Creation as Necessity: On the Existential Movement That Cannot Be Stopped

In people who create—and do so with deep intent and love—there’s an understanding that they simply cannot do otherwise.

It’s a strong internal pressure that can’t be calmed by anything other than the specific creative act itself.

It’s not about performance or income.
It’s a part of personality.
It’s an activity a person needs in order to exist in balance.

And if they don’t engage in it, it always shows—sometimes immediately, sometimes after a while.

This is about the authentic and strong inner need to create—as the mind and the inner rhythm of existence demand.

It’s not about checking goals off a list. Goals, when reached, tend to just lead to more demands—not to fulfillment.
Creation as an inner need works differently.

It’s about a specific creative action that carries the person somewhere else—into a space where only the present moment and the act exist.
The movement, gesture, word, emotion—often a merging of senses and feelings pouring into the work.
And in that, a state of deep connection arises, which modern psychology calls flow—a mental state of complete immersion.

It’s a real need.
Comparable to basic physiological ones—and when it’s unmet for a long time, there are consequences.

A lack of creation can lead to inner restlessness, insomnia, tension, poor focus, mood swings, and other symptoms.

It’s not about ego.
It’s about existential movement—about a way of being, a way to stay alive and in touch with oneself.

Phenomenology – Simple and Human

What is it?

Phenomenology explores what is present—as it is directly perceived.

It doesn’t ask what we think about things, but what is happening to us as we live them.

That makes it ideal for understanding creativity that doesn’t stem from technique or concept, but from a real, living experience.

It’s like holding someone’s hand in silence.
It’s not about what you think—it’s about what moves inside you in that quiet.

Phenomenology doesn’t ask:
“What do you think about it?”
It asks:
“What’s happening to you as you live it?”

And that’s exactly how we can look at creative work.
As a deep, existential need for action—not as a tool, but as a way of being.

Creation as Existential Phenomenon in Art and Literature

This deep need to create, based on lived experience, isn’t a modern whim or individualist pose.
It’s a constant—appearing across different eras in painting, writing, and philosophy.

Expressionism

Both in painting and literature, it was a raw outcry of the soul.
Schiele, Munch, Nolde—bodies and emotions fractured, twisted, but deeply truthful.
Trakl, Kafka—characters lost in their own undefinable existence, teetering on the edge of madness.

Expressionism was born of pressure—not structure.
Creation as catharsis.

Romanticism

Here, creativity was born from loneliness, longing, pain, melancholy.
Friedrich’s landscapes were souls in visual form.
The words of Byron, Keats, Mácha, or Novalis weren’t descriptions—they were the exhale of a being with nowhere to belong.

Romantics were the first to openly say: pain can create.
That melancholy isn’t weakness—but a space of perception.

Symbolism and Surrealism

Visible reality was no longer enough.
Symbolists (Redon, Moreau) and surrealists (Dalí, Ernst, Carrington) turned to dreams, the subconscious, and archetypes.
Creation became a tool to access the invisible—the deep layer beneath the surface of things.

In literature: Rimbaud, Baudelaire, later Breton.
Words, images, symbols—everything in movement, in layers.
Creation was no longer a reflection—it was a portal.

Modernism and Spiritual Art

Kandinsky, in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, described painting as an inner composition—not a reflection of visible reality.
Color and form were a language of the soul.

“Color is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the string.” — W. Kandinsky

Writers like Woolf and Joyce experimented with consciousness, inner monologue, and continuous perception.
Creation became a way of listening to the inner silence.

Existentialism in Art and Writing

In Bacon or Giacometti—emptiness around the human figure. A body in space, unsure of its place.
In literature: Camus, Sartre, Beckett—their characters speak, even without belief in meaning.
And the act of speaking, of creating, becomes resistance against disappearance.

Creators Who Had No Choice

This kind of creative necessity is obvious in those who didn’t create out of comfort—but to survive their perception of the world.

Frida Kahlo’s pain fused with her body until it became her painting.
Leonora Carrington blended dreams, magic, and feminine psyche into strange mythologies.
Toyen blurred the borders of identity and reality—unfitting, and therefore free.
Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton wrote poetry that wasn’t “beautiful”—but necessary.
Virginia Woolf gave voice to the silence inside the mind.

“It’s not about finding a place for women in society. It’s about creating a new language in which she can exist.” — Virginia Woolf

Men, too, carried this inner fire:

Van Gogh captured light while surrounded by darkness.
Schiele painted the body as a scream in motion.
Kafka described a world where guilt and being are blurred.

“We need books that act like a fist to the skull.” — Franz Kafka

Trakl wrote in the language of decay and silence.
Camus searched for dignity in the absurd.
James Baldwin wrote like a man who couldn’t live inside lies.

William Blake painted and wrote from a vision beyond his time—a mystic who followed what he saw.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite.” — William Blake

Robert Burns created from the soil, the body, love, and everyday pain.
And Shakespeare was not just a dramatist—he was a mirror. Of contradictions, voices, and shadows.

“All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players.” — William Shakespeare

They created from places where performance ends.
They didn’t fit—and in that, they touched something lasting.

Their art isn’t history.
It’s proof that some part of us can’t remain silent.

Why This Matters – And Why Now

Because today, creativity is often reduced to output. To product. To “content.”
It’s confused with marketing, self-promotion, and personal branding.

But the creative drive described here doesn’t need viewers, likes, or approval.
It needs to be fulfilled.

Otherwise, everything connected to it begins to fade—emotion, the body, perception, the ability to remain present.

Many people today feel a kind of restlessness. Pressure. A weight they can’t name.
Maybe they’re not “artists” in the traditional sense—but the need is still there.
Maybe it’s an urge to write, to paint, to dance.
To walk barefoot. To observe in silence.
To express something that can’t fit into everyday words.

And that’s the point.
Creativity is not a privilege.
It’s a way of staying connected to what happens inside.

An Invitation to Silence, and a Return to Yourself

This is not a manual. Nor a justification.
It’s an open space.
A place where you might recognize something of your own story.

Maybe you carry a similar tension.
Maybe you feel something calling—but in today’s noisy world, it’s hard to hear.

Then this is an invitation.
Not to escape the world—but to return to yourself.

To create doesn’t mean to be an “artist.”
To create means to be present. Connected. Alive.

© Tereza Sklovská | Different Worlds by Sklovská

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