"Divine Afflatus" (1917) (LONG-delete if necessary)

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HL Mencken - Wikiquote
... "The Divine Afflatus", New York Evening Mail (November 16, 1917); later
published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949) ...
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
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QuoteGeek
... HL Mencken. (1880-1956) American author ... 'The Divine Afflatus,' in the New
York Evening Mail, November 15, 1917 ...
www.quotegeek.com/page_categories.asp?action=viewcategory& catid=89&linktype=2&chunk=M&page=1 - 11k - Cached - Similar pages
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"MEDITATIONS ON THE FAIR" by H. L. Mencken appeared in the New York Evening Mail on November 15 (page 8) and November 16 (page 13).
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Is the quotation even here in "The Divine Afflatus"? Was it edited out? The following long article (former ADS member, btw) appeared in the New York Evening Mail on November 16, 1917, page 5, columns 1-2:
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_The Divine Afflatus_
By H. L. MENCKEN
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The laborious Chesterton, ina lare effort to earn the honorarium of a Chicago gazette, composed a thousand words of somewhat feeble rattling against what is called inspiration in the bozart. The thing itself, he argued, had little actual existence; we hear about it so much because of the value of its alleged coyness and fortuitousness as an apology for second-rate work. The artist is thus depicted as a helpless slave of the gods. If they favor him by blowing their breath upon him he teems with ideas and creates a masterpiece. But if they neglect him or overlook him he has to stand and wait--a fiddle without a bow, an engine without steam, a tire without air. All this, maintained Chesterton, is bosh. A man who can really write at all, or paint at all, or compose music at all should be able to do it at almost any time, "whenever he is not drunk or asleep."
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_DENIAL IS ANSWER._
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Here, with the usual Chestertonian address, we have the usual Chestertonian method--which is to say that we have a characteristic effort to dispose of a difficult question by denying that any such question asks itself. The facts, unahppily, stand against that facile reduction. Setting aside the struggles of those magnificoes of the spirit whose gifts amount to genius, it is a commonplace of experience to every creative artist on lower planes that there are days when his ideas flow freely and copiously, and days when they are dammed up damnably. He has a good day accomplishing a double stint of the best work he is capable of, and goes to bed impatient for the morrow--and on the morrow he feels almost idiotic, and is incapable of any work at all.
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This experience, as I say, is familiar to every man who tries to do anything in the world involving reflection, planning, creation. It overtakes poets and contrapuntists, and it overtakes novelists, critics, philosophers and mere journalists. It may even, so far as I know, be shared by congressmen, stock brokers, tripe sellers, and the clergy. The qualities that all anatomists of melancholy mark in it are the irregular ebb and flow of the tides and its pervasive mysteriousness. No one can ever predict its courses, even roughly, and no one has ever rationally explained the processes behind them.
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I say rationally, for a plain reason, for explanations of another sort are very plentiful. THe ancients threw responsibility directly on the gods one day they were kind and the next day they were the reverse. In medieval times the lesser powers of heaven began to take a hand in it, and one reads of works of art inspired by the saints, by the shades of the departed, and even by the devil. In our own day there are explanations less supernatural, but still no less fanciful--explanations chiefly groundeed upon certain hypothetical characters of what is ineptly called genius whereby its possessor, on occasion, becomes the mere agent of vast powers that are quite beyond his control, and, the occasion past, returns to his own destructive self.
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_PYLORUS, SEAT OF  GENIUS._
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All these explanations, however, fail to explain; they constitute, in fact, no more than a gigantic begging of the question. The machinery of the thing remains as unseen as before, and the manner of is starting and stopping as unfathomanble. In this emergency, having regard for the sufferings of those who wrestle with the problem, I offer a new, simple and at all events not metaphysical solution. It is supported by various observed facts and by more various logc=ical analogies, and it may be couched in the following terms, to wit, that inspiration is a function of metabolism and has its roots in the intestinal flora--inother words, that a man's ideas, both in quantity and quality, are conditioned not by the whims of the gods or the combinations of some transcendental set of dice, but the chemical content of the blood which reaches its cerebrum, and that this chemical content is determined by the state of his digestion, particularly south of the pylorus.
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I speak here, of course, of men who have cerebrums mechanically capable of the process of ratiocincation, of men designed by nature to have ideas--in brief, the minority of intelligentsia. The nether herd, being incapable of ideas, is obviously incapable of inspiration. But once we get among  those who, from observed facts, can deduce a conclusion that is neither worn out and notorious nor insane, we are among those who, at least occasionally, are potentially capable of a conclusion that is subtle and even brilliant. Such seizures we call inspirations. Tschaikowsky, in general was a bad composer, and for the plain reason that he was a silly and maudlin man; but when he wrote the allegro grazioso of his sixth symphony he had a first-rate inspiration, and so he achieved a first-rate work of art. So with writers. Hillaire Beloc is surely no genius. On the contrary, he is mainly a dull fellow. But he belongs to the minority because he has his moments, and it was during one of those moments that he conceived "Emmanuel Burden," a very briliant piece of work.
