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Genius and insanity. Parallel between great people and lunatics

Genius and insanity. Parallel between great people and lunatics

25.02.2019

Lombroso Cesare

Genius and insanity

Cesare Lombroso

Genius and insanity

Parallel between great people and lunatics

I. Introduction to the historical review.

II. The similarity of people of genius with crazy people in a physiological sense.

III. The influence of atmospheric phenomena on brilliant people and on lunatics.

IV. Influence meteorological phenomena for the birth of brilliant people.

V. The influence of race and heredity on genius and insanity.

VI. Men of genius who suffered from insanity: Harrington, Bolian, Kodazzi, Ampère, Kent, Schumann, Tasso, Cardano, Swift, Newton, Rousseau, Lenau, Szcheni, Schopenhauer.

VII. Examples of geniuses, poets, humorists and others among the crazy.

VIII. Crazy artists and artists.

IX. Mattoid graphomaniacs, or psychopaths.

X. "Prophets" and revolutionaries. Savonarola. Lazaretti.

XI. Special features of brilliant people who suffered at the same time and insanity.

XII. Exceptional Features brilliant people.

Conclusion

When, many years ago, being, as it were, under the influence of raptus, during which the relationship between genius and insanity was clearly presented to me as if in a mirror, I wrote the first chapters of this book in 12 days *. I confess that even to myself it was not clear what serious practical conclusions the theory I had created could lead to. I did not expect that it would provide a clue to the mysterious essence of genius and to explain those strange religious manias that were sometimes the core of great historical events, that it would help to establish a new point of view for evaluating artistic creativity geniuses by comparing their works in the field of art and literature with the same works of lunatics and, finally, that it will render enormous services to forensic medicine.

[Genius and insanity. Introduction to the Psychiatric Clinic Course taught at Pavian University. Milan, 1863.]

Little by little, the documentary works of Adriani, Paoli, Frigerio, Maxime Dukan, Reeve and Verg on the development of artistic talents among the lunatics, as well as the high-profile trials of recent times - Mangione, Passanante, Lazaretti, Guiteau, who proved to everyone that the mania for writing is not only a kind of psychiatric curiosity, but a directly special form of mental illness, and that the subjects possessed by it, apparently completely normal, are all the more dangerous members of society that it is difficult to immediately notice in them mental disorder meanwhile, they are capable of extreme fanaticism and, like religious maniacs, can even cause historical upheavals in the life of peoples. That is why it seemed to me extremely useful to revisit the old topic on the basis of the latest data and on a larger scale. I will not hide the fact that I even consider him bold, in view of the bitterness with which the rhetoricians of science and politics, with the ease of newspaper scribblers and in the interests of one party or another, try to ridicule people who prove contrary to the nonsense of metaphysicians, but with scientific data in their hands completely the insanity, due to mental illness, of some of the so-called "criminals"; and the mental disorder of many persons who have hitherto been considered, according to the generally accepted opinion, to be perfectly sane.

To the caustic mockery and petty cavils of our opponents, we, following the example of that original, who, in order to convince people who denied the movement, moved in their presence, will only respond by collecting new facts and new evidence in favor of our theory. What could be more convincing than facts, and who would deny them? Unless only ignorant ones, but their triumph will soon come to an end.

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL REVIEW

In the highest degree, our duty is sad - with the help of inexorable analysis, to destroy and destroy one after another those bright, iridescent illusions with which man deceives and exalts himself in his arrogant insignificance; it is all the more sad that in return for these pleasant delusions, these idols, which have served for so long as an object of adoration, we can offer him nothing but a cold smile of compassion. But the servant of truth must inevitably obey its laws. Thus, due to fatal necessity, he comes to the conclusion that love is, in essence, nothing but the mutual attraction of stamens and pistils ... and thoughts are a simple movement of molecules. Even genius - this is the only sovereign power that belongs to a person, before which one can kneel without blushing - even many psychiatrists put it on the same level with a propensity to crime, even in it they see only one of the teratological (ugly) forms of the human mind, one of the varieties of madness. And note that such profanity, such blasphemy is allowed not only by doctors, and not exclusively only in our skeptical time.

Even Aristotle, this great founder and teacher of all philosophers, noted that under the influence of rushes of blood to the head, "many individuals become poets, prophets or soothsayers, and that Mark of Syracuse wrote pretty good poems while he was a maniac, but, having recovered, completely lost this ability ".

He says in another place: “It is noticed that famous poets, politicians and artists were partly melancholic and mad, partly misanthropes, like Bellerophon. Even at the present time we see the same thing in Socrates, Empedocles, Plato and others, and most strongly in poets. People with cold, abundant blood (lit. bile) are timid and limited, and people with hot blood are mobile, witty and talkative.

Plato argues that “delusion is not a disease at all, but, on the contrary, the greatest of the blessings bestowed upon us by the gods; under the influence of delusion, the Delphic and Dodonic soothsayers rendered thousands of services to the citizens of Greece, while in their ordinary state they brought little or no use at all. Many times it happened that when the gods sent epidemics to the peoples, then one of the mortals fell into sacred delirium and, under the influence of his prophet, indicated a cure for these diseases. the ability to express in beautiful poetic form the exploits of heroes, which contributes to the enlightenment of future generations.

Democritus even directly said that he does not consider a person who is of sound mind to be a true poet. Excludit sanos, Helicone poetas.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Recognition of the close connection and multiple correlations between genius and insanity is now deeply rooted among scientists. This happened thanks, firstly, to the scientific works of Verg, Moreau, Schilling and Maudsley, and secondly, to the studies of the skulls of great people carried out by Brock, Canestrini, Turner, Vogt, Kupfner, Catrfage and Mantegazza. To some extent my book, which is now in its third edition, may have contributed to this, but a particularly important role was played in this case by the distribution of many journals-diaries, which a few years ago began to be published in Italy by almost all the best hospitals for the insane.

Almost every issue of these curious entries contained new factual data confirming the correctness of the thesis, which for so long was considered an absurd paradox, namely, that the mentally ill only rarely show that complete mental breakdown that the crowd ascribes to them, and that, on the contrary, the affliction itself often causes them an unusual vivacity of mind. However, although this theory is no longer considered ridiculous or false at the present time, however, many still call it sterile, cruel and practically inapplicable. I do not argue that it should seem sad, but there is a lot of sadness in the phenomena of nature, from our point of view - for example, the fact of the simultaneous growth of nettles and roses, violets and wormwood.

