The Man of Genius

“September 7, 1852, 7 a.m. Lancinating pain in the eyes, acute suffering in the eyelids. Pressure on the temples, principally on the left, eyes constantly watering, larynx contracted; a horrible, never-ceasing devouring hunger, which seems to make me start. I am seized by an anger which makes me seem mad in the eyes of others. If I could still cry out, that would relieve me; I am boiling over with anger, and I look wild. It is as though I had a little saw inside my head. Always this motion of sawing – of a wheel which keeps turning and carries me with it. My bones feel to me like dead wood which burns like logwood.

“September 8, 1852. The whole day without having been able to do anything. My forehead seemed encircled with a tight iron band. I went to bed with a feeling of deep depression. Fear overpowers me – sometimes a feeling of hatred – a very little excusable jealousy of those who can act freely and work. I have in my back something like little strings pulling in all directions, making music like an accordion. It is torturing. The strongest man would fall dead with terror, if he could see the reality of a person in my state of health… And they laugh at me… The doctors refuse to believe in my sufferings. There are moments when all that I have ever seen in my life is before my eyes at once. I feel myself lifted into the air or up to the roofs; I feel a horror of myself. It is like an old painting by Rembrandt etched in aqua fortis.

“Dreams.– Dead horses, headless, dismembered – horrors of all kinds… Then there are members of my family who appear to me; but everything I see is distorted and reduced in size; there is, as it were, a camera obscura in me, and the reflector shows me everything in miniature. I admit that I may be insane – but you, too, must admit at least that I am very ill,” &c.

It is known, says Paulhan,295 that with some dementia patients, certain faculties remain intact; they can, for instance, play at cards or draughts, though their mind in general may be quite disorganized. The same is found to be the case with idiots. Griesinger saw, in the Earlswood Asylum, a young man who had made, all by himself, a remarkable model of a man-of-war. This individual’s intelligence was very limited; he had no idea whatever of numbers. “It more frequently happens,” adds the author, “that complete idiots execute fairly good work in drawing or painting. In such cases, it is, of course, only a mechanical talent.”

Esquirol reports the case of a general suffering from mania, whose “delusions persist throughout the summer, with some lucid intervals, during which the patient writes comedies and vaudevilles which betray the incoherence of his ideas… In spite of the confusion of his mind, the general conceives an idea for the perfecting of a certain weapon, draws designs, and manifests the desire of getting a model constructed.” One day, he went to the foundry, and, on his return, was seized with agitation and delirium. A while later, he paid a second visit to the foundry, and “the model having been executed, gave an order for fifty thousand. This order was the only act which gave the founder reason to suspect the general’s malady. His invention was afterwards officially adopted.” Thus, in the midst of general incoherence, an important series of ideas was maintained and carried out to the end.

A writer not practised in mental disease, Esquiros whom we have already had occasion to quote, mentions the following facts, which are very significant: —

“Dr. Leuret,” he says, “related to us the history of a patient in the Bicêtre who, during his malady, had shown a remarkable talent for writing, though when in good health he would have been quite incapable of doing as much. ‘I am not quite cured,’ he said to the physician, who thought him convalescent. ‘I am still too clever for that. When I am well, I take a week to write a letter. In my natural condition I am stupid; wait till I become so again.’ The same observer also cites the case of a merchant whose affairs were in danger. During his illness, this man found means to re-establish them; the result of each of his attacks was the perfecting of some mechanism, or the invention of some means for facilitating his industry; and at the end of this invaluable insanity, he was found to have recovered both his reason and his fortune.

“We have been shown at Montmartre, in Dr. Blanche’s establishment, traces of charcoal-drawings on a wall. These half-effaced figures, one of which represented the Queen of Sheba, and the other some king, were the work of a distinguished young author, who has since recovered his reason. This illness had developed a new talent, which was non-existent, or at least played a most insignificant part, while he was in health.

