Hegel on artistic inspiration

"If we ask further wherein artistic inspiration consists, it is nothing but being completely filled with the theme, being entirely present in the theme, and not resting until the theme has been stamped and polished into artistic shape.
But if the artist has made the subject-matter into something entirely his own, he must on the other hand be able to forget his own personality and its accidental particular characteristics and immerse himself, for his part, entirely in his material, so that, as subject, he is only as it were the form for the formation of the theme which has taken hold of him. An inspiration in which the subject gives himself airs and emphasizes himself as subject, instead of being the instrument and the living activation of the theme itself, is a poor inspiration."

G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art, Translated by T.M. Knox, Volume 1, Clarendon press, Oxford, p. 288