In the Cambridge Dictionary, inspiration is defined as “someone or something gives you ideas for doing something.” [1] Applying this definition to art, artistic inspiration can thus be defined as how artists are given ideas for creating art. Where does this inspiration come from?

Following Plato, external theories of inspiration based in a divine origin were the most widely-held theory of inspiration up until the 19th century. This type ofinspiration can most easily be connected to Christian theology, which is exactly what Guthrie does in his book Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human. In this book, Guthrie presents a theology of artistic inspiration based on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He presents this theology of artistic inspiration by contrasting it with Plato’s concept of inspiration. Plato correctly views inspiration as divine, but according to Guthrie, Plato has a wrong view of what divine inspiration would look like, since Plato views it as possessive and irrational. [2]

For Guthrie, the main issue with Plato’s conception of inspiration in Ion is the way artistic inspiration is portrayed as possession and not as gift. [3] In Ion, Socrates presents the inspiration of the Muse like a magnetic current that runs through one bit of metal and then another. The power that passes through the metal belongs to the magnet. In the same way, the Muse inspires some people herself and then starts a whole chain of other enthusiasts. The ideal artist according to Ion would be merely a medium, a lump of clay through which the divine can speak. As Guthrie notes, “the human artist’s business, then, is not spiration - breathing forth, but in-spiration-being breathed into.” [4]

In contrast to this ancient Greek view of inspiration, Guthrie connects artistic inspiration and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Guthrie presents the Holy Spirit as “Gift,” a name which is given to it by St. Augustine. Augustine is building on the language of the New Testament. For example, in 1 Corinthians 12:8-9, the Holy Spirit is presented as giving gifts of wisdom or knowledge. In contrast to Ion’s view of inspiration in which the Muse takes control of something the human has like his voice, the Christian God thus gives something he has (for example wisdom) to the human as a gift from the Holy Spirit. [5]

Guthrie argues that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit people are enabled to give themselves back to God and to give their gifts to others.[6] As Paul writes in Corinthians, the Spirit gives gifts to people not for their own enjoyment but “for the common good.”[7] Applied to artists, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit would thus inspire the artist to create and then share this gift.

This view of inspiration is completely at odds with the one presented in Ion. According to Guthrie, the dialogue doesn’t at all suggest that the Muse hopes to help Ion’s audience through him, nor does Ion view his abilities as gifts to others. Unfortunately, contemporary artists often share Ion’s disregard for the language of gift. As Guthrie writes, there is very little sense that artists have received a gift and that this gifted person is a gift-bearer, who is called to give to others. [8]

Guthrie thus presents a theory of divine inspiration based on the Holy Spirit. In contrast to Platonic accounts of inspiration as possessive, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit would inspire the artist to create and share their gifts.

The Holy Spirit: Artistic Practice

What does this view of artistic inspiration look like in artistic practice? Perhaps the best interlocutor for this is Gerald Manley Hopkins. In 1889, just seven weeks before he died, he wrote his last poem, titled “To R. B.”, which specifically addresses inspiration. [9]

The fine delight that fathers thought; the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.

The poem expresses both the joy of inspiration and the feeling of lacking it. The octave gives us a positive vision of inspiration, as a gift which quickly comes to the poet and then becomes the root of his later work. The following sestet presents a different, more negative mood, in which Hopkins laments his lack of inspiration. On the one hand, Hopkins connects artistic inspiration to the Holy Spirit throughout the poem. The Holy Spirit is often presented as a flame, signifying the flame which descended upon the disciples at Pentecost. [10] In the second line, Hopkins likens inspiration to the “blowpipe flame.” Later, he again makes this connection to fire, naming her “Sweet fire the sire of muse.”

The term "Spirit" translates to the Hebrew word ruah, which, in its primary sense, means breath, air, wind.[11] The act of inspiration is also connected to breathing in this poem: in the third line, inspiration “Breathes once.” Breathing plays an important role in the sestet as well: In the symbolically “winter world” of barrenness, Hopkins barely “breathes” that bliss, the bliss of inspiration by the Holy Spirit.

At the end of the poem, Hopkins gives his explanation to why he has been lacking inspiration, with “some sighs.” These sighs could be read as the sighing of the uninspired poet, who completely lacks the gifts of the Holy Spirit. However, it is more fruitful to read them as Hopkins' last acknowledgement of the Holy Spirit. Paradoxically, having lamented his lack of poetic inspiration in verse, the poem becomes the artistic gift Hopkins had so desired to receive via inspiration.[12]

Guthrie’s suggestion that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit would thus inspire the artist to create and then share this gift is shown in the poem as well: Hopkins continually references the artistic inspiration the Holy Spirit grants him, and by writing the poem, he has given back this gift as well, in poetry.

“To R. B.” thus presents a vision of inspiration which is rooted in the Holy Spirit. Artistic inspiration is viewed as a gift of the Holy Spirit who moves Hopkins to writing his last poem. Both Guthrie and Hopkins thus find a solution to the question of inspiration by tapping into a religious tradition, countering secular narratives which would present inspiration as something internal to the human person but instead emphasizing inspiration as a gift, or in religious terms, a grace.

References

[1] Cambridge Dictionary, s. v. “inspiration,” accessed March 17, 2025, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/inspiration.

[2] Steven R. Guthrie, Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human, (Baker Academic, 2011), 95-100.

[3] Ibid., 97-98.

[4] Ibid., 98.

[5] Ibid., 115-116.

[6] Ibid., 122.

[7] Guthrie, Creator Spirit, 122.

[8] Ibid., 123.

[9] Michael Hurley, "Theologies of Inspiration: William Blake and Gerard M. Hopkins", in Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion: Literary, Historical, and Religious Studies in Dialogue, ed. Joshua King and Winter Jade Werner (Ohio State University Press, 2019), 269-270.

[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 696, accessed March 17, 2025, https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/partone/section__two/chapterthree/article8/iithe____,titles,and___symbolsofthe___holy_spirit.html# 

[11] CCC, 691.

[12] Michael Hurley, "Theologies of Inspiration,” 271.