The Man of Genius. Lombroso Cesare

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СКАЧАТЬ the right to say anything and the chance to be first. The glory of Napoleon long haunted Victor Hugo. But the day came when he could no longer tolerate that any one should have glory equal to his own. The great captain must give way to the great poet; the giant of action must efface himself before the giant of thought. Is not Homer greater than Achilles? Victor Hugo came to believe himself superior to all human beings. He did not say, ‘I am Genius,’ but he began to believe firmly that the world would say so. His personages do not possess the characters of reality nor the proportions of man; they are always above and beyond humanity, sometimes reversed, not to say upside down; that was because Nature had for him aspects that were seen by no other. His eye enlarged everything; he saw herbs as tall as trees; he saw insects as large as eagles.”

      Hegel believed in his own divinity. He began a lecture with these words: “I may say with Christ, that not only do I teach truth, but that I am myself truth.”108

      “Man is the vainest of animals, and the poet is the vainest of men,” wrote Heine, who knew.109 And in another letter: “Do not forget that I am a poet, and, as such, convinced that men must forsake all and read my verses.”

      “Every one knows,” wrote George Sand of her friend Balzac,110 “how the consciousness of greatness overflowed in him, how he loved to speak of his works and to narrate them. Genial and ingenuous, he asked advice from children, but never waited for the answer, or else opposed it with all the obstinacy of his superiority. He never instructed, but always talked very well indeed of himself, of himself alone. One evening, having on a beautiful new dressing-gown, he wished to go out, thus clothed, with a lamp in his hand, to excite the admiration of the public.”

      Chopin directed in his will that he should be buried in a white tie, small shoes, and short breeches. He abandoned the woman whom he tenderly loved because she offered a chair to some one else before giving the same invitation to himself.111

      Giordano Bruno declared himself illumined by superior light, a messenger from God, who knew the essence of things, a Titan who would destroy Jupiter: “And what others see far ahead I leave behind.”112 And again: —

      “Nam me Deus alter

      Vertentis sæcli melioris non mediocrem

      Destinat, haud veluti, media de plebe, magistrum.”

      The poet Lucilius did not rise when Julius Cæsar entered the college of poets because he believed himself his superior in the art of verse. Ariosto, after receiving the laurel from Charles V., ran like a madman through the streets.113 The celebrated surgeon Porta would not suffer any medical paper to be read at the Lombard Institute without murmuring and showing his contempt; as soon as a mathematical or philological paper was brought forward he became quiet and attentive. Comte gave out that he was the High Priest of Humanity. Wetzel intitled his works, Opera Dei Wetzelii. Rouelle, the founder of chemistry in France, quarrelled with all his disciples who wrote on chemistry. They were, he said, ignorant bunglers, plagiaries; this latter term assumed so odious a significance in his mind that he applied it to the worst criminals; for instance, to express his horror of Damiens he said he was a plagiary.

      Many men of genius, while avoiding these excesses, nevertheless believe that they embody in themselves absolute truth; they modify scientific conclusions in their own interests, and in accordance with the part they are themselves able to take. Delacroix, become incapable of drawing beautiful lines, declared, “Colour is everything.” Ingres said, “Drawing is honesty, drawing is honour.” Chopin charged Schubert and Shakespeare with temerity because in these great men he always sought a correspondence with his own temperament.114 The Princess Conti having said to Malherbe, “I wish to show you some of the most beautiful verses in the world, which you have not yet seen,” he replied immediately with emotion, “Pardon me, madame, I have seen them; for, since they are the most beautiful in the world, I must have written them myself.”

       Folie du doute.– Among men of genius we often find the phenomena which characterizes that disorder termed by alienists folie du doute, one of the varieties of melancholia. In this form of insanity the subject has every appearance of mental health; he reasons, writes, and speaks like other people; everything goes well until he has to execute a definite action, and in this he finds all sorts of imaginary dangers. Thus I have treated a woman who when she had to get up in the morning, would hesitate for hours beside her bed, with one arm in the sleeve of her chemise, and the other sleeve hanging down, until her husband came to her help. Sometimes the husband was obliged to give her a few slight blows to induce her to take action. If she went for a walk and knocked against a stone, or came across a puddle, she would remain motionless; her husband had then to carry her for a few instants. In conversation she seemed the best and most sensible of mothers, but woe to the unfortunate person who dropped any word she regarded with suspicion, such as “devil,” “death,” “God”; she immediately seized him and cried out, until he repeated a certain formula, declaring a dozen times that the word had not been uttered to injure her. A peasant, affected by the same disorder, was incapable of attending to his work, unless some one was there to watch over him; for, said he, “I cannot make up my mind whether I ought to dig or to hoe, to go to the field or to the hill, and my uncertainty is so great that I end by doing nothing.”

      When Johnson walked along the streets of London he was compelled to touch every post he passed; if he omitted one he had to return. He always went in or out of a door or passage in such a way that either his right or his left foot (Boswell was not certain which) should be the first to cross the threshold; when he made any mistake in the movement, he would return, and, having satisfactorily performed the feat, rejoin his companions with the air of a man who had got something off his mind. Napoleon I. could not pass through a street, even at the head of his army, without counting and adding up the rows of windows. Manzoni, in a letter (addressed to Giorgio Briano) which has become famous, declared that he was incapable of giving himself up to politics because he did not know how to decide on anything; he was always in a state of uncertainty before every resolution, even the most trifling. He was afraid of drowning in the smallest puddle, and could never resolve to go out alone; he confessed on various occasions that, from his youth up, he had suffered from melancholy.115 He passed whole days without being able to apply himself to anything,116 so that in a month there were five or six useful days during which he worked five hours, and then he became incapable of thinking.117 Ugo Foscolo said that “very active in regard to some things, he was in regard to others less than a man, less than a woman, less than a child.”118 Tolstoi confesses that philosophic scepticism had led him into a condition approximating to madness; let us add, to folie du doute. “I imagined,” he said, “that there existed nothing outside me, either living or dead; that the objects were not objects, but vain appearances; this state reached such a point that sometimes I turned suddenly round, and looked behind me in the hope of seeing nothing where I was not.” “The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me,” cried Flaubert, “I doubt about everything, even about my doubts.”119 “I am embarrassed and frightened at my own ideas,” wrote Maine de Biran, “every expression stops me and gives me scruples. I have no confidence in anything that I publish, and am always tempted to withdraw my works when they have scarcely appeared, to substitute others which would certainly be worthless. I always call those happy who are tied down to fixed labour, who are not submitted to the torment of uncertainty, to the indecision which poisons men who are masters of their time. I am always trying my strength; I commence, and recommence again and again. It is my fortune to be useless, to be wanting in measure, never to feel my СКАЧАТЬ