The Man of Genius. Lombroso Cesare

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      Napoleon said that the fate of battles was the result of an instant, of a latent thought; the decisive moment appeared; the spark burst forth, and one was victorious. (Moreau.) Kuh’s most beautiful poems, wrote Bauer, were dictated in a state between insanity and reason; at the moment when his sublime thoughts came to him he was incapable of simple reasoning. Foscolo tells us in his Epistolario, the finest monument of his great soul, that writing depends on a certain amiable fever of the mind, and cannot be had at will: “I write letters, not for my country, nor for fame, but for the secret joy which arises from the exercise of our faculties; they have need of movement, as our legs of walking.” Mozart confessed that musical ideas were aroused in him, even apart from his will, like dreams. Hoffmann often said to his friends, “When I compose I sit down to the piano, shut my eyes, and play what I hear.”50 Lamartine often said, “It is not I who think; my ideas think for me.”51 Alfieri, who compared himself to a barometer on account of the continual changes in his poetic power, produced by change of season, had not the strength in September to resist a new, or rather, renewed, impulse which he had felt for several days; he declared himself vanquished, and wrote six comedies. In Alfieri, Goethe, and Ariosto creation was instantaneous, often even being produced on awaking.52

      This domination of genius by the unconscious has been remarked for many centuries. Socrates said that poets create, not by virtue of inventive science, but, thanks to a very certain natural instinct, just as diviners predict, saying beautiful things, but not having consciousness of what they say.53 “All the manifestations of genius,” wrote Voltaire to Diderot, “are the effects of instinct. All the philosophers of the world put together would not be able to produce Quinault’s Armide, or the Animaux Malades de la peste, which La Fontaine wrote without knowing what he did. Corneille composed Horace as a bird composes its nest.”54

      Thus the greatest conceptions of thought, prepared, so to say, by former sensations, and by exquisite organic sensibility, suddenly burst forth and develop by unconscious cerebration. Thus also may be explained the profound convictions of prophets, saints, and demoniacs, as well as the impulsive acts of the insane.

       Somnambulism.– Bettinelli wrote: “Poetry may almost be called a dream which is accomplished in the presence of reason, which floats above it with open eyes.” This definition is the more exact since many poets have composed their poems in a dream or half-dream. Goethe often said that a certain cerebral irritation is necessary to the poet; many of his poems were, in fact, composed in a state bordering on somnambulism. Klopstock declared that he had received several inspirations for his poems in dreams. Voltaire conceived during sleep one of the books of his Henriade; Sardini, a theory on the flageolet; Seckendorf, his beautiful ode to imagination, which in its harmony reflects its origin. Newton and Cardan resolved mathematical problems in dreams. Nodier composed Lydia, together with a complete theory of future destiny, as the result of dreams which “succeeded each other,” he wrote, “with such redoubled energy, from night to night, that the idea transformed itself into a conviction.” Muratori, many years after he had ceased to write verse, improvised in a dream a Latin pentameter. It is said that La Fontaine composed in a dream his Deux Pigeons, and that Condillac completed during sleep a lesson interrupted in his waking hours.55 Coleridge’s Kubla Khan was composed, in ill health, during a profound sleep produced by an opiate; he was only able to recall fifty-four lines. Holde’s Phantasie was composed under somewhat similar conditions.

       Genius in Inspiration.– It is very true that nothing so much resembles a person attacked by madness as a man of genius when meditating and moulding his conceptions. Aut insanit homo aut versus facit. According to Réveillé-Parise, the man of genius exhibits a small contracted pulse, pale, cold skin, a hot, feverish head, brilliant, wild, injected eyes. After the moment of composition it often happens that the author himself no longer understands what he wrote a short time before. Marini, when writing his Adone, did not feel a serious burn of the foot. Tasso, during composition, was like a man possessed. Lagrange felt his pulse become irregular while he wrote. Alfieri’s sight was troubled. Some, in order to give themselves up to meditation, even put themselves artificially into a state of cerebral semi-congestion. Thus Schiller plunged his feet into ice. Pitt and Fox prepared their speeches after excessive indulgence in porter. Paisiello composed beneath a mountain of coverlets. Descartes buried his head in a sofa. Bonnet retired into a cold room with his head enveloped in hot cloths. Cujas worked lying prone on the carpet. It was said of Leibnitz that he “meditated horizontally,” such being the attitude necessary to enable him to give himself up to the labour of thought. Milton composed with his head leaning over his easy-chair.56 Thomas and Rossini composed in their beds. Rousseau meditated with his head in the full glare of the sun.57 Shelley lay on the hearthrug with his head close to the fire. All these are instinctive methods for augmenting momentarily the cerebral circulation at the expense of the general circulation.

      It is known that very often the great conceptions of thinkers have been organized, or at all events have taken their start, in the shock of a special sensation which produced on the intelligence the effect of a drop of salt water on a well-prepared voltaic pile. All great discoveries have been occasioned, according to Moleschott’s remark, by a simple sensation.58 Some frogs which were to furnish a medicinal broth for Galvani’s wife were the origin of the discovery of galvanism; the movement of a hanging lamp, the fall of an apple, inspired the great systems of Galileo and Newton. Alfieri composed or conceived his tragedies while listening to music, or soon after. A celebrated cantata of Mozart’s Don Giovanni came to him on seeing an orange, which recalled a popular Neapolitan air heard five years before. The sight of a porter suggested to Leonardo da Vinci his celebrated Giuda. The movements of his model suggested to Thorwaldsen the attitude of his Seated Angel. Salvator Rosa owed his first grandiose inspirations to the scenes of Posilipo. Hogarth conceived his grotesque scenes in a Highgate tavern, after his nose had been broken in a dispute with a drunkard. Milton, Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, liked to hear music before beginning to work. Bourdaloue tried an air on the violin before writing one of his immortal sermons. Reading one of Spenser’s odes aroused the poetic vocation in Cowley. A boiling teakettle suggested to Watt the idea of the steam-engine.

      In the same way a sensation is the point of departure of the terrible deeds produced by impulsive mania. Humboldt’s nursemaid confessed that the sight of the fresh and delicate flesh of his child irresistibly impelled her to bite it. Many persons, at the sight of a hatchet, a flame, a corpse, have been drawn to murder, incendiarism, or the profanation of cemeteries.

      It must be added that inspiration is often transformed into a real hallucination; in fact, as Bettinelli well says, the man of genius sees the objects which his imagination presents to him. Dickens and Kleist grieved over the fates of their heroes. Kleist was found in tears just after finishing one of his tragedies: “She is dead,” he said. Schiller was as much moved by the adventures of his personages as by real events.59 T. Grossi told Verga that in describing the apparition of Prina, he saw the figure come before him, and was obliged to relight his lamp to make it disappear.60 Brierre de Boismont tells us that the painter Martina really saw the pictures he imagined. One day, some one having come between him and the hallucination, he asked this person to move so that he might go on with his picture.61

       Contrast, Intermittence, Double Personality.– When the moment of inspiration is over, the man of genius becomes an ordinary man, if he does not descend lower; in the same way personal inequality, СКАЧАТЬ