Synopses & Reviews
Paul Klee * Robert Johnson * Billie Holiday * T.S. Eliot * Wallace Stevens * Baudelaire * Herman Melville * Rainer Maria Rilke * Rimbaud * Sylvia Plath * Jackson Pollock * Ella Fitzgerald * Ezra Pound * W.B. Yeats A work of art, whether a painting, a dance, a poem, or a jazz composition, can be admired in its own right. But how does the artist actually create his or her work? What is the source of an artist's inspiration? What is the force that impels the artist to set down a vision that becomes art?
In this groundbreaking book, poet and critic Edward Hirsch explores the concept of duende, the mysterious, highly potent power of creativity that results in a work of art. From Federico García Lorca's wrestling with darkness as he discovered the fountain of words within himself to Martha Graham's creation of her most emotional dances, from the canvases of Robert Motherwell to William Blake's celestial visions, Hirsch taps into the artistic imagination and explains, in terms illuminating and emotional, how different artists respond to the power and demonic energy of creative impulse. Hirsch's passionate exploration of the creative process is an inspiration in itself.
"Unique, exhilarating, and virtuosic. . . . [Hirsch] is able to articulate the seemingly ineffable through brilliant critical analyses and empathic insights into artists' lives. . . . Hirsch himself is imbued with the soulful spirit he celebrates, and its 'dark radiance' shimmers in every inspired page." --Donna Seaman, Booklist
Edward Hirsch is the author of many books, including five books of poetry. He also writes a weekly poetry column for the Washington Post Book World. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle award, the Prix de Rome, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and lives in New York City.
Review
PRAISE FOR
THE DEMON AND THE ANGEL"Unique, exhilarating, and virtuosic."--Booklist
PRAISE FOR HOW TO READ A POEM
"A lovely book, full of joy and wisdom."--The Baltimore Sun
"A wise, exhilarating book; Edward Hirsch is the most endearing of guides to the ecstasies of reading poetry."--Susan Sontag
Synopsis
In this groundbreaking book, Hirsch explores the concept of "duende, " that mysterious, highly potent power of creativity that results in a work of art. Hirsch taps into the artistic imagination and explains, in terms illuminating and emotional, how different artists respond to the power and demonic energy of creative impulse.
Synopsis
A work of art, whether a painting, a dance, a poem, or a jazz composition, can be admired in its own right. But how does the artist actually create his or her work? What is the source of an artist's inspiration? What is the force that impels the artist to set down a vision that becomes art?
In this groundbreaking book, Edward Hirsch explores the concept of duende, that mysterious, highly potent power of creativity that results in a work of art. With examples ranging from Federico García Lorca's wrestling with darkness as he discovered the fountain of words within himself to Martha Graham's creation of her most emotional dances, from the canvases of Robert Motherwell to William Blake's celestial visions, Hirsch taps into the artistic imagination and explains, in terms illuminating and emotional, how different artists respond to the power and demonic energy of creative impulse.