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_METABOLIC INSPIRATION._
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Fix your eye upon my hypothesis of metabolic inspiration and at once you will find that it explains many things not hitherto explicable. For one thing, it explains the observed hopelessness of trying to pump up inspiration by mere industry and striving. A poet may sit at his desk until he petrifies, he may
(Column two--ed.)
gnaw his pen until it is a mere stump; he may read other poets unti his head swims--but if too little manganese or phosphoric acid reaches his cerebral arteries, or too much creatin or paralactic acid, he will never dredge up a good idea for that sonnet, and the bad ones generated by the reactions in his brain will make him tear up his work to-morrow.
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Again, this chemical theory explains the fact that inspiration, save under very extraordinary circumstances, is never continuous for more than a short period. As Mr. Chesterton says, some of SHakespeare's strongest passages are in the weakest of his plays; he had sudden bursts of inspiration, and then long periods of dullness. And why? Simply because the chemical constitution of the blood changes hourly, almost every minute. A beefsteak may flood it with poisonous proteids. A glass of bad beer may fill it with enzymes which split its euglobulin into zinc ointment and pleric acid. A few billion bacilli, hidden and forgotten below the equator, may so pollute it with toxins that the very bones of the skull are corroded. These changes come quickly; they are potent; they depend upon a vast complex of factors. It is no wonder that the brain heaves and pitches under them--that it is as sensitive and ineffable as an aolian harp one moment and as stupid as a liver the next.
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_BRAINS DO TIRE._
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Moreover, the theory explains why it is that inspiration tends to flag as work progresses that a tired man seldom has good ideas. Why should he have them? The very confinement and constraint which any sort of creative intellectual labor imposes are bound to interfere with metabolism, and so impede the proper nutrition of the brain. A poet cannot do his work under the ideal hygienic conditions which curround a farmahnd, a curb broker or a sailor. He must bend over a desk, his muscles flaccid, his viscera congested. He must lose exercise and sleep and rush through his meals. THe result, at best, is a flabby blood stream and a starved cerebrum. At worst it is intestinal intoxication, a headache, arthritis, asthma and delusions of persecution.
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The more the influence of metabolism is examined, indeed, the more plain it becomes that it conditional menial processes quite as directly and as powerfully as it conditions the more patent processes of the muscles and nerves.A badly cooked chop not only causes spots to appear before the eyes, it also causes a freckling of the spirit. The notion that thought is independent of the brain, that it is a function of some obscure superphysical ego--this notion belongs to mythology. Not long ago insanity was also relegated to the same fabulous sphere; there were mental diseases and physical diseases. But the Wassermann reaction drove a great gap into that ancient dualism, and nowadays no intelligent psychiatrist cherishes it. Mental diseases are now known to be quite as much physical diseases as rheumatism or the delirium of fever and some of them are being treated and cured in the same way that malaria and adenoids are being treated and cured.
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_DISEASE AND STIMULATION._
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The purely physical character of some of the phenomena of insanity, and in particular their demonstrated dependence upon the presence of bacterial toxins in the blood--this fact clears up another venerable mystery, to wit, the extraordinary menial activity of certain eminent men whom we know to have been diseased. The explanation is quite simple. The toxins of a number of common organisms, in proper quantities, stimulate the brain enormously. The consumptive, in certain stages of his malady, is not stupified; on the contrary, he is amazingly alert, and even briliant. Chopin was a consumptive who remained in that stage long enough to produce some of the greatest music ever written. His brain was almost constantly stimulated; he had inspirations nearly unlimited.
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A different toxin shook up the cerebrums of Schonpenhauer and Nietzche, and was responsible for many of their boldest flights. It has been mre than once observed, in fact, that Neitzsche achieved some of his clearest and most remarkable thinking when he gave the plainest signs of suffering from toxemis. As for Schopenhauer, he noticed the fact himself. Nor are we to forget the masterpieces done by men who were habitual drug users, or periodical drunkards. It was morphine that stimulated Coleridge to produce "Kubla Khan." Chatterton, a dull boy, acquired tuberculosis and took to arsenic, and the result was some poetry that still lives after a century and a half. Finally, I have it from an ambient ENglish novelist that there is a certain stage in katzenjammer which always lights up his fires, and that the plans of at least two of his books were thus engendered.
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_COCKTAILS FOR GENIUS._
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Once rid of its metaphysical hocus-pocus, inspiration becomes rational and comprehensible. But how to pump it up when it flags? So far scientific medicine has not answered; it has not yet, indeed so much as tackled or even recognized the problem. But soone or late, I am convinced, an answer will come. It is, after all, a mere question of technique. The poet of the future, come upon a period of doldrums, will not tear his hair in futile agony. Instead, he will go to the family doctor and get a rasher of Bulgarian bacili, or an ijection of some vaccine, or an order on a masseur, or a diet list, or a does of calomel.
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COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC: WHAT DID BARRY POPIK EAT?
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Three restaurants today.
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HOWARD JOHNSON'S IN TIMES SQUARE--The place is closing soon after so many years. Still the best shake in town, with honest ice cream not loaded with chemicals.
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CHOP'T, CREATIVE SALAD COMPANY (www,choptsalad.com), 60 East 56th Street between Madison and Park--There's also one at 24 East 17th Street. Really great salads with all the ingredients you can ask for. There's always a line out the door. I have a feeling this is the next Starbucks that will appear on every corner. Unfortunately, it's for a business lunch crowd and closes for dinner. I could eat salad anytime.
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SEH JA MEH, 28 East 18th Street--A Korean takeout place. I had soup. The Mandoo (dumplings) looked good, as does the Bibimbop.