Poetic and prophetic inspiration both involve uttering what the speaker does not fully understand.

Evidence

T. S. Eliot attempted a formulation that embraced both religious and secular senses of the notion: “if the word ‘inspiration’ is to have any meaning, it must mean just this, that the speaker or writer is uttering something which he does not wholly understand—or which he may even misinterpret when the inspiration has departed from him. This is certainly true of poetic inspiration… . [The poet] need not know what his poetry will come to mean to others, and a prophet need not understand the meaning of his prophetic utterance.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 178

Categorization

• CANDY: Eliot’s one-liner that a prophet need not understand his own utterance is a memorable elevator fact about how inspiration was conceived mid-century.