The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration

Product Description

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.

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

From the Back Cover

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. YeatsA 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 Garcia 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.
”

About the Author

EDWARD HIRSCH is a celebrated poet and peerless advocate for poetry. A MacArthur fellow, he has published ten books of poems and five 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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Only Mystery

I WISH I HAD BEEN IN Buenos Aires on October 20, 1933, when Federico García Lorca delivered a lecture that he called “Juego y teoría del duende” (“Play and Theory of the Duende”). Lorca was testifying to his own poetic universe, as his biographer Ian Gibson has recognized. It woul