“It is said that Marion Delorme met, in a madhouse, with the first man who conceived the idea of applying the forces of steam to the needs of industry, Salomon de Caus. Talents created by disease forsake the individual, for the most part, at the same time as the disease itself.”296

I had under treatment at Pavia, a peasant lad, aged twelve, who composed extremely original musical melodies, and bestowed on his companions in misfortune nicknames which fitted so well that they always kept them. With him was a little old man afflicted with rickets and pellagra who, when asked whether he was happy, replied, like a philosopher of ancient Greece, “All men are happy, even the rich, if they are only willing.”

Many of my pupils still remember B – , by turns musician, servant, porter, keeper of a cookshop, tinman, soldier, public letter-writer, but always unfortunate. He left us an autobiography, which, apart from a few orthographical mistakes in spelling, would be quite worth printing; and he asked me for his discharge in terms which, for an uneducated working man, were wanting neither in beauty nor in originality.

Not long ago I heard a poor hawker of sponges, when insane, thus conjecture and sum up the cardinal idea of the circulation of life: “We do not die. When the soul is worn out it melts, and is turned into another shape. In fact, when my father had buried a dead mule, we afterwards saw mushrooms growing in great numbers on the same spot, and the potatoes in the same place, which were formerly very small, grew to twice their usual size.”

Thus a vulgar mind, enlightened by the energy of mania, stumbles on theories which the greatest thinkers arrive at with difficulty.

G. B., a maniac, nephew of a celebrated author, said to me one day, when I hesitated before permitting him to ride a somewhat skittish horse, “No fear, doctor —similia similibus.”

M. G., a merchant, suffering from melancholia, said to some one who had called him “Count” by mistake, “What count? I have kept plenty of accounts– I know no others!”

“Why will you not shake hands with me?” I asked Madame M – , a sufferer from moral insanity, one morning, “Are you angry with me?” “Pallida virgo cupit, rubicunda recusat,” she replied. Another time I asked her, “Do you hope to leave this establishment soon?” She answered, “I shall leave it when those outside have recovered their reason.”

V – , a thief, and insane, made his escape during a walk which had been permitted him. When overtaken and reproached with having betrayed the confidence reposed in him, he replied, “I only wanted to try whether my knees were stiff or not.”

B. B., a maniac woman, over seventy years of age, who had lost all her teeth, made obscene remarks. When remonstrated with for using expressions so unbecoming to her age, she said, “Old! old! Why, do you not see that I have not yet cut my teeth?”

N. B., who became a poet through insanity, writes with much subtlety, but his verses do not scan. His companion, G. R., once told us that he lengthened the feet on purpose, so that, being well planted, they should not be able to escape his memory.297

Synthesis.– The most original and general characteristic of the poets who are the product of insanity is precisely the forcing of the mind to a state so at variance with previous conditions of life and culture. In many, it is true, the only result of this effect is a continuous flow of epigrams, plays upon words, and assonances – puns, in short, such as are praised in society as evidences of wit; though it is no wonder that they should abound in lunatic asylums, being, as they are, the very negative of truth and logic. This tendency, or, at least, the tendency to alliteration and rhyme, is evident in all their works, even those written in prose. Yet, on the other hand, we not rarely meet with improvised philosophers, who in their utterances reproduce parts of the systems of the Positivists, of Epicurus and Comte; the brain, quickened by insanity, being able to seize upon those salient points of truth from which the systems named took their rise, and that because these men have less hatred of novelty, and more originality, than normal people.

Their most salient characteristic – originality heightened to the point of absurdity – is due to the overflowing of the imagination which can no longer be restrained within the bounds of logic and common sense. It is natural that the mind which has been most injured, or is by nature the most deficient, should exceed most in this respect. We need only refer now to the pretended metamorphosis and journeyings of the soul of P – of Siena, and the writings of M – of Pesaro, who had carried his passion for the Greek language so far as to invent a new idiom, in which gravel was called lithiasis, the sea, equor, convictions, agonies, the world, a vase.298

Their more rapid association of ideas, and livelier imagination, often enable them to solve problems which more cultivated, but normal, intellects can scarcely attack with success.