However, does a botanist resent such a phenomenon, deny it? No, he takes note of it, studies it, describes it, and, of course, no one will blame him for this.

Challenge the benefit and the important practical value The latest research in the field of psychiatry can only be done by someone who does not know their results, who does not know that it was thanks to such research that it was possible not only to determine, at least in part, the essence and origin of genius, but also to dispel forever that fatal error, on the basis of which madmen, and consequently, only subjects who had completely lost their minds were considered insane, as a result of which thousands of innocent victims of mental disorder were betrayed as criminals into the hands of executioners.

FOREWORD TO THE FOURTH EDITION

When many years ago, as if under the influence of an influx from above (raptus), the correlation between genius and insanity appeared to me as if in a mirror, and I wrote the first chapters of this book in 12 days, I confess that even I myself was not clear to what serious practical conclusions the theory I created can lead to. I did not expect that it would give the key to understanding the mysterious nature of genius and explaining those strange religious manias that were sometimes the core of great historical events that it will help to establish a new point of view for evaluating the artistic creativity of geniuses by comparing their works in the field of art and literature with similar works of lunatics and, finally, that it will render enormous services to forensic medicine.

In the course of time, I was convinced of such an important practical significance of the new theory both by the documentary works of Adriani, Paoli, Frigerio, Maxime Dukan, Riva and Verg regarding the development of creative talents among the lunatics, as well as by the high-profile processes of recent times - Mangione, Passanante, Lazaretti, Guiteau, which proved to everyone that the mania for writing is not only a kind of psychiatric curiosity, but in the literal sense a special form of mental illness, and that the subjects possessed by it, outwardly completely normal, are all the more dangerous members of society because it is difficult to immediately notice a mental disorder in them, and meanwhile they are capable of extreme fanaticism and, like religious maniacs, can even cause historical upheavals in the life of peoples. That is why it seemed to me extremely useful to revisit the old topic on the basis of the latest data and on a larger scale. I will not hide the fact that I even consider him bold, in view of the bitterness with which the rhetoricians of science and politics, with the ease of newspaper scribblers and in the interests of one party or another, try to ridicule people who prove contrary to the delusions of metaphysicians, but with scientific data in their hands, complete insanity due to the mental illness of some of the so-called criminals; and the mental disorder of many persons who have hitherto been considered, according to the generally accepted opinion, to be perfectly sane. To the caustic mockery and petty cavils of our opponents, we, following the example of that original, who, in order to convince people who denied the movement, moved in their presence, will only respond by collecting new facts and new evidence in favor of our theory. What could be more convincing than facts, and who would deny them? Unless only ignorant ones, but their triumph will soon come to an end.

FOREWORD TO THE RUSSIAN EDITION

Lombroso's work "Genius and Madness" is already partly known to the Russian public from magazine reviews and reports. The reviews that have appeared about this book have singled it out from a number of others similar to it so much that an attempt to translate the psychiatric study of the Italian scientist into Russian needs neither justification nor explanation.

We only consider it necessary to make the reservation that, due to unavoidable circumstances, some minor cuts have been made in places in the book and those details that are interesting only for specialists, details that are usually very frightening to the profane, have been omitted. Such details, however, are not particularly numerous in Lombroso's work, which has a purely journalistic character and is intended as much for scientists as for the general public. The cuts concerned mainly minor forensic details and quotations from literary works insane, almost untranslatable into a foreign language, as well as partly that factual material that matters only to the author's compatriots and often even obscures the meaning of the positions he proves. In addition, the article on "The geographical distribution of artists in Italy and scientific researchers in France" placed in the appendix was excluded as too cluttered with the names of minor and tertiary "celebrities", dry in presentation and representing exclusively local interest.

It would be desirable to fill these abbreviations with data from Russian life, but they are not in the hands of private individuals, and those psychiatrists whom the publisher asked to supply the translation with appropriate notes could not do this successfully: some - for lack of free time, others - due to ignorance of the Italian language or disagreement with the main provisions of the author.

Lombroso revealed the purpose and practical significance of his research with sufficient completeness in two prefaces to various editions of the book and in the text itself. No matter how extensive the task he set himself, however, recently it has been further expanded by the German psychiatrist Radstock, who found it possible to apply such a theory to a branch of knowledge that has been little studied by psychiatrists, but especially important for society - pedagogy.

A small pamphlet by Radstock, which appeared last year under the title "Genie und Wahnsinn," deals with the same subject as Lombroso's, but is an independent study that does not even refer to the writings of Italian psychiatrists. Meanwhile, Radstock points out in it approximately the same facts from the life of brilliant people and draws the same parallels between genius and insanity, as does the Milanese professor, and only in practical application He sees one more goal of such studies, namely, he considers them useful for the self-education of talented individuals and for guiding teachers. Here are the final pages of his pamphlet:

"Studies on the points of contact between genius and insanity beyond scientific interest also have practical purposes. Many of the highly gifted people, having become acquainted with the life of their great predecessors, can draw from it more than one instructive example. In addition, indications of the dangers associated with outstanding abilities should serve as a warning to geniuses and make them aware of the need to avoid all excitement and counteract, as far as possible, the harmful influence of passions. History gives many examples of how eccentric people, prone to all sorts of excesses, then went out on Right way solely through the vigorous struggle with their passions and perseverance in achieving this goal. But such self-education still presents too great difficulties, especially in adulthood. It is much easier for parents and educators to achieve good results. younger generation for whom, therefore, acquaintance with the normal and morbid manifestations of brain activity is especially important. First of all, parents should know that their example has an enormous influence on their children, just as the hysteria of a mother always passes on to her daughters, and all the bad habits of the parents, all their mental abnormalities will certainly be reflected in the children, including by virtue of unconscious imitation. Further, educators should never seek to produce so-called phenomenal children (Wunderkinder) from their pupils, and for this purpose burden their brain with overwork, as a result of which the physical development of the child is usually retarded and a predisposition to mental illness appears. Exorbitant exactingness, harshness of treatment and lack of affection also have a harmful effect on children, as a result of which a child who does not find satisfaction for his loving heart among those around him gets a tendency to fantasize and daydream. But perhaps the most detrimental effect on children is the excessive indulgence of parents, which gives full scope for the development of stubbornness, whims and unrestrained whims of the child. From such children, people usually come out who are incapable of either self-control or a stubborn struggle with the hardships of life: they either die at the first encounter with harsh reality, or turn into soulless egoists.

