Must art come from tension?

Mask

I am reading this book about a poet who is continually struggling with her craft and her bouts of depression and rage. I still don't know how I feel about this... I think I agree but I will have to let this sit for a while before I can really write about what I really think about it.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a paragraph she puts in her book about Goethe: "It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life; he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life, he must never grow complacent, never be content with life, must always demand the impossible and when he cannot have it, must despair. The burden of the mystery must be with him day and night. He must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy. Many lesser poets have it only in their youth; some even of the greatest lose it in middle life. Wordsworth lost the courage to despair and with it his poetic power. But more often the dynamic tensions are so powerful that they destroy the man before he reaches maturity."