The Man of Genius. Lombroso Cesare

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СКАЧАТЬ he manifested tendencies to sadness, to music, and to mysticism. He studied medicine, law, agriculture, and especially music. In 1831 Kerner remarked in him strange fits of sadness and melancholy, and noted that at other times he would spend whole nights in the garden playing his favourite violin. “I feel myself,” he wrote to his sister, “gravitating towards misfortune; the demon of insanity riots in my heart; I am mad. To you, sister, I say it, for you will love me all the same.” This demon induced him to go, almost aimlessly to America. He returned to find himself fêted and received with gladness by all; but hypochondria, in his own words, had planted its teeth deep in his heart, and everything was useless.178 And, in fact, this unhappy heart had an attack of pericarditis, from which it recovered only imperfectly. From that time sleep, once the only medicine for his troubles, ceased to visit him; every night he is surrounded by terrible visions. “One would say,” he wrote, in a truly insane fashion, “that the devil is hunting in my belly. I hear there a perpetual barking of dogs and a funereal echo of hell. Without joking, it is enough to make one despair.”

      That misanthropy which we have already noted in Haller and Swift and Cardan and Rousseau took possession of Lenau in 1840 with all the accompaniments of mania. He is afraid and ashamed of men, disgusted with them. Germany was preparing bouquets and triumphal arches in his honour, but he fled, and without any cause went to and fro from one country to another; he was causelessly angry and impatient, and felt himself incapable of work; non est firmum sinciput, it seemed, as he himself said; at the same time his appetite became as insane as his brain. He returned with a strange taste to the mysticism of his childhood, wished to study the Gnostics, and read over again the stories of sorcerers which he had found so attractive in his youth, while he drank coffee enormously and smoked excessively. It was incredible, he observed, how in moving his body, in lighting or changing a cigar, new ideas arose within him. He wrote during entire nights, wandered, journeyed, meditated a marriage, projected great works, and executed none.

      It was the last flickering of a great spirit; in 1844 Lenau complained more and more of headache, of constant perspiration, of extreme weakness. His left hand and the muscles of the eyes and cheeks were paralysed, and he began to write with orthographic errors and quibbles, as Wie gut es mir gut for mir geht; or “I am not delirious, but lyrical.” Suddenly, on the 12th of October, he had a violent attack of suicidal mania. He was restrained, and furiously struck and broke everything, burning his manuscripts. Gradually he became composed and intelligent again, and even analyzed his attack minutely in that terrible, chaotic poem the Traumgewalien. It was a ray of sunlight in the dark night; it was, as Schilling well said, genius for the last time dominating insanity. In fact, his condition was constantly getting worse; another suicidal attack was followed by that fatal comfort, that pleasant excitement which marks the commencement of general paralysis. “I enjoy life,” he said; “I am glad that the terrible visions of old have been succeeded by pleasant and delightful visions.” He imagined that he was in Walhalla with Goethe, and that he had become King of Hungary and was victorious in battle; he made puns on his family name, Niembsch. In 1845 he lost his sense of smell, which had previously been very delicate, and ceased to care for violets, his favourite flowers. He no longer recognised his old friends. Notwithstanding this sad condition, he was still able to write a lyric marked by extravagant mysticism, but not without the old beauty. One day when conducted to Plato’s bust, he said: “There is the man who invented stupid love.” Another time, hearing some one say, “Here lives the great Lenau,” the unfortunate man replied: “Now Lenau has become very, very small,” and he wept for a long time. “Lenau is unhappy” were his last words. He died on the 21st of August, 1850. The autopsy only revealed a little serum in the ventricles and traces of progressive pericarditis.

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      1

      Magnan, Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 1887; Lombroso, Tre Tribuni, pp. 3-9, 16-23, 148-150; Saury, Études Cliniques sur la Folie Héréditaire, 1886.

      2

      Psychologie du Génie, 1883.

      3

      De Renzis, L’opera d’un Pazzo, 1887.

      4

      Revue des Deux Mondes, 1886.

      5

      De Pronost., i. p. 7.

      6

      Problemata, sect. xxx.

      7

      Horace, Ars Poet., 296-297.

      8

      Observationes in Hom. Affect., 1641, lib. 10, p. 305. More singular examples in Italy were collected by F. Gazoni, in the Hospitale dei folli incurabili, 1620.

      9

      Diderot, Dictionnaire Encyclopédique.

      10

      I Mattoidi e il Monumente a Vittorio Emanuele, 1885.

      11

      Magnan, Annales Médico-psych., 1887; Déjerine, L’Hérédité dans les Maladies Mentales, 1886; Ireland, The Blot upon the Brain, 1885.

      12

      I Caratteri dei Delinquenti, 1886, Turin.

      13

      Méd. de l’Esprit, ii.

      14

      Lamartine, Cours de Littérature, ii.

      15

      Revue Britannique

1

Magnan, Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 1887; Lombroso, Tre Tribuni, pp. 3-9, 16-23, 148-150; Saury, Études Cliniques sur la Folie Héréditaire, 1886.

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