Another peculiarity characteristic of them, but which, be it noted, is often found also in the writings of criminals, is the tendency to speak of themselves or their companions, and to write autobiographies, abandoning themselves without restraint to the torrent of ambition or love. But with insane persons the form of expression is much less artificial than that used by criminals, in whose writings one finds more coherence but less creative power and originality.

The use of assonances in place of reasoning is entirely peculiar to the insane, as also the use of special words, or words used in a peculiar sense, and the exaggerated importance attributed to the most trifling things.

“C’est le travail des fous d’épuiser leurs cervellesSur des riens fatigants, sur quelques bagatelles,”

said Hécart in his Gualana, which, by the way, is only the work of a mattoid.

Many of them, though fewer than among the mattoids, mingle drawing with poetry, as though neither art by itself were sufficient for the impetus of their ideas. Their style lacks the polish which comes of much elaboration, but abounds in incisive and vigorous sentences, so that it often equals, and even surpasses, the productions of calmer and more refined art.

Passion.– This should not cause surprise any more than the tendency to versification in individuals who, before losing their reason, were ignorant of prosody, when it is remembered that poetry – as Byron well said and demonstrated in his own person – is the expression of passion under excitement, and grows in vigour and effectiveness as the excitement increases.

That rhythm can relieve and express abnormal psychic excitement much better than prose can be deduced from the poetic inspirations of drunkards, as well as from the spontaneous affirmations of insane poets.

“Je vous-écris en vers, n’en soyez point choqué,En prose je ne sais exprimer ma pensée,”

an insane criminal wrote to Arboux, clearly explaining this tendency.299

A lunatic at Pesaro gave this reason for some of his verses: “Poetry is a spontaneous emanation from the mind – poetry is the cry of the soul pierced by a thousand griefs.”300

Atavism.– Vico had already guessed, and Buckle, at a later date, has admirably explained that, among primitive peoples, all thinkers and sages were poets. In fact, the earliest histories were put into a fixed form and handed down by the bards of Gaul, or by the Toolkolos of Tibet; likewise in America,301 the Deccan,302 Africa,303 and Oceania.304 Ellis writes that the Polynesians have recourse to their ballads as to historical documents when any question arises regarding the deeds of their ancestors. And as in ancient India, so also in mediæval Europe, the sciences were explained in verse. Montucla speaks of a mathematical treatise of the thirteenth century written in verse; an Englishman versified the Institutes of Justinian, and a Pole wrote a rhyming work on heraldry.

History, properly so called, though written in prose was in the Middle Ages no less fabulous and full of fantastic absurdities and puns than poetry. Troyes was derived from Troy, Nuremberg from Nero, the Saracens from Sara; Mahomet was a cardinal; Naples was built on a foundation of eggs; after certain victories of the Turks there were children born with 22 or 23 instead of 32 teeth. Turpin, the Macaulay of those times, relates in his chronicle that the walls of Pampeluna fell as soon as the followers of Charlemagne had begun to pray. Ferrante was 20 cubits in height, and had a face a cubit in length. In short, the history of those days was the same as the fairy tales still told at rustic firesides, from which we can gather nothing but the uniform quality of human imbecility which becomes more fantastic the more ignorant it is.

A tendency to revert to ancestral conditions appears even in the prose of the mattoid or insane. Thus Tanzi and Riva,305 speaking of some works by monomaniacs write as follows: —

“For the demonomaniacs of a hundred years ago – belated representatives of mediæval mysticism, who typify the ancient form of paranoia– are now substituted the modern paranoiacs; new alchemists who, with their pseudo-scientific delusions, and their vainglorious phrases, revive in our day the style and thoughts of Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, and other men of the sixteenth century who were strange, but learned and venerated students of occult science and magic. Paranoia follows the path of humanity through the centuries, undergoing, with a certain delay, all its changes, though often separated from it only by a slight interval. As an example of this latter kind we may take the following passage from an extremely long autobiography, written by a paranoiac, in which the acute and accurate account of his own adventures is found in company with insane statements like the following: —

