends itself to a pun (Helen was fated to
destroy Troy); once one 'tunes in' to the matrix of sound-associations,
a number of quite idiotic puns and rhymes will invade the mind. No effort
is required to produce them; on the contrary, when concentration flags,
and the rational controls are relaxed, thinking has a tendency to revert,
by its own gravity as it were, to matrices governed by more primitive
rules of the game. Among these, association by sound-affinities plays a
prominent part; the free associations of the patient on the analyst's
couch belong as often as not to this category. Let us also remember
(pp. 186 f.) that other games based on sound-affinity have exercised a
perennial attraction on the most varied cultures; anagrams, acrostics,
and-word-puzzles; incantations and verbal spells; hermeneutics and Cabala,
which interpreted the Scriptures as a collection of the Almighty's hidden
puns, combining letter-lore with number-lore.
ornaments of speech; the whole evidence indicates that their origins go
back to primitive -- and infantile -- forms of thought and utterance,
in which sound and meaning are magically interwoven, and association
by sound -- affinities is as legitimate as association based on
other similarities. Rationality demands that these matrices should be
relegated underground, but they make their presence felt in sleep and
sleeplike states, in mental illness and in the temporary regression --
the reculer-pour-mieux-sauter -- of poetic inspiration. But before we
come to that, let me once more quote additional evidence from neurology,
more precisely, from brain surgery -- a field rarely bisociated with
the poetic faculty.
was first observed by Förster, a German surgeon, in 1929, when he was
operating on a patient suffering from a tumour in the third ventricle --
a small cavity deep down in the phylogenetically ancient regions of the
mid-brain, adjacent to structures intimately concerned with the arousal of
emotions. When the surgeon began to manipulate the tumour, affecting those
sensitive structures, the (conscious) patient burst into a manic flight
of speech, 'quoting passages in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He exhibited
typical sound associations, and with every word of the operator broke into
a flight of ideas. Thus, on hearing the operator ask for a
Tupfer
[tampon] he burst into
Tupfer . . . Tupfer, Hupfer, Hüpfer,
hüpfen, Sie mal . . .
On hearing the word
Messer
, he
burst into
Messer, messer, Metzer, Sie sind ein Metzel, das ist ja
ein Gemetzel, metzeln Sie doch nicht so messen Sie doch Sie messen ja
nicht Herr Professor, profiteor, professus sum, profiteri
. These
manic responses were dependent on manipulation of the tumour and could
be elicited only from the floor of the third ventricle.' [3]
the poet's brain -- in an unexpectedly literal sense of the word. The
first flight of ideas,
Tupfer, Hupfer
, etc. -- 'tampon, jumper,
go and jump into the air' -- has a gruesome kind of humour coming from
a man tied face down to the operating table with his skull open. The
second flight, translated, runs as follows:
Messer, Metzer
,
etc. -- 'Knife, butcher, you are a butcher in a butchery; truly this is
a massacre [
Gemetzel
]; don't go on butchering [
metzeln
],
take measurements [
messen
]; why don't you measure, Herr Professor,
profiteor, professus sum
,' and so on.
meaningful message to the surgeon -- his fear of being butchered, and his
entreaty that the surgeon should proceed by careful measurements, that is,
in a more cautious, circumspect way. His train of thought seems to move
under dual control. It is controlled by alliteration and assonance --
for he has regressed to the level of sound-association and must abide
by its rules. But it is also controlled by his intermittent, rational
awareness of his situation on the operating table. Without this, his
flight of words would become meaningless (and does so at times). Without
the tyranny of the other code, he would address the surgeon in simple,
sensible prose. As it is, he must serve both masters at the same time.*
Let us take a blasphemous short-cut from patient to poet. We have
seen that the creative act always involves a regression to earlier,
more primitive levels in the mental hierarchy, while other processes
continue simultaneously on the rational surface -- a condition that
reminds one of a skin-diver with a breathing-tube. (Needless to say,
the exercise has its dangers: skin-divers are prone to fall victims
to the 'rapture of the deep' and tear their breathing-tubes off -- the
reculer sans sauter
of William Blake and so many others. A less
fatal professional disease is the Bends, a punishment for attempting to
live on two different levels at once.)
Coaxing the Unconscious
The capacity to regress, more or less at will, to the games of the
underground, without losing contact with the surface, seems to be
the essence of the poetic, and of any other form of creativity. 'God
guard me from those thoughts men think / In the mind alone, / He that
sings a lasting song / Thinks in a marrow bone' (Yeats); or, to quote
A. E. Housman:
. . . I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat,The next quotation, in a more academic vein, is from Paul Valéry's
but we both recognize the object by the symptoms which it provokes in
us. One of these symptoms was described in connection with another
object by Eliphaz the Temanite: 'A spirit passed before my face:
the hair of my flesh stood up.' Experience has taught me, when I am
shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if
a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the
razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver
down the spine. . . . I think that the production of poetry, in its
first stage, is less an active than a passive and involuntary process;
and if I were obliged, not to define poetry, but to name the class of
things to which it belongs, I should call it a secretion; whether a
natural secretion, like turpentine in the fir, or a morbid secretion,
like the pearl in the oyster. I have seldom written poetry unless
I was rather out of health, and the experience, though pleasurable,
was generally agitating and exhausting. [4]
A Course in Poetics
(the italics are in the original):
When the mind is in question, everything is in question; all isThe sceptical reader may object that all these metaphors about the
disorder, and every reaction against that disorder is of the same kind
as itself. For the fact is that disorder is the condition of the mind's
fertility. . . .
