open up and take on new resonance. Henry James (1843–1916) calls the use of such specifics “the revelatory gesture,” but it is just as great a part of Marcel Proust’s (1871–1922) art. Indeed, it might be called the opposite of “dramatic” writing, but it can be just as strong—if not, sometimes, stronger.
Here are other emblems that can designate talent:
The talented writer often uses rhetorically interesting, musical, or lyrical phrases that are briefer than the pedestrian way of saying “the same thing.”
The talented writer can explode, as with a verbal microscope, some fleeting sensation or action, tease out insights, and describe subsensations that we all recognize, even if we have rarely considered them before; that is, he or she describes them at greater length and tells more about them than other writers.
In complex sentences with multiple clauses that relate in complex ways, the talented writer will organize those clauses in the chronological order in which the referents occur, despite the logical relation grammar imposes.
Here is a badly organized narrative sentence of the sort I’ve read in dozens of student manuscripts handed in by writers who want to write, say, traditional commercial fantasy:
(A) Jenny took a cold drink from the steel dipper chained to the stone wall of the corner well, where, amidst the market’s morning bustle, the women had finished setting up their counters and laying out their tools, implements, and produce minutes after the sun had risen; she had left the sandal stall to amble over here.
The good writer would immediately want to break the above up into smaller sentences and clarify some antecedents:
(B) Jenny took a cold drink from the steel dipper chained to the stone wall. With the market’s morning bustle, the women had finished setting up their counters and laying out their tools, implements, and produce. Only minutes after the sun had risen, Jenny had left the sandal stall and ambled over to the corner well.
Certainly that’s an improvement; and it hides some of the illogic in the narrative itself. But a writer who has a better sense of narrative would start by rearranging the whole passage chronologically:
(C) Minutes after the sun had risen above the wall, amidst the market’s morning bustle, the women finished setting up their counters and laying out their tools, implements, and produce. Jenny left the sandal stall to amble over to the corner well, where, from the steel dipper chained to the stone wall, she took a cold drink.
At this point, the two sentences still need to be broken up. But at least the various clauses now come in something like chronological order. This allows us to see that each fragment can have far more heft and vividness:
(D) Minutes after the sun cleared the market wall, foot-prints roughened the dust. Tent posts swung up; canvas slid down. Along the counters women laid out trowels and tomato rakes, pumpkins and pecan pickers. Jenny ambled from under the sandal stall awning. At the corner well she picked up a steel dipper chained to the mossy stones for a cold drink. As it chilled her teeth and throat, water dripped on her toes.
Talented writing tends to contain more information, sentence for sentence, clause for clause, than merely good writing. Example D exhibits a variety of sentence lengths. Yes, the images arrive in chronological order. But more than that, the passage paints its picture through specifics. It also employs rhetorical parallels and differences. (“Tent posts swung up; canvas slid down.”) It pays attention to the sounds and rhythms of its sentences (“trowels and tomato rakes, pumpkins and pecan pickers”). It uses detailed sensory observation (the drink chills “her teeth and throat”). Much of the information it proffers is implied. (In D that includes both the bustle and the fact that we are in a market!) These are among the things that indicate talent.
I do not hold up D as a particularly good (or particularly talented!) piece of writing, but it shows a rhetorical awareness, a balance, a velocity, a particularity, and a liveliness that puts it way ahead of the others. Above and beyond the fact that they are logically or illogically organized, versions A through C are, by comparison, bland, formulaic, and dull. What distinguishes the writers of A, B, and C is, in fact, how good each is. But D alone shows a scrap of talent—and only a scrap.
Good writing avoids stock phrases and received language. Talented writing actively laughs at such phrases, such language. When talented writing and good writing support one another, we have the verbal glories of the ages—the work of Shakespeare, Thomas Browne, Joyce, and Nabokov.
Talented writing and good writing sometimes fight. The revisions necessary to organize the writing and unclutter it can pare away the passages or phrases that give the writing its life. As often, what the writer believes is new and vivid is just cliché confusion. From within the precincts of good writing, it’s easy to mistake talent’s complexity for clutter. From within the precincts of talent, it’s easy to mistake the clarity of good writing for simplicity—even simple-mindedness. Critics or editors can point the problems out. The way to solve them, however, is a matter of taste. And that lies in the precincts of talent.
III
The early German Romantics—Schiller (1759–1805), the Schlegel brothers, Wilhelm (1767–1845) and Friedrich (1772–1829), and Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), that is, the smart Romantics—believed something they called Begeisterung was the most important element among the processes that constituted the creative personality.
I think they were right.
Begeisterung is usually translated as “inspiration.” Geist is the German word for “spirit,” and “Be-geist-erung” means literally “be-spirited-ness,” which is certainly close to “inspiration.” As the word is traditionally used in ordinary German, though, it is even closer to “enthusiasm”—“spirited” in the sense of a “spirited” horse or a “spirited” prizefighter. For the Romantics, Begeisterung was not just the initial idea or the talent one had to realize it. Begeisterung was both intellectual and bodily. A form of spirit, it was also a mode of will. To the Romantics, this enthusiasm/Begeisterung carried the artist through the work’s creation. If there were things you didn’t know that you needed in order to write your story, your novel, your play, with enough Begeisterung you could always go out and learn them. If your imagination wasn’t throwing out the brilliant scenes and moments to make the material dramatic, with Begeisterung you could arrive at such effective material through dogged intelligence, though it might take longer and require more energy. If you lacked the verbal talent that produced vivid descriptive writing, well, there were hard analytic styles that were also impressive, which you could craft through intellectual effort—though you would have to attack the work sentence by sentence. But however you employed it, Begeisterung is what carried you through the job. Begeisterung could make up for failures on other creative fronts.
Begeisterung is what artists share over their otherwise endless differences: enthusiasm for a task clearly perceived.
Over the range of our society the artist’s position is rarely a prosperous one—certainly not in the beginning stages and often never. The increased size of the new, democratic field that today produces both readers and writers, the increase in competition for fame and attention—not to mention the increased effort necessary to make a reasonable living from one’s work—all transform a situation that was always risky into one that today often looks lunatic. Begeisterung/enthusiasm is about the only thing that can get the artist through such a situation.
The decision to be a writer is the decision to enter a field where most of the news—most of the time—is bad. The best way to negotiate this situation is to have (first) a realistic view of what that situation is and (second) considerable Begeisterung. As Freud knew, Begeisterung
