Belief in inspiration. - Artists have an interest in the ...

Belief in inspiration. - Artists have an interest in the existence of a belief in the sudden occurrence of ideas, in so-called inspirations; as though the idea of a work of art, a poem, the basic proposition of a philosophy flashed down from heaven like a ray of divine grace. In reality, the imagination of a good artist or thinker is productive continually, of good, mediocre and bad things, but his power of judgement, sharpened and practised to the highest degree, rejects, selects, knots together; as we can now see from Beethoven's notebooks how the most glorious melodies were put together gradually and as it were culled out of many beginnings. He who selects less rigorously and likes to give himself up to his imitative memory can, under the right circumstances, become a greater improviser; but artistic improvisation is something very inferior in relation to the serious and carefully fashioned artistic idea. All great artists have been great workers, inexhaustible not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.

from Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human