. . . The constitution of poetry . . . is rather mysterious. It is
strange that one should exert himself to formulate a discourse which
must simultaneously obey perfectly incongruous conditions: musical,
rational, significant, and suggestive; conditions which require a
continuous and repeated connection between rhythm and syntax, between
sound and sense. . . .
. . . There is a poetic language in which words are no longer the words
of free practical usage. They are no longer held together by the same
attractions; they are charged with two different values operating
simultaneously and of equivalent importance: their sound and their
instantaneous psychic effect. They remind us then of those complex
numbers in geometry; the coupling of the phonetic variable
with the semantic variable creates problems of extension and
convergence which poets solve blindfold but they solve them (and that
is the essential thing), from time to time. [5]
blindfold poet thinking in his marrow-bones while secreting pearls like
an oyster, reflect a too romantic view of the profession; and that I have
put altogether too much emphasis on the role of the unconscious. The
answer is partly to be found in the chapter on 'Thinking Aside', which
shows that the unconscious is neither a romantic nor a mystic fancy,
but a working concept in the absence of which nearly every event of
mental life would have to be regarded as a miracle. There is nothing very
romantic about the wheels of the railway carriage screaming 'I told you
so'; it is simply an observed fact.
In the second place, though unconscious processes cannot be governed by
conscious volition, they can at least be coaxed into activity by certain
tricks acquired at the price of a little patience. Friedrich Schiller
learned to get himself into a creative frame of mind by smelling rotten
apples, Turgenev by keeping his feet in a bucket of hot water, Balzac
by drinking poisonous quantities of black coffee; for lesser mortals
even a pipe or pacing up and down in the study might do.
And lastly, there is the long process of conscious elaboration --
of cutting, grinding, polishing the rough stone which inspiration has
unearthed. Here the range of variations from one writer to another --
and from one work to another by the same writer -- is as enormous as with
the elaboration and formulation of a 'nuclear discovery' in science. An
excellent account of this process is to be found in an essay, far too
little known, by A. E. Housman from which I have already quoted:
Having drunk a pint of beer at luncheon -- beer is a sedative to theNOTE
brain, and my afternoons are the least intellectual portion of my life
-- I would go out for a walk of two or three hours. As I went along,
thinking of nothing in particular, only looking at things around me
and following the progress of the seasons, there would flow into my
mind, with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two
of verse, sometimes a whole stanza at once, accompanied, not preceded,
by a vague notion of the poem which they were desfined to form part
of. Then there would usually be a lull of an hour or so, then perhaps
the spring would bubble up again. I say bubble up, because, so far
as I could make out, the source of the suggestions thus proffered to
the brain was an abyss which I have already had occasion to mention,
the pit of the stomach. When I got home I wrote them down, leaving
gaps, and hoping that further inspiration might be forthcoming another
day. Sometimes it was, if I took my walks in a receptive and expectant
frame of mind; but sometimes the poem had to be taken in hand and
completed by the brain, which was apt to be a matter of trouble and
anxiety, involving trial and disappointment, and sometimes ending in
failure. I happen to remember distinctly the genesis of the piece which
stands last in my first volume. Two of the stanzas, I do not say which,
came into my head, just as they are printed, while I was crossing the
corner of Hampstead Heath between the Spaniard's Inn and the footpath to
Temple Fortune. A third stanza came with a little coaxing after tea. One
more was needed, but it did not come: I had to turn to and compose it
myself, and that was a laborious business. I wrote it thirteen times,
and it was more than a twelvemonth before I got it right.
To
p. 316
. Less dramatic than Förster's syndrome but equally convincing were experiments by Luria and Vinagradova, which demonstrated that subjects who normally associated words by their meaning regressed to association by sound when they were made drowsy by choral hydrate
(
Br. J. of Psychol.
, May, 1959).
IMAGE
The Hidden Analogy
In Chapters VII-VIII I have spoken at length of the close relatedness
between the scientist seeing an analogy where nobody saw one before,
and the poet's discovery of an original metaphor or simile. Both rely
on the mediation of unconscious processes to provide the analogy. In
the scientist's Eureka process two previously unconnected frames of
reference are made to intersect, but the same description may be applied
to the poet's
trouvaille
-- the discovery of a felicitous poetic
comparison. The difference between them is in the character of the
'frames of reference', which in the first case are of a more abstract,
in the second of a more sensuous nature; and the criteria of their
validity differ accordingly. But the difference, as we have seen,
is a matter of degrees; and often the two overlap. The discovery of
perspective and fore-shortening, for instance, belongs to both geometrical
science and representative art; it establishes formal analogies between
two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, but at the same time has
a direct sensory impact.
Here is another example which I have already mentioned -- the account,
by one of Freud's earlier biographers, of how the master suddenly hit
upon the idea of the sublimation of instinct:
It happened while he was looking at a cartoon in a humorous periodicalThe two cartoons provided the hidden (though not all to deeply hidden)
which showed the career of a young girl in two subsequent stages. In
the first she was herding a flock of young geese with a stick, in the
second she was shown as a governess directing a group of young girls
with her parasol. The girls in the second picture were arranged exactly
in the same groups as the goslings in the first. [1]
analogy for the Eureka process. But vice versa, the two cartoons may be
regarded as a metaphorical illustration of it. The same reversibility
applies to Kekulé's snake and Faraday's cosmic lines of
force. Lastly, on the third panel of the triptych, the governess or the
snake can be turned into a joke -- as was actually done by malicious
contemporaries.
Emotive Potentials
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