Since it is gifted, brilliant personalities who are most susceptible to mental suffering, it is they who must be protected from childhood, if possible, from various harmful influences, from everything that affects the nervous system too strongly: all excitations, passions, impulses should be restrained as much as possible , pride should be put within the proper limits, and vanity and self-conceit should be eradicated in the most thorough way. The educator is obliged to prevent the richly gifted mind from becoming divided or one-sided and to instill in his pet a love of serious virtues.

No less important foundations of proper education are also self-control and willpower - qualities that give a person the opportunity to resist any harmful influences and often even overcome the first bouts of mental illness, even if it is hereditary. However, a firm will is acquired slowly, through long exercise, and the character itself is not formed immediately, from separate, suddenly arising drives and intentions, but gradually and mainly as a result of habit. Herbart rightly noted that both our mental functions and the will have their own memory, thanks to which ordinary, often repeated manifestations of the will require less effort than rare, exceptional ones. The character reaches its full development, of course, only when faced with life's storms, but its foundation is laid at the hearth.

Psychology and psychiatry are thus, according to Radstock, reliable guides in the matter of education; but to acquaint the public with the abnormalities of the brain activity of geniuses and lunatics, not so much his own pamphlet, which is only a collection of contradictory facts, as a completely processed and beautifully presented study of Lombroso can serve.

K. Tetyushinova

GENIUS AND CRAZY

I
INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL REVIEW

In the highest degree, our duty is sad - through inexorable analysis, to destroy and destroy one after another those bright, iridescent illusions with which man deceives and exalts himself in his arrogant insignificance; it is all the more sad that in return for these pleasant delusions, these idols, which have served for so long as an object of adoration, we can offer him nothing but a cold smile of compassion. But the servant of truth must strictly obey its laws. Thus, due to fatal necessity, he comes to the conclusion that love is, in essence, nothing more than the mutual attraction of stamens and pistils ... and thoughts are a simple movement of molecules. Even genius - this is the only sovereign power that belongs to a person, before which one can kneel without blushing - even many psychiatrists put it on the same level with a propensity to crime, even in it they see only one of the teratological (ugly) forms of the human mind, one kind of madness. And note that such profanity, such blasphemy is allowed not only by doctors, and not exclusively only in our skeptical time.

Even Aristotle, this great founder and teacher of all philosophers, noted that under the influence of a rush of blood to the head, “many individuals become poets, prophets or soothsayers, and that Mark of Syracuse wrote pretty good poetry while he was a maniac, but, having recovered, he completely lost this ability ".

He says elsewhere: “It has been observed that famous poets, politicians and artists were partly melancholy and mad, partly misanthropes, like Bellerophon. Even at the present time we see the same thing in Socrates, Empedocles, Plato and others, and most strongly in the poets. People with cold, abundant blood ( letters. bile) are timid and limited, and people with hot blood are mobile, witty and talkative.

Plato argues that “furiousness is not a disease at all, but, on the contrary, the greatest of the blessings bestowed on us by the gods; under the influence of fury, the Delphic and Dodonic soothsayers rendered thousands of services to the citizens of Greece, while in the ordinary state they brought little or no use at all. Many times it happened that when the gods sent epidemics to the peoples, then one of the mortals fell into a sacred ecstasy and, becoming under its influence a prophet, indicated a cure for these diseases. A special kind of frenzy excited by the Muses evokes in the simple and immaculate soul of a person the ability to express the exploits of heroes in beautiful poetic form, which contributes to the enlightenment of future generations.

Democritus even directly said that he does not consider a person who is of sound mind to be a true poet. Excludit sanos, Helicone poetas.

As a result of such views on madness, the ancient peoples treated the lunatics with great respect, considering them inspired from above, which is confirmed, in addition to historical facts, also by the fact that the words mania are in Greek, navi and mesugan are in Hebrew, and nigrata is in Sanskrit, they mean both madness and prophecy.

Felix Plater claims that he knew many people who, while distinguished by remarkable talent in various arts, were at the same time mad. Their insanity was expressed by an absurd passion for praise, as well as strange and indecent acts. Incidentally, Plater met at court an architect, sculptor, and musician of great renown, no doubt crazy. Even more outstanding facts are collected by F. Gazoni in Italy, in "Hospital for the terminally mentally ill". His work was translated (into Italian) by Longoal in 1620. Of the writers closer to us, Pascal has repeatedly said that the greatest genius borders on sheer madness, and subsequently proved this by his own example. The same was confirmed by Hecart with regard to his fellows, scientists and at the same time madmen, like himself. He published his observations in 1823 under the title "Stultiziana, or Brief Bibliography of the Lunatics in Valenciennes, Compiled by a Lunatic". The same subject was dealt with by Delpierre, a passionate bibliophile, in his interesting "Histoire litteraire des fous", 1860, Forg - in an excellent essay, placed in Revue de Paris, 1826, and by an unknown author in Bedlam's Essays ( Sketchers in Bedlam, London, 1873).

