II. Cloze (10%, 1% each)In antiquity, creativity was a divine attribute, a capacity narrated in thecreation myths that are almost universal in human cultures. Examples include theCreator of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, Odin of Norse mythology, Ormazdof Zoroastrianism, and Brahma of the Hindu trinity. Even when creativity wasattributed to individual human beings, the ultimate source often remainedspiritual. This connection is __11__ the ancient Greek belief in the Muses.According to the myth, Zeus, the reigning god in the pantheon, fathered ninedaughters with Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Each of these ninedaughters presided over a different domain of human creativity. __12__, thesemuses were responsible for epic poetry, lyric poetry, sacred poetry and hymns,tragedy, comedy, music, dance, astronomy, and history. Each muse was thought toprovide a guiding spirit or source of inspiration for the mortal creator. This usageunderlies several common expressions, such as to say that one has lost one’s musewhen one has run out of creative ideas. Given this view, human creativityremained __13__ divine creativity.The religious or spiritual roots of creativity are also evident in the concept ofgenius, an idea that would later become intimately identified __14__ creativity.According to Roman mythology, each individual was born with a guardian spiritwho watched out for the person’s distinctive fate and individuality. With time, theterm was taken to indicate the person’s special talents or aptitudes. Although inthe beginning everybody could be said to “have a genius,” at least in the sense ofpossessing a unique potential, the term eventually began to be __15__ thosewhose gifts set them well apart from the average, such as the creative genius.Outstanding creativity then became the gift of the gods or spirits, not a humanact. Even during the Italian Renaissance rudiments of this ascription persisted. Forinstance, when Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) wrote his biography of the “divineMichelangelo,” he explicitly asserted that “the great Ruler of Heaven” sent theartist to earth to serve as an exemplar of artistic genius.As European civilization became increasingly secularized, especially after theEnlightenment, creativity’s spiritual connotations __16__ more naturalisticconceptions. One prominent viewpoint was that creativity, and especially creativegenius, was closely linked to madness. This linkage became especially popularduring Europe’s Romantic period, attaining a peak in the first half of thenineteenth century. It was also during this period that creative genius began tobecome associated with alcoholism, drug addiction, and other __17__ conditions.In the Preface to “Kubla Khan,” for example, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)claimed __18__ this poetic masterpiece in an opium stupor.Eventually the mad-genius conception of creativity received scientificendorsement from psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts. For instance,Cesare Lombroso (1836–1909) attributed exceptional creativity to a geneticallybased “degenerative psychosis.” The only conspicuous disagreements concernedthe specific nature of the mental disorder. __19__ Lombroso, Sigmund Freud(1856–1939) saw creativity as a variety of neurotic behavior, whereas WilliamJames (1842–1910) viewed creativity as a form of “borderline” personality.Related to this issue was a debate about the extent __20__ creative genius bearsany relation to criminality. Some psychiatrists argued that genius, madness, andcriminality were all consequences of the same underlying genetic disorder.
11.
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