On creative thinking: some undiscovered aspects

As a creative writer Henry Miller (1891-1980) possessed an identity for himself for being frank and fearless, unobsessed by various outer social forces. As such Miller is now rediscovered in many a literary circle.

Even when his two works, which, were written in the form of inner esoteric expressions, namely, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn the creator Miller never attempted to rebuff his critics, as a defense measure.

Instead Miller expressed his reflections on the creative process.

These reflections on creative thinking that come in the form of a rediscovery may help both the creative writer and the critic to gauge their stance. The notes presented in the column are culled from one of the sources titled as “the wisdom of the heart”

These notes commence with a personal note of his own creative process as follows:

“Knut Hamsun once said, in response to a questionnaire, that he wrote to kill time. I think that even if he were sincere in stating it thus he was deluding himself. Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.

The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself.

I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life, a process which appears more and more inexhaustible as I go on. Like the world-evolution, it is endless.

It is a turning inside out, a voyaging through X dimensions, with the result that somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself.

It is this quality about all art which gives it a metaphysical hue, which lifts it out of time and space and centers or integrates it to the whole cosmic process. It is this about art which is “therapeutic”: Significance, purposelessness, infinitude.

From, the very beginning almost I was deeply aware that there is no goal. I never hope to embrace the whole, but merely to give in each separate fragment, each work, the feeling of the whole as I go on, because I am digging deeper and deeper into life, digging deeper and deeper into past and future.

With the endless burrowing a certitude develops which is greater than faith or belief. I become more and more indifferent to my fate, as writer, and more and more certain of my destiny as man.

Then Miller goes deeper into the process of creative thinking as follows:

I began assiduously examining the style and technique of those whom I once admired and worshipped: Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Hamsun, even Thomas Mann, whom today I discard as being a skilful fabricator, a brick maker, an inspired jackass or draught-horse.

I imitated every style in the hope of finding the clue to the gnawing secret of how to write. Finally I came to a dead end, to a despair and desperation which few men have known, because there was no divorce between myself as writer and myself as man: to fail as a writer meant to fail as a man. And I failed.

What follows is a series of initial insights to his creative thinking.

I realized that I was nothing - less than nothing - a minus quantity. It was at this point, in the midst of the dead Sargasso Sea, so to speak, that I really began to write. I began from scratch, throwing everything overboard, even those whom I most loved.

Immediately I heard my own voice I was enchanted: the fact that it was a separate, distinct, unique voice sustained me. It didn’t matter to me if what I wrote should be considered bad. Good and bad dropped out of my vocabulary.

I jumped with two feet into the realm of aesthetics, the non-normal, non-ethical, non-utilitarian realm of art. My life itself became a work of art. I had found a voice. I was whole again. The experience was very much like what we read of in connection with the lives of Zen initiates.

My huge failure was like the recapitulation of the experience of the race: I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything, smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark.

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