Behind Lately Lelu - in Demon de Socrates, 1856, and in Amulet de Pascal, 1846, Verga - in Lipemania del Tasso, 1850, and Lombroso in Pazzia di Cardano, 1856, proved that many brilliant people, such as Swift, Luther, Cardano, Brugam and others, suffered from insanity, hallucinations or were monomaniacs for a long time. Moreau, dwelling with special love on the facts of the least plausible, in his last work "Psychologie morbide" and Schilling in their " Psychiatrische Briefe», 1863, tried to prove with the help of careful, although not always strictly scientific research, that genius is, in any case, something like a nervous abnormality, often turning into real madness. Similar conclusions, approximately, were made by Hagen in his article "On the affinity between genius and madness" ( Ueber die Verwandschaft Genies und Irresein, Berlin, 1877) and partly also by Jurgen Meyer in his excellent monograph Genius and Talent. Both of these scientists, who were trying to establish more precisely the physiology of genius, came, by the most careful analysis of the facts, to the same conclusions that were expressed more than a hundred years ago, rather on the basis of everyday experience than strict observations, the Italian Jesuit Bettinelli in his now completely forgotten , book " Dell'entusiasmo nelle belle arti", Milan, 1769

II
SIMILARITY OF GENIUS PEOPLE WITH THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY CRAZY

Cruel and sad as this kind of paradox may be, but, considering it from a scientific point of view, we will find that in some respects it is quite reasonable, although at first glance it seems absurd.

Many of the great thinkers are subject to, like crazy, convulsive contractions of the muscles and are distinguished by sharp, so-called choreic body movements. So, about Lenau and Montesquieu, they say that on the floor near the tables where they studied, one could notice indentations from the constant twitching of their legs. Buffon, immersed in his thoughts, once climbed the bell tower and descended from there by a rope quite unconsciously, as if in a fit of somnambulism. Santeil, Crebillon, Lombardini had strange facial expressions, similar to grimaces. Napoleon suffered from constant twitching of his right shoulder and lips, and during fits of anger, also of his calves. “I must have been very angry,” he himself once admitted after a heated argument with Lowe, “because I felt my calves tremble, which had not happened to me for a long time.” Peter the Great was prone to twitching of facial muscles, which terribly distorted his face.

“Carducci’s face,” says Mantegazza, “at times resembles a hurricane: lightning flashes from his eyes, and the trembling of muscles is like an earthquake.”

Ampère could not speak otherwise than by walking and gesticulating animatedly. It is known that the normal composition of the urine, and in particular the content of urea in it, changes markedly after manic attacks. The same thing is noticed after intensive mental exercises. Already many years ago, Golding Bird made the observation that an English preacher, who spent the whole week in idleness and only on Sundays delivered sermons with great fervour, on that very day the content of phosphate salts in the urine increased significantly, while on other days it was extremely insignificant. Subsequently, Smith confirmed by many observations that with any mental exertion the amount of urea in the urine increases, and in this respect the analogy between genius and madness seems undoubted.

On the basis of this abnormal abundance of urea, or rather on the basis of this new confirmation of the law of balance between force and matter, which governs the whole world of living beings, other more amazing analogies can be deduced: for example, gray hair and baldness, thinness of the body, as well as disorders muscular and sexual activity, characteristic of all lunatics, are very common among great thinkers. Caesar was afraid pale and thin Cassians. D'Alembert, Fenelon Napoleon were as thin as skeletons in their youth. About Voltaire Segur writes: “Thinness proves how much he works; his emaciated and bent body serves only as a light, almost transparent shell, through which one seems to see the soul and genius of this man.

Paleness has always been considered an accessory and even an adornment of great people. In addition, thinkers, on a par with lunatics, are characterized by: constant overflow of the brain with blood (hyperemia), intense heat in the head and cooling of the limbs, a tendency to acute brain diseases and weak sensitivity to hunger and cold.

About brilliant people, just like about crazy people, it can be said that they remain lonely, cold, indifferent to the duties of a family man and a member of society all their lives. Michelangelo constantly said that his art replaces his wife. Goethe, Heine, Byron, Cellini, Napoleon, Newton, although they did not say this, but by their actions proved something even worse.

Cases are not uncommon when, due to the same causes that so often cause madness, i.e., due to diseases and injuries of the head, the most ordinary people turn into brilliant people. As a child, Viko fell down a very high ladder and crushed his right parietal bone. Gratry, at first a bad singer, became a famous artist after being severely bruised on the head with a log. Mabillon, from his youth completely imbecile, achieved fame for his talents, which developed in him as a result of a head wound he received. Gall, who reported this fact, knew a Dane, a half-idiot, whose mental abilities became brilliant after he fell head first down the stairs at the age of 13. A few years ago, a cretin from Savoy, bitten by a mad dog, became a perfectly reasonable man in the last days of his life. Dr. Galle knew limited people whose mental faculties developed unusually as a result of diseases of the brain (midollo).

“It may very well be that my illness (disease of the spinal cord) gave my last works some kind of abnormal connotation,” Heine says with amazing perspicacity in one of his letters. It must be added, however, that the disease thus affected not only his latest works and he himself was aware of it. A few months before the intensification of his illness, Heine wrote about himself (Correspondance inedite. Paris. 1877): “My mental excitement is more the result of illness than genius: in order to at least slightly alleviate my suffering, I composed poetry. In these terrible nights, mad with pain, my poor head rushes from side to side and makes the bells of a worn-out foolish cap ring with cruel gaiety.

Bisha and von der Kolk noticed that people with a twisted neck have a more lively mind than ordinary people. Conolly had one patient whose mental faculties were excited during operations on him, and several such patients who showed special talent in the first periods of consumption and gout. Everyone knows how wit and cunning humpbacks are; Rokitansky even tried to explain this by saying that in them the bend of the aorta directs excess blood flow through the vessels leading to the head, which results in an expansion of the volume of the heart and an increase in blood pressure in the skull.

This dependence of genius on pathological changes can partly explain the curious feature of genius compared to talent in that it is something unconscious and appears quite unexpectedly.

Jurgen Meyer says that a talented person acts strictly deliberately; he knows how and why he came to famous theory, while the genius is completely unknown, any of his creative activity unconscious.

Haydn attributed the creation of his famous symphony "Creation of the World" to a mysterious gift sent down from above. “When my work was not moving forward well,” he said, “I, with a rosary in my hands, retired to the chapel, read the Mother of God - and inspiration returned to me again.”

The Italian poetess Milli, during the creation, almost involuntarily, of her wonderful poems, is agitated, screams, sings, runs back and forth and seems to be in a fit of epilepsy.

Those of genius who have observed themselves say that, under the influence of inspiration, they experience some kind of inexpressibly pleasant feverish state during which thoughts involuntarily arise in their mind and splash out of themselves, like sparks from a burning brand.

