[An excerpt from “The Argentine Writer and Tradition” by Jorge Luis Borges.]
I believe...that all the foregoing discussions of the aims of literary creation are based on the error of supposing that intentions and plans matter much. Take, for example, the case of Kipling: Kipling dedicated his life to writing in accordance with a given set of political ideals, he wanted to make his work a tool for propaganda, and nevertheless, at the end of his life he had to confess that the true essence of a writer’s work is usually unknown by that writer; and he remembered the case of Swift, who while writing Gulliver’s Travels wanted to raise an indictment against mankind and instead left behind a children’s book. Plato said that poets are the amanuenses of a god who moves them against their will, against their intentions, as the magnet moves a series of iron rings.
[...& here are two quotes from Shakespeare's Hamlet that the above brings to mind:]
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will
[also...]
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own