[Excerpt from Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche]

Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration?  If not, I will describe it.  If you had the slightest residue of superstition left in you it would hardly be possible to completely disregard the idea that one is the mere incarnation, a mouthpiece or a medium of an almighty power.  The idea of revelation in the sense of something which profoundly moves and provokes, becoming suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy—is a simple description.  You hear—you do not seek; you take—and do not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes as a necessity, without hesitation—I have never had any choice in the matter.  There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears during which one does not know whether one is coming or going.  There is the feeling of completely being outside of oneself, with the very distinct consciousness of endless delicate shivers right down to one’s toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy parts do not detract from the whole but are produced and required as necessary shades of colour amidst such an overflow of light.  There is an instinct for rhythmical relationships which embrace a whole world of forms: length, the need of an all-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension.  Everything happens quite involuntarily as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom of absolute power and divinity.  The involuntary nature of the images and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what is imagery and metaphor; everything seems to present itself in the readiest, the truest and simplest means of expression.  It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra’s own phrases, as if all things came together and offered themselves as images.  (“Here do all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you for they would wish to ride upon your back.  On every simile you rid here unto every truth.  Here fly open to you all the speech and word shrines of the world, here would all existence become speech, here would all Becoming learn of you how to speak”.)  This is my experience of inspiration.