“ ‘It ought to be known that the aristocracy, or persons descended from them, secrete a certain, as yet undefined, substance which produces electricity. In this way it is easy to understand how there can be communication between one nobly-born person and another – if one thinks for a moment of the telegraph and its electric batteries. In this manner two nobles, being placed in communication, act upon each other as electric batteries, transmitting every movement and thought by means of a thread, as if the idea and way of thinking were so many strokes on the part of the manipulator of the telegraphic instrument. The system, as may be understood, is infinitesimal, for thought, transmitted from one side, forms on the other as many infinitesimal points as there are atoms forming the idea.’ ”

MM. Riva and Tanzi observe that many of the ancient alchemists expressed themselves in precisely the same way.

“So,” they continue, “nothing could be easier than to recognize a born paranoiac in the King of Bavaria,306 misanthropic, vain, ambitious, mystical, romantic, voluble, subject to hallucinations, eccentric in his acts, his habits, his judgment and his conduct, perverted in his æsthetic tastes, in love, in the ethical sentiments, exaggerated and unbalanced in everything. He was so profoundly impressed with the stamp of mediæval atavism that political journalism – hitting the mark with unconsciously scientific correctness – designated him as a Sir Percival come to life again.”

The pathologic and atavistic origin of many of the literary productions of the insane explains the frequent inequalities of the style, which is as feeble and slovenly when the excitement ceases, as it was at first splendid and vigorous, and the abrupt transition from stanzas worthy of a classic author to the scribbling of an idiot. This origin also accounts for the extreme contradictions to be found in the writings of one and the same author – as is seen in Farina and Lazzaretti – their fondness for aphorisms and detached periods, the abrupt and disconnected character of their style – which is both primitive and childish – and the monotonous repetition of certain words or phrases, recalling the verses of the Bible or the suras of the Koran. It also explains their propensity for continually dwelling on the same subject, nearly always connected with matters out of the line of their own studies, and (what is more important) of no advantage to themselves or others. Their works are nearly always autobiographical.

Conclusion.– Summing up what has been said, there is a special organization in all the writings of madmen, even the absurdest – a true finality, as Paulhan calls it.

“I understand by this,” he says, “that, as soon as one psychic element exists, it tends to call forth others. It is not the totality of the mind – if it is not itself co-ordinated – which determines the appearance of phenomena, but the elements. That is to say, what is already systematized in the mind tends to acquire a more complete systematization. If it is a sensation, it will tend to awaken particular, precise, and appropriate ideas or acts; if it is a general tendency – a pre-established mental organization – it will tend to make the mind interpret in such or such a manner the sensations which reach it.

“As every psychic element is systematic, and as, when finality is not to be found in the totality of a psychic organism, or of a series of actions, or a theory, or an argument, or a passion (and in this case all these facts are not really psychic elements), it exists in the elements. This tendency on the part of the elements to systematic association, exercising itself without higher control, without general direction, ends in producing numerous discords in the totality of psychic operations. The result is somewhat as though all the musicians in an orchestra were to play different tunes in as many different keys.

“When, in the constitution of society, an association is dissolved, a law of finality is broken and the elements (the human beings who formed the association) are restored to individual life. They then enter upon new forms of social activity. If, for example, a factory is closed, the men and women who worked there and were united by a systematic association, go to work again, each on his or her own account, either separately, or in new associations, in which some of them may chance to meet again. The same thing takes place with the psychic elements, wherever, from one cause or another, the bond which united them is broken; they enter into new associations where they work, each on its own account, at the risk of producing nothing but incoherence. This isolated activity of the elements is met with in a striking manner in mental disease.

