A Dissection of Genius

GENIUS AS A RELATIONSHIP

We define genius as the proven ability to produce artistic, scientific, or other intellectual work that
is considered supremely valuable during or after the lifetime of the producer. Certain qualifications must
be met in order to achieve recognition of the work done. The candidate for genius must produce, perform,
discover, or invent something that is highly valued. If this work is too far ahead of its time, it will be
ignored or derided; unless the work can be preserved to be appreciated later, recognition may never come.

The most favorable chance for recognition comes to those whose work relates in some significant
way to the needs and spirit of their contemporaries while the producers are still living and can make their
work public. Once the producer has died, even if he or she was highly acclaimed, the remaining work may
go unpublished, as was the case with Leibniz.The work of those who die without reputation is usually lost
to posterity.

The title of genius is not inalienable but varies over the years with the number and fervor of one's
appreciators. William Hogarth, the eighteenth century painter, thought that some of Michelangelo's work
verged on the ridiculous, but Hogarth's Romantic successors worshipped the sculptor. Furthermore, one's
reputation as a genius varies in longevity, depending on the field of endeavor. The philosopher and
mathematician may wear their crowns for centuries: the actor is quickly forgotten, buried under changing
styles. One's claim to genius also depends on the credibility of those who promote it. Genius, therefore, is
not an attribute: it is a dynamic relationship between its possessor and society. It indicates, in a general
way, what society expects of the genius and how it responds to that person. There are always geniuses in
potentia; but there are no unrecognized geniuses. A genius is someone who is acknowledged as such, even
if only by those who work in, or have been trained in, his field, and who pass their verdict on to society.

The title of genius can be temporarily won for reasons that have little to do with the quality of
one's work: a colorful life, timely publicity, and a personality that fits the stereotype of genius can distract
society from the absence of talent. However, the person who has a more lasting claim to that designation
has won it by other means, and it is this individual with whom we are concerned. The genius we have
defined has done work that is of importance or value to society and has produced it with unusual skill.
Work that is a lucky accident does not earn lasting respect for its producer. Furthermore, outstanding
ability wasted on trivia does not lead to recognition of genius. According to our definition, outstanding
ability, work of high value, and recognition are essential elements of genius.

THE MAD AND MELANCHOLY:

FROM THE CLASSICAL GREEKS TO THE ROMANTICS

The traditional view of genius has its roots in classical Greece. Aristotle associated great ability
with depression: "All extraordinary men distinguished in philosophy, politics, poetry and the arts are
evidently melancholic." Socrates and Plato stated that genius, among poets at least, was inseparable from
madness. Socrates said that the poet has "no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his
senses," and Plato claimed that the poetry of sane men "is beaten all hollow by the poetry of madmen."

Marsilio Ficino, a Renaissance philosopher, linked Aristotle's concept of melancholy genius with
Plato's idea of inspired mania and thus was the first to associate genius with what is now recognized as
manic-depression.

Eighteenth-century rationalists, though honoring both sanity and high intelligence, continued to
attribute the latter to temporary insanity. The poet Diderot stated: "These reserved and melancholy men
owe their extraordinary, almost godlike acuteness of insight to a temporary disturbance of their whole
mechanism.One may notice how it brings them now to sublime and now to insane thoughts."

ROMANTIC GENIUS: THE MODEL MANIC-DEPRESSIVE

The novelist George Sand proclaimed, "Between genius and madness there is often not the
thickness of a hair." The Romantics were quite enthusiastic about both genius and madness. Charles Lamb
wrote to one of his friends, "Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy
till you have gone mad." Lamb had no need to patronize Coleridge, who was an opium addict.Coleridge's
fellow Romantics used alcohol, drugs of all kinds, and even hunger, thirst, and illness to silence reason,
paralyze conscience, and break down familiar patterns of thought in the search for
inspiration.Hallucination was considered the most fertile condition for the artist. I should have taken more
opium when I wrote it," remarked Friedrich von Schlegel after having written an unsuccessful play. De
Quincey's fame derived from his book on the experiences he had under opium.The poet Byron declared:
"Man, being reasonable, must therefore get drunk.The best
of life is but intoxication." During the part of his life in which he was writing poetry and taking drugs, the
poet Rimbaud went about in a state of delusion and hallucination.To him factories appeared to be
mosques, and carriage traffic rolled by in the sky. Many of the Romantics complained of severe
depressions, so they may have resorted to drugs and alcohol to relieve their suffering as well as to
stimulate creativity.

The Romantic concept of genius is a catalogue of manic-depressive symptoms, perhaps derived

from such leading manic-depressive Romantics as Rousseau, Byron, and Goethe, as well as from large
numbers of Romantics who also had the disorder.According to the Romantic view, there was no genius
without the manic-depressive's wide-ranging and unbearably powerful emotions.The writer Goethe
lamented, I am not always in tune for great emotions, and without them I am negligible." The writer Victor
Hugo said: "What in fact is a poet? A man who has strong feelings and who expresses them in
impassioned words."

Liszt's portrait of his fellow composer Chopin as a Romantic genius may be exaggerated, but it
does enumerate some of the manic-depressive symptoms that were expected: "Chopin was ... of an
intensely passionate, an overflowing nature.... Every morning he began anew the difficult task of
imposing silence upon his raging anger, his whitehot hate, his boundless love, his throbbing pain, and his
feverish excitement, and to keep it in suspense by a sort of spiritual ecstasy—an ecstasy into which he
plunged in order to ... find a painful happiness." The writer Carlyle insisted that the genius experience both
extremes of mania and depression: "A great soul ... alternates between the highest height and the lowest
depth."

Continuing the tradition with antiquity, the Romantics coupled severe depression with genius.
Liszt wrote to his competitor Wagner: "Your greatness is your misery; both are inseparably connected."
Romantics, however, also looked for signs of mania such as excitement and hyperactivity.The philosopher
Schopenhauer stated, "The lives of men of genius show how often, like lunatics,
they are in a state of continuous agitation." Francis Galton, in his book Hereditary Genius, identified
inspiration with two other copious flow of ideas and willfulness. "If genius means a sense of inspiration,
or of rushes of ideas," he wrote, "... or of an inordinate and burning desire to accomplish any particular
end, it is perilously near to the voices heard by the insane, to their delirious tendencies, or to their
monomanias."

Although Romanticism had waned by 1889, its concept of genius held sway.Accordingly, the
playwright Anton Chekov believed there could be no genius without intense emotion and two manic
symptoms: insomnia and immense productivity.He confessed: "I lack the necessary passion—and
therefore talent for literature.... The fire in me burns in an even, lethargic flame; it never flares up or roars,
which is why I never find myself writing fifty or sixty pages in one night."

The Romantics added to the classical insistence on madness the idea that the genius pays in
suffering for exceptional ability. Heine stated, "The history of great men is always a martyrology"; the
novelist Flaubert insisted, "There never was . . . a great man who has not been pelted with potatoes or
struck with knives." This point of view is a distortion of history.As a rule, extraordinary ability enabled
people to rise to a social and economic class higher than that from which they originated, making a
corresponding improvement in their lives. The sufferings of the successful were as nothing compared to
the sufferings of the vast impoverished majority that they had left behind. Paranoia and the despair
generated by depression inspired much of the Romantics' feeling of martyrdom.

Webografie

Hershman, J., Lieb, J. (1998). Manic Depression and Creativity. Online: Accesat Decembrie 30, 2008,
http://www.questia.com/read/96870669?title=Manic%20Depression%20and%20Creativity