Observations placeholder
G N M Tyrrell - The Personality of Man – The nature of Keats’s inspiration
Identifier
026797
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
As quoted in G N M Tyrrell - The Personality of Man
One after another the great writers, poets and artists confirm the fact that their work comes to them from beyond the threshold of consciousness. It is not as though this material came passively floating towards them. It is imperious, dynamic and wilful. Keats said that the description of Apollo in the third book bf Hyperion came to him
"'by chance or magic-to be, as it were, something given to him.'
He said also that he had
'not been aware of the beauty of some thought or expression until after he had composed and written it down. It had then struck him with astonishment and seemed rather the production of another person than his own.’