This is beautifully expressed by Dante in the following three lines:

…I mi son un che, quando
Amore spira, noto ed in quel modo
Che detta dentro vo significando.

“When I breathe love, I am attentive:
she only needs to suggest words to me, and I write.

(Purgatory, XXIV, 52, per. M. Lozinsky)

Napoleon said that the outcome of battles depends on one moment, on one thought, temporarily remaining inactive; when a favorable moment comes, it flares up like a spark, and the result is victory (Moro).

Bauer says that Koo's best poems were dictated to him in a state close to insanity. In those moments when these wonderful stanzas flew from his lips, he was not able to reason even about the simplest things.

Foscolo confesses his epistolario, the best work of this great mind, that the creative ability of the writer is determined by a special kind of mental excitement (fever), which cannot be caused at will. “I write my letters,” he says, “not for the fatherland and not for glory, but for that inner pleasure that the exercise of our abilities gives us.”

Bettinelli calls poetic creativity a dream with open eyes, without losing consciousness, and this is perhaps true, since many poets dictated their poems in a state similar to a dream.

Goethe also says that a certain brain irritation is necessary for a poet, and that he himself composed many of his songs, being, as it were, in a fit of somnambulism.

Klopstock confesses that when he wrote his poem, inspiration often came to him during sleep.

In the dream, Voltaire conceived one of Henriade's songs, Sardini conceived the theory of playing the harmonica, and Seckendorf conceived his lovely song about Fantasia. Newton and Cardano solved mathematical problems in their sleep.

Muratori composed a pentameter in Latin in a dream many years after he stopped writing poetry. It is said that while sleeping, Lafontaine composed the fable "Two Doves", and Condillac finished the lecture he had begun the day before.

"Kubla" Coleridge and " Fantasy" Golde were composed in a dream.

Mozart admitted that musical ideas appear to him involuntarily, like dreams, and Hoffmann often told his friends: “I work, sitting at the piano with my eyes closed, and reproduce what someone tells me from outside.”

Lagrange noticed an irregular beating of his pulse when he wrote, while Alfieri's eyes grew dark at that time.

Lamartin often said: "It is not I who think, but my thoughts think for me."

Alfieri, who called himself a barometer - to such an extent his creative abilities changed depending on the season - with the onset of September could not resist the one who has it involuntary impulse, so strong that he had to give in, and wrote six comedies. On one of his sonnets, he wrote the following inscription with his own hand: "Random. I didn't want to write it.". This predominance of the unconscious in the work of brilliant people was noticed even in antiquity.

Socrates was the first to point out that poets create their works not as a result of effort or art, but due to some natural instinct. In the same way, soothsayers say beautiful things, completely unaware of it.

“All works of genius,” says Voltaire in a letter to Diderot, “are created instinctively. Philosophers of the whole world together could not have written the "Armida Kino" or the fable "The Pestilence of the Beasts", which La Fontaine dictated, not even knowing what would come of it. Corneille wrote his Horatii as instinctively as a bird builds a nest.

Thus, the greatest ideas of thinkers, prepared, so to speak, by the impressions already received and by the highly sensitive organization of the subject, are born suddenly and develop as unconsciously as the rash actions of madmen. The same unconsciousness explains the unshakable faith of people who are fanatically devoted to certain beliefs. But as soon as the moment of ecstasy, excitement has passed, the genius turns into an ordinary person or falls even lower, since the lack of uniformity (balance) is one of the signs of a genius nature. Disraeli put it well when he said that the best English poets, Shakespeare and Dryden, have the worst poetry. They said about the painter Tintoretto that he is sometimes higher than Caracci, sometimes lower than Tintoretto.

Ovidio quite correctly explains the dissimilarity of Tasso's style by his own admission that when inspiration disappeared, he got confused in his writings, did not recognize them and was not able to appreciate their merits.

There is no doubt that there is a complete resemblance between a madman during a fit and a man of genius who thinks and creates his work.

Remember the Latin proverb "Aut insanit homo, aut versus fecit" ("Either a madman, or a lyricist").

Here is how the doctor Revelier-Parat describes Tasso's condition: “The pulse is weak and uneven, the skin is pale, cold, the head is hot, inflamed, the eyes are shiny, bloodshot, restless, running around. At the end of a period of creativity, often the author himself does not understand what he expounded a minute ago.

Marini when writing Adone, did not notice that he burned his leg badly. Tasso during the period of creativity seemed completely crazy. In addition, thinking about something, many artificially cause a rush of blood to the brain, as, for example, Schiller, who put his feet on ice; Pitt and Fox, preparing their speeches after drinking stout; and Paisiello, who composed nothing but covered himself with many blankets. Milton and Descartes threw their heads down on the sofa, Bossuet retired to a cold room and put warm poultices on his head; Cujas worked lying face down on the carpet. There was a saying about Leibniz that he thought only in a horizontal position - to such an extent it was necessary for him to mental activity. Milton composed with his head thrown back on the pillow, and Thomas (Thomas) and Rossini - lying in bed; Rousseau pondered his works under the bright midday sun with an open head.

The late Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, who had a remarkably bright mind, was such a sickly and stupid child that he could not study at all. But in the seminary, one of his comrades, during a game, hit his head with a stone, and after that Macarius's abilities became brilliant, and his health completely recovered. - Approx. per.

However, does a botanist resent such a phenomenon, deny it? No, he takes note of it, studies it, describes it, and, of course, no one will blame him for this.

Only those who do not know their results, who do not know that it was thanks to such studies that it was possible not only to determine, at least in part, the essence and origin of genius, but also to dispel forever that fatal delusion , on the basis of which only subjects who had completely lost their minds were considered insane, and therefore insane, as a result of which thousands of innocent victims of a mental disorder were betrayed as criminals into the hands of executioners.

FOREWORD TO THE FOURTH EDITION

FOREWORD TO THE RUSSIAN EDITION

We only consider it necessary to make the reservation that, due to unavoidable circumstances, some minor cuts have been made in places in the book and those details that are interesting only for specialists, details that are usually very frightening to the profane, have been omitted. Such details, however, are not particularly numerous in Lombroso's work, which has a purely journalistic character and is intended as much for scientists as for the general public. The abbreviations touched mainly on minor forensic medical details and quotations from literary works of madmen, almost untranslatable into a foreign language, as well as partly on that factual material that matters only to the author’s compatriots and often even obscures the meaning of the provisions he proves. In addition, the article on "The geographical distribution of artists in Italy and scientific researchers in France" placed in the appendix was excluded as too cluttered with the names of minor and tertiary "celebrities", dry in presentation and representing exclusively local interest.

