Fallen from Grace: The Muse
According to the writers of antiquity, there were nine muses who embodied the arts and brought inspiration to the people: Calliope, Clio, Polyhymnia, Euterpe, Terpsichore, Erato, Melpomene, Thalia and Urania. They were the daughters of Zeus, the king of gods, and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. The muses are thus divine in origin; they are goddesses who used to be worshipped, who had their own temples and shrines. It was believed that no act of creation could happen without them and as a result, all ancient Greek texts begin with or include multiple invocations of the muses.
Dora Maar, “Mannequin-Star”, 1936. Via Hyperallergic.
What most caught my attention while reading about them was the fact that they are portrayed as being the ones who decide whom to grant inspiration to and whether or not to do so. Looking at the artist-muse relationship through this perspective, it would appear that the muse has the upper hand. The best illustration of this appears in Ion, one of Plato’s Dialogues. In this text, the character of Socrates encounters Ion, a rhapsode who claims to have mastered Homer’s epics, so that he can retell and explain them to his audience. The two fall into a conversation on the source of Ion’s art, during which a theory of inspiration is conceived under the metaphor of the magnet and the rings. Socrates explains that the muses are the magnet, from which a chain of rings hangs. The muses magnetise the poet, the first iron ring of the system, who afterwards magnetises the rhapsode, the second ring. The audience is portrayed as the third and final ring of the system. Throughout the dialogue, it becomes clear that neither the poets nor the rhapsodes know anything other than what is given them by the muse; they have no knowledge or skill outside of what is granted them. The muses hold the power. They are the ones with agency.
Now I cannot help but wonder: how did the muse lose her aura and mystique? How did she stop being worshipped as a goddess?
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that she did not in fact lose anything. And that is exactly the problem. Nothing has changed after the muse, as a concept, switched from one that is divine in nature to one that is human. Both are fascinating figures that cannot seem to be fully understood. Both are beautiful and in their beauty, they are immortal. Artists mythologise the women who serve as their muses and they worship them. I do not argue against the fact that powerful emotion is capable of leaving its mark and completely changing the course of one’s art (this in itself is rather beautiful if you ask me), but romantic as it may appear, to worship is to dehumanise.
The idea of being loved by an artist and of being forever immortalised in their art has always seemed rather glamorous to me and I am sure I'm not the only one, but is it really? There is something inherently sexist in women being objectified by men for the sake of art, but there is more to the issue than that. The artist-muse relationship is an imbalanced one and thus it becomes strenuous. Most cases seem to suggest that the artist is overcome with the desire to control and possess his muse; a sense of superiority and jealousy takes over the relationship. One example that immediately comes to mind is that of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The Fitzgeralds were significant figures of the Jazz Age, but in their dynamic, Zelda was first and foremost his muse and only then an artist in her own right. Her husband famously immortalised her persona in The Great Gatsby and infamously wrote about her mental health crisis and time spent in a mental institution in Tender is the Night, while forbidding her from using that same material in her own semi-autobiographical novel, Save me the Waltz. Reportedly, he also included snippets of her diary, as well as of their conversations in his texts without ever crediting her. This opens up another discussion. Should he have credited her? After all, who should receive the credit, the artist or the muse? The skill might belong to the artist, but the muse ignites and enables the creative act. This is especially tricky in a domain like literature. Is it ethical to quote someone, to use their words as your own in the name of inspiration? To get back to where I started from, even in ancient times the muses were credited. Again, all ancient texts either began with or contained references to and invocations of the muses, thus crediting the creative act to them.
The artist-muse relationship appears as an exploitative one. It is always the artist who profits from this connection. Many other examples can be given: Henry Miller and June Miller, Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar etc. And I restricted myself to the 20th century.
Approaching the conclusion, I realized that there might not be one. At least not a straightforward one that could provide a solution. After all, artists and muses have and will always be around. Maybe what we need is to move on from this rather limited conception of artistic inspiration, from this artist-muse model that envisions the creative act as an act of devotion/exploitation. This would ultimately require us to rethink the concept of the muse and not only be aware of, but also actively stay away from actions that would reinforce the patterns of exploitation.
