If the reader avoids being distracted by certain religious overtones, the Lewis' quote is seen to describe quite well the suffocating effects that unbalanced minds and egos can have on artistic inspiration and expression.

When a musician, poet or artist allows their work to become less motivated by sheer Love of the art and more by personal competitive, intellectual or ego-based concerns, the art produced loses it's power and will be inferior in quality. The spontaneous, life-affirming qualities of "divine inspiration" intrinsic to great art can become sacrificed to the "gods" of intellectualism, commercialism and the ever-changing fads of artistic technique.

It may be that a poet works without inspiration for six months on a poem, and it gives satisfaction neither to the poet to others, who find it mechanical. And there is another one who receives the inspiration in a moment and puts it down. He can never correct what he has written, he can never change it. No one can change it. If it is changed, it is spoiled. It is something that comes in a moment and it is perfect in itself. It is a piece of art, and example of beauty, and it comes so easily. That is inspiration...

... [Inspiration] comes to the one whose mind is still and whose thought is absorbed in the beauty of the work he is contemplating. The mind of the musician who knows little of this world except music is concentrated and focused on the beauty of his art. Naturally he will draw inspiration. So it is with the poet. But when the mind is absorbed in a thousand things, then it is not focused, then it cannot receive inspiration."

From Hazrat Inayat Khan's The Music of Life


daylia (feeling a little be~MUSE~d by it all :-)