551-8460

ABSTRACT ON PHILOSOPHY ON THE TOPIC :

Psychoanalysis and the problem of man.

“GENIUS

INSANE.”

Parallel

between great people

and crazy

by Cesare Lombroso.

II.

III. The influence of atmospheric phenomena on brilliant people and lunatics.

IV. The influence of meteorological phenomena on the birth of brilliant people.

v. Varieties of graphomaniac mattoids. (according to C. Lombroso)

VI. "Prophets" and revolutionaries.

VII. Exceptional features of brilliant people. Conclusion.

"Genius is a man possessed,

but he is the creator...

N. A. Berdyaev.

"Genius and insanity ” .

Introduction and historical overview.

Unfortunately, sometimes, with the help of inexorable analysis, they destroy and destroy one after another those bright, iridescent illusions with which a person deceives and exalts himself. So, due to fatal necessity, he comes to the conclusion that love is, in essence, nothing but the mutual attraction of stamens and pistils ... and thoughts are a simple movement of molecules. Even genius - this only sovereign power that belonged to a person, before which one can kneel without blushing - even many psychiatrists put it on the same level with a propensity to crime, even they see in it only one of the teratological forms of the human mind, one of the varieties of insanity.

Even Aristotle, that great ancestor and teacher of all philosophers, noted that under the influence of a rush of blood to the head, “many individuals become poets, prophets or soothsayers and that Mark of Syracuse wrote pretty good poems while he was a maniac, but, having recovered, he completely lost this ability ".

He says in another place: “It is noticed that famous poets, politicians and artists were partly melancholy and mad, partly misanthropes, like Bellerophon. Even at the present time we see the same thing in Socrates, Empidocles, Plato, and others, and most strongly in the poets. People with cold, abundant blood are timid and limited, and people with hot blood are agile, witty and talkative.

Plato argues that “delusion is not a disease at all, but, on the contrary, the greatest of the blessings bestowed on us by the gods; under the influence of delusion, the Delphic soothsayers of Dodona rendered thousands of services to the citizens of Greece, while in the ordinary state they brought little or no use at all... heroes, which contributes to the enlightenment of future generations”.

Democritus even directly said that he does not consider a person who is of sound mind to be a true poet. Excludit sanos, Helcone poetas.

As a result of such views on madness, the ancient peoples treated the mad with great respect, considering them inspired from above, which is confirmed, in addition to historical facts, also by the fact that the words mania - in Greek, navi and mesugan - in Hebrew, and nigrata - in -Sanskrit means both madness and prophecy.

The similarity of brilliant people with crazy people.

Cruel and deplorable as this kind of paradox may be, but, viewed from a scientific point of view, it can be said that in some respects it is quite reasonable, although at first glance it seems absurd.

Many of the great thinkers are subject to, like crazy, convulsive contractions of the muscles and are distinguished by sharp, so-called "choreic" body movements. So they say about Lenau and Montesquieu that on the floor near the tables where they studied, one could notice indentations from the constant twitching of their legs. Napoleon suffered from constant twitching of his right shoulder and lips, and during fits of anger, also of his calves. “I must have been very angry,” he himself once admitted after a heated argument with Lowe, because he felt his calves trembling, which had not happened to me for a long time. Peter the Great was subject to twitching of facial muscles, which terribly distorted his face.

Cesare Lombroso, on the basis of the law of the balance between force and matter, which governs the whole world of living beings, also brought out other, more amazing analogies: for example, gray hair and baldness, thinness of the body, as well as poor muscular and sexual activity, characteristic of all crazy people, are very common. and great thinkers. Caesar was “afraid” of the pale and thin Cassians. D'Alembert, Fenelon, Napoleon were as thin as skeletons in their youth. Segur writes about Voltaire: “Thinness proves how much he works, his emaciated and hunched body serves only as a shell through which you seem to see the soul and genius of this man.”

About people of genius, just like about crazy people, it can be said that they remain lonely, cold, indifferent to the duties of a family man and a member of society all their lives. Michelangelo constantly said that "his art replaces his wife." Goethe, Heine, Byron, Cellini, Napoleon, Newton, although they did not say this, but by their actions proved something even worse.

It is not uncommon for the same causes that so often cause madness, that is, due to diseases and damage to the head, the most ordinary people turn into brilliant people. As a child, Viko fell from the highest stairs and crushed his right parietal bone. Gratry, at first a bad singer, became a famous artist after being severely bruised on the head with a log. Mabillon, from his youth completely imbecile, achieved fame for his talents, which developed in him as a result of the wound he received in the head.

A few months before the intensification of his illness, Heine wrote about himself (Correspondance inedite. Paris, 1877): “My mental excitement is more the result of illness than genius - in order to console my suffering a little, I composed poetry. In these terrible nights, mad with pain, my poor head rushes from side to side and makes the bells of a worn-out foolish cap ring with cruel gaiety.

This dependence of genius on pathological changes can partly explain the curious feature of genius in comparison with talent: it is something unconscious and manifests itself completely unexpectedly.

Jurgen Meyer says that a talented person acts strictly deliberately; he knows how and why he came to a certain theory, while a genius is completely unaware of this: all creative activity is unconscious.

Those of genius who have observed themselves say that, under the influence of inspiration, they experience some inexpressibly pleasant feverish state, during which thoughts involuntarily arise in their minds and splash out of themselves, like sparks from a hot brand.

Napoleon said that the outcome of battles depends on one moment, on one thought, temporarily left inactive; when a favorable moment comes, it flares up like a spark, and the result is victory (Moro). Socrates was the first to point out that poets create their works not as a result of effort or art, but due to some natural instinct. In the same way, soothsayers say beautiful things, completely unaware of it.