About the Author
Edward Hirsch is a celebrated poet and peerless advocate for poetry. A MacArthur fellow, he has published eight books of poems and four books of prose. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He serves as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and lives in Brooklyn.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface-xi
Only Mystery - 1
Invoking the Duende - 3
Poetic Fact - 5
A Mysterious Power - 8
The Hidden Spirit of Disconsolate Spain - 13
An Apprenticeship - 19
Between Eros and Thanatos - 29
The Majesty of the Incomprehensible - 35
A Spectacular Meteor - 39
Swooping In - 45
Ardent Struggle, Endless Vigil - 49
The Black Paintings - 55
The Intermediary - 58
Yeats's Daimon - 65
Ars Poetica? - 72
A Passionate Ingredient - 76
The Yearning Cry of a Shade - 80
I Sing You, Wild Chasm - 85
Night Work - 91
Vegetable Life, Airy Spirit - 96
A Person Must Control His Thoughts in a Dream - 101
The Angelic World - 109
The Story of Jacob's Wrestling with an Angel - 118
Concerning the Angels - 126
The Rilkean Angel - 132
Angel, Still Groping - 141
The New Angel - 147
Three American Angels - 152
Demon or Bird! - 157
Between Two Contending Forces - 162
The Sublime Is Now - 166
In the Painting - 171
Paint It Black - 178
Motherwell's Black - 184
Deaths and Entrances - 191
Ancient Music and Fresh Forms - 196
America Heard in Rhythm - 202
Hey, I'm American, So I Played It - 207
Fending Off the Duende - 213
The Existentialist Flatfoot Floogie - 220
Poet in New York - 222
Where Is the Angel? Where Is the Duende? - 229
Notes - 231
Reading List: The Pleasure of the Text - 279
Acknowledgments - 303
Permissions Acknowledgments - 304
Index - 309
Reading Group Guide
IN THIS BOOK, celebrated poet and critic Edward Hirsch explores the idea of duende, that mysterious, highly potent, and universal-yet-personal aspect of creativity that results in a work of art. Hirsch taps into the artistic imagination and explains, in terms illuminating and emotional, how a broad range of artists have responded to the demonic energy and angelic power that together define the creative impulse. The Demon and the Angel is an informed yet informal meditation on artistic creations both ancient and modern, both sacred and profane. Indeed, Hirsch offers us a fresh, far-reaching understanding of creativity in itself, one which illuminates, especially in the book's concluding chapters, the unique mood and mindset of American art. As Hirsch confesses in his Preface, his book "is a tribute with wings." Q> What is an ars poetica? How might The Demon and the Angel as a whole be deemed an ars poetica? And how did this book enrich, challenge, or alter your previously held notions of modernism, primitivism, individuality, and spirituality in art? Also, what did the book teach you about the bonds existing between creativity and nighttime? Q> "Art is by definition an incarnate form of experience," Hirsch maintains at the end of the chapter entitled "A Spectacular Meteor." What exactly does he mean by this-both in general and in terms of this book particularly? Q> Consider these three lines from the poem "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens: "Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, / Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams / And our desires." How do these lines reflect, refract, echo, or expand on the ideas of mortality presented and parsed throughout this book? Q> What, in Hirsch's well-considered view, did the duende mean to Lorca? What did the daimon mean to Yeats? And what did angels mean to Rilke? And to Klee? Comparatively or associatively discuss the two primary metaphors (demons and angels) of The Demon and the Angel. Q> Hirsch begins one chapter ("A Person Must Control His Thoughts in a Dream") by claiming: "It is too reductive to think of artistic creation as merely putting oneself in a trance state. We need a fresh vocabulary, a fuller and more enhanced notion of the artistic trance state in which one also actively thinks." Does this book, in your view, provide such a "fresh vocabulary"? Q> In the chapters entitled "Paint It Black" and "Motherwell's Black" Hirsch investigates the use of the color black by certain (primarily American) painters. Who were these artists, and to what aesthetic and thematic ends did they employ black paint? Should we see their black-based concepts and creations sacred? Profane? Angelic? Demonic? Otherwise? While considering your views in this regard, revisit the chapter on Goya's inspirations and intentions ("The Black Paintings") from much earlier in the text. Q> Identify and discuss the connections Hirsch makes between flamenco music and the blues, between duende and black soul, in the "Ancient Music and Fresh Forms" chapter, as well as those he makes between Spanish cante jondo and American jazz in the subsequent chapter. What other musical forms (or representative musicians) would you contribute to this pivotal discussion as supplementary or additional evidence, and why? Q> What representative and distinctly American traits does Hirsch recognize in the demon and the angel as artistic/mythic/symbolic/cosmic constructs? Consider in particular the chapter entitled "The Sublime Is Now." Q> Look again at the book's final four paragraphs. What, ultimately, do the demon and angel have in common? And in what key ways are they different? How does Hirsch suggest that we might identify these similar yet dissimilar muses? Q> Many books on the nature of creativity-or on the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the creative endeavor-have been published. Conclude your exploration of this book by comparing and contrasting it with other works you have read on the craft, history, impulse, and/or mystery of artistic inspiration.
Copyright (c) 2003. Published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Inc. Written by Scott Pitcock