Nicholas Berdyaev: The Creative Act is always Liberation and Conquest

Every creative act strives towards the transcendent, towards passing beyond the borders of the given world. The creative act is always liberation and conquest. It is an experience of power. In essence, creativity is a way out, an exodus; it is victory.

—Nicholas Berdyaev

It is only in the creative act that we prevail over the oppression and enslavement of extraneous influences.

The creative act reveals the absolute priority of the “self,” the subject, over the “non-self,” the object; but at the same time, it strikes at the root of the egocentric, for it is eminently a movement of self-transcendence, reaching out to that which is higher than oneself…

The link between creativity and a pessimistic attitude towards life as it is given, with all its necessities, compulsions and conventions, made me attach a great importance to imagination, since without imagination there can be no creative activity.