“All works of genius,” says Voltaire in a letter to Diderot, “are created instinctively. The philosophers of the whole world together could not have written Kino's Armida or the fable "The Pestilence of the Beasts" that Lafontaine dictated without even knowing well what would come of it. Corneille wrote the tragedy "Horace" as instinctively as a bird builds a nest.

Thus, the greatest ideas of thinkers, prepared, so to speak, by the impressions already received and by the highly sensitive organization of the subject, are born suddenly and develop as unconsciously as the rash actions of madmen. The same unconsciousness explains the steadfastness of convictions in people who have fanatically assimilated certain convictions to themselves. But as soon as the moment of ecstasy, excitement has passed, the genius turns into an ordinary person or falls even lower, since the lack of uniformity (balance) is one of the signs of a genius nature. There is no doubt that there is a complete resemblance between a madman during a fit and a man of genius who thinks and creates his work. A Latin proverb says: “Aut insanit homo, aut versus fecit” (“Either a madman, or a poet”).

Many drunkards are also found among the great musicians, such as Dussek, Handel and Gluck, who said that "he considers it quite fair to love gold, wine and glory, because the first gives him the means to have the second, which, inspiring, gives him glory." However, in addition to wine, he also loved vodka and finally got drunk on it.

But in exactly the same way, certain sensations cause insanity or serve as the starting point of it, being sometimes the cause of the most terrible attacks of rabies. How many people have been involved in murder, arson or grave digging at the sight of an ax, a blazing fire and a corpse!

It should also be added that inspiration, ecstasy always turn into real hallucinations, because then a person sees objects that exist only in his imagination. So Grossi said that one night, after he had labored for a long time to describe the appearance of the ghost of Prien, he saw this ghost in front of him and had to light a candle to get rid of him. Bal talks about the son of Reynolds, that he could make up to three hundred portraits a year, since it was enough for him to look at someone for half an hour while he sketched out a sketch, so that later this face would constantly be in front of him, as if alive. Luther heard arguments from Satan that he had not previously been able to come up with on his own.

If we now turn to the solution of the question - what exactly is the physiological difference between a man of genius and an ordinary person, then, on the basis of autobiographies and observations, we find that for the most part the whole difference between them lies in the refined and almost painful impressionability of the first. A savage or an idiot is insensitive to physical suffering, their passions are few, and from the sensations they perceive only those that directly concern them in the sense of satisfying vital needs. As the mental faculties develop, impressionability grows and reaches its greatest strength in brilliant personalities, being the source of their suffering and glory. These chosen natures are more sensitive quantitatively and qualitatively than mere mortals, and the impressions they receive are profound, long remembered and combined in various ways. Little things, random circumstances, details that are imperceptible to an ordinary person, sink deep into their soul and are processed in a thousand ways to reproduce what is usually called creativity, although these are only binary and quaternary combinations of sensations.

“Galler wrote about himself: “What is left with me, except for impressionability, this powerful feeling, which is the result of a temperament that vividly perceives the joys of love and the wonders of science? It is my sensitivity, of course, that gives my poems that passionate tone that other poets do not have.”

“Nature has not created a more sensitive soul than mine,” Diderot wrote about himself. Elsewhere he says: “Increase the number sensitive people and you will increase the number of good and bad deeds.”

Sterne, after Shakespeare, the most profound of the poets-psychologists, says in one letter: “Reading the biographies of ancient heroes, I cry about them as if about living people ... Inspiration and impressionability are the only tools of genius. The latter evokes in us those delightful sensations that give great strength to joy and cause tears of tenderness.”

It is known in what slavish subordination Alfieri and Foscolo were in women who were not always worthy of such adoration. The beauty and love of Fornarina served as a source of inspiration for Raphael not only in painting, but also in poetry.

And how early passions manifest themselves in people of genius!

Dante and Alfieri were in love at nine, Rousseau at eleven, Carron and Byron at eight. With the latter, already in the sixteenth year, convulsions began when he learned that the girl he loved was getting married. “Grief choked me,” he says, “although I was not yet familiar with sexual desire, I felt love so passionate that it is unlikely that I later experienced a stronger feeling.”

Lorby saw scholars swooning with delight while reading the writings of Homer.

The painter Francia died of admiration after he saw a painting by Raphael.

But it is precisely this too strong impressionability of people of genius or only giftedness that in the vast majority of cases is the cause of their misfortunes, both real and imaginary. Genius is annoyed by everything, and what for ordinary people seems to be just pinpricks, then with his sensitivity it already appears to him as a blow of a dagger. Painful impressionability also gives rise to exorbitant vanity, which distinguishes not only people of genius, but also scientists in general, starting from ancient times; in this respect, both of them are very similar to monomaniacs suffering from prideful insanity.

“Man is the most vain of animals, and poets are the most vain of people,” wrote Heine, meaning, of course, himself. In another letter, he says: “Do not forget that I -

- a poet and therefore I think that everyone should quit all their affairs and start reading poetry.

The poet Lucius did not get up when Julius Caesar appeared in the meeting of poets, because he considered himself superior to him in the art of versification.

Schopenhauer was furious and refused to pay bills if his last name was spelled with two "n".

Everyone who had the rare happiness of living in the company of brilliant people was amazed at their ability to reinterpret in a bad way every act of others, to see persecution everywhere and in everything to find a reason for deep, endless melancholy. This ability is due precisely to a stronger development of mental powers, due to which a gifted person is more able to find the truth and at the same time more easily invents false arguments in support of the solidity of his painful error. Part of the gloomy view of geniuses on the environment depends, however, on the fact that, being innovators in the mental sphere, they repel most ordinary people with unshakable firmness.

But still, the main reason for melancholy and dissatisfaction with the life of the chosen natures, according to C. Lombroso, is the law of dynamism and balance, which also controls the nervous system, the law according to which, following the excessive expenditure or development of force, there is an excessive decline of the same force, - the law , as a result of which not one of the miserable mortals can show a certain strength without paying for it in another respect, and very cruelly, finally, the law that determines the unequal degree of perfection of their own works.

Melancholy, despondency, shyness, selfishness - this is a cruel retribution for the highest mental gifts that they spend, just as the abuse of sensual pleasures entails various disorders.

