inspiration vs. craft

There are I think four separate posts I feel I now owe you. I'm not sure how many I'll get around to writing. I do have a spare hour at the moment, so we'll see how much I manage to churn out. First I want to say a couple short things in response to the two posts you've written since I last wrote. For the record, in case I don't get around to any or all of them, the other three things I wanted to write on were Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato; a paper my supervisor wrote, and in particular my objection to a certain way of reading philosophy's place in intellectual life; and some reflections on the declining prospects for anyone who wants to make a living off their wits.

But first, just two short things about your two posts. The first is that I think really this contrast between inspiration and craft is bogus to start with. As you rightly point out, there's a great deal of craft and discipline in the creative output of improvisers, and the same goes for Breton, Kerouac, Rilke, Nietzsche, Coleridge, or anyone else who's ever claimed to put pen to paper in a burst of spontaneity. I think it helps here to draw an analogy to sport. On one hand, virtuosity in any sport relies on--exemplifies, even--a spontaneity and a creativity that delights us by moving faster than the speed of thought. On the other hand, this virtuosity is only possible through intense and rigorous training. No one claims that everyone has a magnificent end-to-end run culminating in a magnificent slam dunk in them, waiting to get out if only they can shed their inhibitions. Why should we make an equivalent claim about writing?

I suppose the main difference is that you can revise writing and you can't revise your moments of sporting genius. But even revision, if it's going to make any improvements, has to be inspired. You have to be "in the zone" or else you're not going to see the changes that can turn your lacklustre prose into something beautiful.

The second thing I wanted to say was really more a question about evil as you discuss it with regard to Blanchot and Bataille and that lot. You talk about them identifying good with bourgeois values and evil with spontaneity of a sort. How would you characterize this characterization of evil? For instance, it's clearly not meant as a dictionary definition, or some description of how we use these terms (who would call a saint "evil"?). Is it meant to be prescriptive, telling us how we ought to use the word? That sounds a little odd too. Or is it a metaphysically tinged use, relying on the assumption that with the word "evil," we pick out a metaphysically real category, and that most people who use the term (in its traditional sense) are mistaken about the nature of that category, and their redescription of evil is meant to give a more accurate account of a cateogry that others are misdescribing? Or is it something else?