“The pun is a form of this disorder. On analyzing it, we find that it consists essentially in this: A sound employed in a particular complexus (consisting of the sound, the ideas, and the systematized images constituting the signification of the sound), itself forming part of a more complex system, separates itself at least partially from these two systems, and becomes associated with other systems of ideas and images. The association through a resemblance between certain parts of the words – for example, by means of rhyme – is an essentially analogous fact. Here it is a sound which, systematically associated with other sounds, allies itself at the same time with different sounds, in order to form simultaneously, or at short intervals, systems which do not harmonise together. Among the latter class may be reckoned the greater number of lapsus linguæ and lapsus calami.

“Examples of this abound. M. Regnard has cited several pieces of verse written by madmen, which show in a high degree the mode of elementary systematic association. Sometimes one observes a remnant of intellectual co-ordination, as in the following lines, in which, however, incoherence is also abundantly manifested: —

“ ‘J’aime le feu de la fougèreNe durant pas, mais pétillant;La fumée est âcre de goût.Mais des cendres de: là Fou j’erreOn peut tirer en s’amusantDeux sous d’un sel qui lave tout,De soude, un sel qui lave tout.’307

At other times sense disappears altogether, as in these lines, also quoted by M. Regnard, and composed by a patient whose mania was that of self-conceit, and who had been insane for twenty-five years: —

“ ‘Magnan! à mon souhait, médecin Magnan ime,Adore de mon sort la force qui … t’anime…Admirant son beau crâne … autre remord de Phèdre,Nargue Legrand du Saulle et sois un Grand du Cèdre.’308

A good example of this phenomenon is afforded by the patient, observed by Trousseau, who wrote down more than five hundred pages of words connected with one another by assonance or sense: Chat, chapeau, peau, manchon, main, manches, robe, rose, jupon, pompon, bouquet, bouquetière, cimetière, bière, &c.309

“One need not be either insane or imbecile to make puns and associate words together on account of superficial resemblances. In this case, instead of being a permanent dissociation of the more complex systems, it is a momentary dissociation which gives rise to the phenomenon. Nothing is more natural – when one feels the need of unbending one’s mind – than to restore to themselves the psychic elements retained in complex systems not necessary to life, and to allow them a liberty which they sometimes abuse. To continue the above comparison – which may be carried a long way – the workmen in the factory are not always at work; they have their moments of rest and recreation, and then usually occupy themselves with less complex systems.”310

Those most prone to these rhythmic manifestations are, in my opinion (which is borne out by Adriani and Toselli), chronic maniacs, alcoholic maniacs, and paralytics in the early stage – in whom, however, there is apt to be more rhyme than verse, and more verse than sense. Melancholy patients would take the next place, owing to the small number of these found in asylums; they seem to find in versification a relief from their habitual silence, or a defence against imaginary persecutions. This is a much more important fact than would appear at first sight, when connected with another, already well known, viz., that all great thinkers and poets are constitutionally inclined to melancholy.

CHAPTER II.

Art in the Insane

Geographical distribution – Profession – Influence of the special form of alienation – Originality – Eccentricity – Symbolism – Obscenity – Criminality and moral insanity – Uselessness – Insanity as a subject – Absurdity – Uniformity – Summary – Music among the insane.

THOUGH the artistic tendency is very pronounced, and might almost be called a general characteristic, in some varieties of insanity, few authors have paid sufficient attention to it.

The only exceptions are Tardieu, who, in his Études Médico-Légales sur la folie, remarks that the drawings of the insane are of great importance from the point of view of forensic medicine; Simon,311 who, in speaking of drawing among megalomaniacs, observes that the imagination appears in them in inverse proportion to the intellect; and Frigerio, who some time later gave a survey of the subject in an excellent essay, published in the Diario del Manicomio di Pesaro.312 Since then I have been able to make a completer examination of this subject, thanks to the curious documents supplied to me by MM. Riva, Toselli, Lolli, Frigerio, Tamburini, Maragliano, and Maxime du Camp.

By comparing their observations with my own, I find a total of 108 mental patients with artistic tendencies, of which: – 46 were towards painting, 10 sculpture, 11 engraving, 8 music, 5 architecture, 28 poetry.