Kierkegaard on genius and desire (Either/Or)

[Gord Barentsen]

"The poet wants his material; but wanting is no art, or rather,  it is a gift. It is what is inexplicable and mysterious about genius, just like the divining rod, to which it never occurs to want except in the presence of what it wants." (Either/Or, Hannay trans. p. 63)

Ok, so technically perhaps I shouldn't attribute this to SK, since so much of his work is pseudonymous, but SK is always in there somewhere!

[Marjorie Pfennig]

On 5/14/2017 at 2:11 PM, Gord Barentsen said:

to which it never occurs to want except in the presence of what it wants

I think that is beautiful but I don't know if it's true of all genius or artists in general.  I think lots of art is made through not knowing what one wants and sort of an an endless searching to find it?

[Graham Barnett]

I guess it means that genius is something organic, like a plant which only grows the way it was meant to grow?  So genius only wants what it is supposed to want?

[Kaitlyn]

On 6/2/2017 at 4:10 PM, Graham Barnett said:

I guess it means that genius is something organic, like a plant which only grows the way it was meant to grow?  So genius only wants what it is supposed to want?

But then how does it "know"?  isn't that just instinct?

[stimmung79]

On 6/10/2017 at 5:13 PM, Kaitlyn said:

 isn't that just instinct?

instinct or drive?  They aren't excactly the same

[Gord Barentsen]

On 6/25/2017 at 6:06 PM, stimmung79 said:

instinct or drive?  They aren't excactly the same

uh-oh......nerd discussion imminent!  

[stimmung79]

Well the way i see it instinct is a pattern of behaviour, like the way a beaver knows how to build an efficient dam in a stream or lake.  but drive  is the motive force that, well, drives the beaver to perform this or that or the other instinctive pattern of behavior.

so a beaver can be driven to build a dam, to chew on a tree to fell it, to mate with another beaver etc., but those are all the patterns that mould the energy of the drive.

[NotWithoutMyOntic]

16 hours ago, stimmung79 said:

Well the way i see it instinct is a pattern of behaviour, like the way a beaver knows how to build an efficient dam in a stream or lake.  but drive  is the motive force that, well, drives the beaver to perform this or that or the other instinctive pattern of behavior.

so a beaver can be driven to build a dam, to chew on a tree to fell it, to mate with another beaver etc., but those are all the patterns that mould the energy of the drive.

Makes sense to me.  But I think those patterns can mutate over time.  I remember when Katrina hit the southern US - there was this picture that went viral (ok, maybe slightly) about a frog sitting on the back of a snake swimming away from flooding.  i always remembered that because it teaches you that unpredictable events can happen which throw everything up in the air and make patterns adapt to new circumstances.

[Gord Barentsen]

@NotWithoutMyOntic Not sure if this is what you're after, but I found this:

and also this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348600/Australian-floods-Snake-gives-frog-piggy-escape.html