In the Classical mythology of Greece and Rome, the nine Muses (Μοῦσαι) were the supernatural sources of artistic inspiration. The root of words like “music” (and hence Julian’s pun in line 6), the Muses were imagined as female spirits, daughters of Zeus and Memory, who lived on Mount Helicon. Repositories of history, and divine guides able to grant access to the mythic past via the imagination, the Muses were called upon, or “invoked,” by epic poets when beginning their narrative songs. The idea was that the poet would literally be “in-spired,” i.e., possessed by the spirit of the Muse. In this sense, such poetry was very much akin to what we would think of as prophecy.

The Greek epic poet Hesiod offers probably the oldest example of this convention in his poem Works and Days:

Muses of Pieria who give glory through song, come hither, / tell of Zeus your father and chant his praise… (lines 1-2)

Homer calls upon the aid of the Muses at the opening of both the Iliad and Odyssey, respectively:

Sing, O Muse, the rage of Achilles son of Peleus… (line 1)

Tell me, O Muse, of that hero, many-wayed, / buffeted far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy (lines 1-2)

In the Christian era, this convention is continued and revalorized by poets writing in the epic genre. Dante, for instance, invokes the classical forces of inspiration, now within a Christian framework.

O Muses, O high wit, now help me; / O memory that wrote down what I saw, / here will your nobility appear. (Inferno Canto 2, lines 7-9)

Dante makes recourse to such invocations at important transitional or otherwise crucial moments in his poem. At the beginning of Paradiso, he ups the ante, calling upon ‘Apollo’ (the Classical god of prophecy):

Benign Apollo! this last labor aid, And make me such a vessel of thy worth, As thy own laurel claims of me belov’d. Thus far hath one of steep Parnassus’ brows Suffic’d me; henceforth there is need of both For my remaining enterprise Do thou Enter into my bosom, and there breathe So, as when Marsyas by thy hand was dragg’d Forth from his limbs unsheath’d. (lines 13-21)

Continuing the tradition of blurring poetry and prophecy, Milton blends the idea of the Muses with that of the Holy Spirit, the more orthodox source of inspiration in the Christian tradition.

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos…(Paradise Lost, Book 1, lines 1-10)

As a post-religious poet, whose very theme is the decline and fall of transcendent/supernatural ideas (including the Muses themselves), Julian is bereft of the possibility for such divine aid. His opening lines are thus, appropriately, a sort of non-invocation, a stand-in for what should be the usual convention. He would “call to Heaven for its help,” but “no Heavens hear”; the subject of his poem is the very end of Heavens (“their end is mine to tell…”). Still, though, he says he will sing, unaided, regardless. By means of his purely immanent imagination, he hopes to “conjure spirit out of song”—a bold reversal, and one fitting the ultimate theme of the poem (which will only become clear to Joel later on, after he ends his requiem and embarks on the “return of dimensionality” [i.e., spirit] through “aesthetically-mediated belief” [i.e., song—which is the very poem itself]. So might we put it using Severan’s terminology, anyway.). For now, that ultimate theme remains but an unwitting double entendre, as Joel ostensibly sets out only to “sing the death of God.” Ironically, what begins as a death song for God will become a means to “reanimate” (literally “re-spiritize”) inspiration itself.