All of this is not to suggest that the display of symp-toms of mental illness on the part of the creative are theresult of nothing more than role playing and adherenceto role expectations deemed appropriate for artists andwriters.
Society's expectations really do have an affect on the way we act and present ourselves. That's not something I think about all the time.
It would be erroneous to assume, however, thatsuch trepidations and self-admissions on the part ofgeniuses were sufficient to establish as a medical factthe connection between genius and madness. Forsuch to occur, there had to exist a close correspon-dence between the intellectual grounds on whichthese trepidations were based and the specializedknowledge claims associated with the rising fields ofpsychology and the medical–psychiatric profession.
This is going to be fun (fun as in difficult) to have to tie this in with Wilde because while he might have been labeled a little crazy by society at his time, people found him very likable, at least for most of his life. I'll probably have to focus on that later portion of his life.
Poe
I didn't think of Poe before but he would have been a really awesome essay topic.
The romantic redefinition of genius in terms of theimagination reigning supreme satisfied two goals si-multaneously.
I think that since the romantic period the definition has changed again with a strong association with intelligence.
Critical to an understanding of the ancient Greeks’ruminations regarding the nature of the creative pro-cess are the concepts of demonic possession and mel-ancholia. The “demon,” which the Greeks conceivedas a semideity that presided over a person, a locality, orsome other discrete entity, was believed to be endowedwith powers to shape the destiny of each in either apositive or negative fashion. Somewhat different fromthis general view of the term, in the Socratic concep-tion the demon was regarded as a divine gift granted toa few select individuals only. According to this view,the poet, priest, philosopher, and sage communicatedwith the gods through the intervention of their demon.It is in this sense that Socrates called on his demon andattributed most of his knowledge to intimations from it(Cahan, 1911, pp. 17–24). This conception of demonsas the benevolent agents of the gods was generally en-dorsed by Plato and others and found support in Plato’sdoctrine of divine madness, orenthousiasmos.
That's interesting! Something that most individuals today perceive with a negative connotation, was not perceived that way in other cultures and ages.
Despite spec-ulations from Greek antiquity to the Renaissance andthe Enlightenment regarding the mental state of indi-viduals during the act of creation, the association of cre-ativity with clinical madness is a modern phenomenonthat does not predate the 1830s. As I argue in this arti-cle, it was the romantic movement in literature that wasindispensable to the establishment of this medical ver-dict
I'm interested to see how Becker pinpoints a time when this phenomenon began. I would have thought it was something that was more innate in our nature, to think that when someone acts differently that ourselves that they are mad or crazy or even just weird. If you think about it we do it all the time and sometime try to label it.
Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad’s mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy.
This reminds me of the Biopic again. When Wilde leaves the gathering he was at with another man (The one with the possibly Byron picture).
“Because you have now the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.” “I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.” “No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so?
This reminds me of Oscar Wilde's speech in the Biopic when he talks about youth and intellect.
Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs1; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
This paragraph has a theme of natural beauty, and it continues into the next paragraph where the portrait of "a young man of extraordinary personal beauty" is mentioned. I wonder if this is only a temporary theme or if it will continue throughout the rest of the story.
Byron inspired so many textual responses to his work, but did these in turn affect his writing? The very fact that Byron kept all his fan letters suggests that he was certainly interested in his readers attitudes towards him and was not, as Lucy Newlyn suggests, '[impervious] to his own popularity' .41 Byron confessed to Thomas Medwin, 'I am sure I was more pleased with the fame my "Corsair" had, than with that of any other of my books. Why? for the very reason because it did shine, and in houdoirs. Who does not write to please women?'4
Interesting. I haven't seen this as much in any of the other readings.
It has often been used as a criticism of Byron's work that Childe Harold, Conrad, Manfred and Don Juan are all the same character -'Byron'. Yet the consistency of characterisation in Byron's works gave readers a familiar and reliable formula. When Byron abandoned his gothic style to write his historical plays, for example, he was attacked by his critics for writing 'inauthentic' works that were not truly Byronic.
I wonder what caused Byron to so suddenly change style? Did his consistent character go unnoticed for that long?
Byron created a poetry of ambiguity which encouraged readers to think that his characters were in fact him.
Does he do this intentionally or does part of his life accidentally slip into his poetry?
he knew it.
I think the Biopic does a particularly good job at sending this message. You see the actor consciously acting a certain way to get a specific reaction out of his audience. You can see it especially from17:40 to 19:30.
I don't think the two versions are completely different. The movie espouses a very strong opinion about Byron, but Marchand seems a little more concerned with the gathering of the facts to present them to the public rather than forming an opinion.