Where does creativity come from? Even the greatest artists have no idea.
One day it flows, the next it freezes over. Plato spoke of the poet’s “enthusiasmos,”
a religious exultation of such revolutionary frenzy that the dour philosopher
banned art from his orderly republic. Yet when the muse fails to descend, the
poet is just another bread-queuing proletarian. So what do we do when we want
to write but can’t find the words?
For an
answer, we can always turn to Sidney’s
poem “Loving in Truth,” the first in his sonnet sequence “Astrophel and
Stella.” Their names tell us the story of their relationship. “Astro” is from
the Greek for “star,” while “phel” or “phil” means love (as in the name “Philadelphia”), so he is
literally a “star lover.” He orbits round and round the radiant Stella, whose
name is derived from the Latin for star. Together, the poet and his beloved
express the Greco-Roman harmony of feeling and form: the classical sensibility
revived in the Renaissance.
Like other creative persons of the period, Sidney also came under the influence of
sonneteering. Thus a series of sonnets addressed to a single lady, expressing
and reflecting on the developing relationship between the poet and his love
grew up. Though the story does not have to be literal autobiography and
questions of ‘sincerity’ are hardly answered, Sidney’s love for Stella, on the artistic
level, has been traced to love-affair of the poet’s own life. Stella is said to
be Penelope Devereux, who did not or could not reciprocate the love and married
Lord Rich. It is, in fact, owing to the predisposition of the mind created by
the Romantic tradition of subjective art that we sometimes relate and interpret
the works of other writers of other periods before the Romantics to and in
terms of their biographical accounts.
It must be remembered that with Loving in Truth the
Astrophil and Stella theme-sequence opens. Significantly the opening sonnet
presents the dual theme of how to write good poetry and how to win the favour
of a beloved. The poet even implies the question whether it is possible to a
good poem aiming at winning the beloved. At the very beginning of the sonnet Sidney makes it clear
that he writes the sonnet in order to win Stella. Here he employs the simplest
means—which any lover does, namely, the pain-pleasure-knowledge-pity-love
method:
“… she might take some pleasure of my pain;
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her
know
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain”.
The word ‘pain’ has, however, a double meaning here; in
one sense it refer to the pains of love and in another sense it refers to the
hardships of creative writing. This implies that poetry is not just
inspirational or impulsive, but a long struggle with words, emotions and
feelings. Theoretically Sidney
was influenced by both Aristotle and Horace. He believed that good poetry must
both teach and delight. That is why he thinks that reading well-written
love-poems give his beloved pleasure and knowledge of his sincerity and
anguish. This would, in turn, make her pity him and pity would give rise to
love.
The poet confesses that once decided upon the means he
went on to paint “the blackest face of woe/ Studying inventions fine…” Here we
come to an outstanding feature of the imagery of Astrophil an Stella—the device
of personification, which was, in fact, a medieval practice and influenced the
poets till the 17th century. Here the poet also refers to the contemporary
practice of imitating the words of other poets. But he comes to the realization
that imitation without inspiration is futile. That is why he waits for “some
fresh showers upon my sun-burn’d brain”. The image is an instance of Sidney’s innovative
imagination. By ‘sun’ he refers to Stella or the source of his love, which has
dried up his creative faculty. The poet understands that this forces him to
halt. When Sidney
says, “Invention, Nature’s child”, he follows Aristotle’s idea that art is an
imitation of nature. In accordance with that equation, literary imitation, the
product of ‘study’ has a secondary place in creative writing. Thus, literary
imitation, “others’ feet” cannot provide the solution to the creation of
original poetry. Here Sidney’s
comparison of creative writing to giving birth to a child is highly significant
and it contains metaphor within metaphor.
At last a miracle seems to happen with him:
“Fool’ said my Muse, “look in thy heart and write”.
He comes to a sudden realization that only spontaneous
inspiration can help the poet compose good poetry and win the beloved. When he
will look into his heart, he will see the image of Stella, which will provide
him with the inspiration and material he needs to write poetry. Thus, the last
line of the sonnet turns out to be a direct statement of Sidney’s critical creed that great poetry
does not result from imitation of other poets, but from the expression of
personal experience and passion. Such views on poetic creation are similar to
those of the Romantic poets.
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