Thought for the day...

A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. ~Diane Mariechild

Quotes on Woman

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, Jane Eyre

Must only women inspire????

Since the time of the ancient Greeks,muses have always been women who have inspired artists with their divine knowledge.The contemporary Indian creative lot however,has its own idea of who makes a muse.For some,its an esoteric concept,for others,a cat would do just as well,says Dhamini Ratnam.

WHEN 19th century author Mary Ann Evans,who wrote under the male pseudonym George Eliot,said in a letter to a friend,( my) pen is not of the true literary order which will run along without the help of brains, she was doing more than making a tongue-in-cheek comment about her style of writing.Eliot,in her inimitable style composed equally of wit and biting sarcasm,was referring to the role played by the muse,a mythical figure credited for being not only an authors inspiration,but very often,the genius behind his work.
Not surprisingly,Eliot would have none of that.Her writing derived from her formidable brain,and no wishy-washy muse depicted traditionally as a beautiful woman,nay,a Greek goddess would distract readers from Eliots chunky,realistic prose.An industrial revolution,two World Wars and some post-colonial liberalisation later,the contemporary Indian artist has mixed feelings about the muse.For some,like painter Akbar Padamsee,the muse is too ephemeral an idea,and he would rather engage with the physical reality that he paints of and photographs.For others like poet Arundhathi Subramaniam,the muse is everchanging and ever present.( None of my poems) would have been written without a muse, says the author of Where I Live,over an e-mail,adding that her muses have ranged from friend to city to even,her cat.
For the Greeks,however,there were nine muses (some accounts say three),who were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne,the Titan who personified memory.Hesiod,an eighth century BC Greek epic poet gave them names,but it was only later,in Roman times,that each was made into a goddess of a particular kind of creative work music (Euterpe ),epic poetry (Calliope),tragedy (Melpomene),comedy (Thalia),dance (Terpischore).The muses not only inspired the likes of 
Homer and Hesiod,they also 
breathed divine knowledge and love for the arts into them.These poets then,saw themselves as receptacles of a knowledge already possessed by the goddesses.Eliot isnt the only who has a problem with that idea.The Last Song of Dusk author Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi admits that while his mother was his muse for his debut novel,the idea of a muse makes him uncomfortable.I must work regardless of inspiration,because people who do more valuable work than me doctors or mothers even dont rely on a muse.They just have to get on with it, he says.In a similar vein,84-year-old Padamsee would rather deal with light and shadow than esoteric notions.Part of the original crop of Modern Indian artists,Padamsee,who also shoots photographs in black and white,says,Temperamentally,I am not suited to put anyone on a pedestal. I am inspired, he adds,by the way the light falls on the body. Goa-based photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta doesnt dismiss the muse.Light and shadow are necessary,but whats essential to his creative output,he says,is the feminine energy. Men have always depended on women for the push in our raw centres.This feminine energy is responsible for my creativity,but the muse doesnt have to be a specific person, he feels.Dasgupta wonders if it would be the same for women artists.Delhi-based fashion designer siblings Gauri and Nainika Karan are clear about their muse late Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn for her timeless elegance,classic style and chicness. Subramaniam,known for the compelling imagery of her poems,however believes in the idea of a muse as a metaphor.The muses are a reminder of that seeming capriciousness of inspiration.The goddesses are wild,free-spirited,elusive;their ways,inscrutable.You can scratch the pen endlessly across the page,but without a touch of their rasa,you are an empty ritualist,a mechanic,and little else. The impetus for a poem could be anything a place,a person,a relationship,a mood.But to transform that into verbal magma,you need Devi.I have no problem with that.I only wish shed visit me more often, she says.dhamini.ratnam@timesgroup.com 

Creative giants inspired by ladies 
I Late singer John Lennon: 

Japanese-American artist,and wife Yoko Ono 

I German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld: 

French singer-actress Vanessa Paradis 

I Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore: 

Sister-in-law Kadambari Devi 

I Late artist MF Husain: 

Actress Madhuri Dixit

BY TIMES NEWS NETWORK