The Muse (s)‏

In Greek mythology . . . The Muses are a sisterhood of goddesses,
their number set at nine, who embody the arts and inspire the
creation with their graces through remembered and improvised song
and stage, writing, traditional music, and dance.
The daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, Goddess
of memory, were denizens of Mount Parnassus, born in Pieria which
is described as 'watered by the springs flowing from Olympus'.

Truman Capote noted . . . The Muses are heard – every time a
poet writes, an artist draws, or, so we are told, a designer
drapes. Homer invoked this ethereal sorority at the opening of
'The Odyssey', and Dante summoned them before plunging into
his 'Inferno' . . . 'O Muses . . . aid me now!'

* Calliope (the 'beautiful of speech'): chief of the muses and
muse of epic or heroic poetry.
* Clio (the 'glorious one'): muse of history.
* Erato (the 'amorous one'): muse of love or erotic poetry,
lyrics, and marriage songs.
* Euterpe (the 'well-pleasing'): muse of music and lyric poetry.
* Melpomene (the 'chanting one'): muse of tragedy.
* Polyhymnia or Polymnia (the singer of many hymns): muse of
sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing and rhetoric.
* Terpsichore (the one who delights in dance): muse of choral
song and dance.
* Thalia (the 'blossoming one'): muse of comedy and bucolic poetry.
* Urania (the 'celestial one'): muse of astronomy.

Somewhere along the millennia the immortal Muses morphed into
flesh-and-blood females, capable of holding all manner of Great
Men in their thrall. Muses are explicitly used in modern English
to refer to an inspiration, as when one cites his/her own artistic
muse.
For a time Courbet and Whistler could barely load up their
brushes without the guiding presence of their auburn-tressed muse,
Jo Hifferman. The Viennese seductress Alma Mahler famously
impelled Gustav Mahler to compose, Walter Gropius to build, and
Oskar Kokoschka who went so far as to commission a life-size doll
of her-to paint.

Around the same moment that art became abstract, The Muses migrated
from artists' studios to couturiers' salons. Poiret's career did
not long outlast his marriage to his obliging muse Denise, whom
the fabled designer at one point literally locked up in a gilded
cage. Givenchy recalled that 'something magic happened' the instant
his symbiotic ideal, Audrey Hepburn, slipped on that first ensemble
in his showroom. Yves Saint Laurent, for his part, assembled around
him a formidable muse entourage (Loulou de la Falaise, Betty Catroux,
and Paloma Picasso), personifying a distinct facet of his taste.

* From Where I Sit!
www.fromwhereisit.co
November 15, 2011