Goethe, himself a cold Goethe, confessed that his mood was sometimes too cheerful, sometimes too sad.

C. Lombroso: “In general, I don’t think that there is at least one great person in the world who, even in moments of complete bliss, would not consider himself, without any reason, unhappy and persecuted, or at least temporarily did not suffer from painful fits of melancholy” .

Sometimes sensitivity is distorted and becomes one-sided, concentrating on one point. Several ideas of a certain order and some especially favorite sensations gradually acquire the significance of the main (specific) stimulus acting on the brain of great people and even on the whole organism.

Poisson said that life is worth living just to do mathematics. D'Alembert and Menage, calmly enduring the most painful operations, wept from the slight jabs of criticism. Lucio de Lanceval laughed when his leg was cut off, but could not bear Geoffroy's harsh criticism.

It should also be noted that among the brilliant or rather learned people often there are those narrow specialists whom Wahdakof calls “monotypic” subjects; all their lives they are engaged in one kind of conclusion, first occupying their brain and then already embracing it entirely: for example, Beckman studied the pathology of the kidneys throughout his whole life, Fresner - the moon, Mkeyer - ants, which is very similar to monomaniacs.

Because of this exaggerated and concentrated sensibility, it is extremely difficult to convince or dissuade great people and lunatics of anything. And this is understandable: the source of true and false ideas lies deeper with them and is more developed than among ordinary people, for whom opinions are only the main form, a kind of clothing, changed at the whim of fashion or at the request of circumstances. From this it follows, on the one hand, that no one should be trusted unconditionally, not even great men, and, on the other hand, that moral treatment is of little use to the insane.

The extreme and one-sided development of sensibility is no doubt the cause of those strange behaviors due to temporary anesthesia and analgesia, which are characteristic of great geniuses as well as lunatics.

Thus, it is said of Newton that one day he began to fill his pipe with his niece's finger, and that when he happened to leave the room to fetch something, he always returned without taking it. Beethoven and Newton, starting - one by one musical compositions, and the other for solving problems, became so insensitive to hunger that they scolded the servants when they brought them food, assuring them that they had already had dinner. Gioia, in a fit of creativity, wrote an entire chapter on a desk board instead of paper.

In the same way it is explained why great geniuses sometimes fail to assimilate the concepts accessible to the most ordinary minds, and at the same time express such bold ideas that most seem absurd. The fact is that a greater impressionability corresponds to a greater limitation of thinking. The mind under the influence of ecstasy does not perceive too simple and easy positions that do not correspond to its powerful energy. So, Monge, who did the most complex differential calculations, found it difficult to extract square root, although any student could easily solve this problem.

Hagen considers originality to be the quality that sharply distinguishes genius from talent. Similarly, Jürgen Meyer says: “The fantasy of a talented person reproduces what has already been found, the fantasy of a genius is completely new. The first makes discoveries and confirms them, the second invents and creates. talented person- this is a shooter who hits a target that seems to us hard to reach; genius hits a target we can't even see. Originality is in the nature of a genius.”

A genius has the ability to guess what he does not quite know: for example, Goethe described Italy in detail, not having seen it yet. Precisely because of this perspicacity, which rises above the general level, and because the genius, absorbed in higher considerations, differs from the crowd in super-deeds or even, like madmen (but in contrast to talented people), exhibits a propensity for disorder, - genius natures meet contempt with the side of the majority, which, not noticing the intermediate points in their work, sees only the discrepancy between their conclusions and generally recognized ones and the oddities in their behavior. How many academicians with a smile of compassion reacted to poor Marzolo, who opened up an entirely new field of philology; Bolyai, who discovered the fourth dimension and wrote anti-Euclidean geometry, was called the geometer of madmen and was compared to a miller who would think of grinding stones to make flour.

There are countries where the level of education is very low and where, therefore, not only brilliant, but even talented people are treated with contempt. But originality, although almost always aimless, is also often noticed in the actions of crazy people, especially in their writings, which only as a result sometimes acquire a shade of genius. By the way, people of genius are distinguished on a par with lunatics by a propensity for disorderliness and a complete ignorance of practical life, which seems to them so insignificant in comparison with their dreams.

Originality, on the other hand, determines the tendency of brilliant and mentally ill people to invent new words that are incomprehensible to others or to give famous words special meaning and significance that we find in Vico, Carrado, Alfieri, Marzolo and Dante.

Influence

atmospheric phenomena

on brilliant people and lunatics.

On the basis of a number of careful observations made over the course of three years in the clinic, C. Lombroso became convinced that the mental state of the madmen changes under the influence of barometer and thermometer fluctuations. “A study of 23,602 cases has shown me that the development of insanity usually coincides with the rise in temperature in spring and summer and even goes parallel with it, but at the same time, the spring heat, due to the contrast with the winter cold, acts even more strongly than the summer one, while the relatively even warmth of August days has a less detrimental effect.” A complete analogy with these phenomena is also seen in those people whom - it is difficult to say whether beneficent or cruel - nature has generously endowed with mental abilities. Few of these people did not say themselves that atmospheric phenomena produce an enormous influence on them. In their personal relations and in letters they constantly complain about the harmful effect on them of changes in temperature, with which they sometimes have to endure a fierce struggle in order to destroy or soften the fatal influence of bad weather, which weakens and delays the bold flight of their imagination. “When I am healthy and the weather is clear, I feel like a decent person,” Montaigne wrote. "During strong winds It seems to me that my brain is not in order, ”said Diderot.

Napoleon, who said that “man is a product of physical and moral conditions,” could not endure a light wind and loved heat so much that he ordered to heat the room even in July. The offices of Voltaire and Buffon were heated at all times of the year. Rousseau said that the sun's rays in the summer time cause creative activity in him, and he put his head under them at noon.

Byron said of himself that he was afraid of the cold, like a gazelle. Heine claimed that he was more able to write poetry in France than in Germany with its harsh climate. “Thunder rumbles, it snows,” he writes in one of his letters, “I have little fire in the fireplace, and my letter is cold.”

Salvatore Rosa, according to Lady Morgan, laughed in his youth at the exaggerated importance that the weather supposedly has on the creativity of people of genius, but, having grown old, he revived and gained the ability to think only with the onset of spring; in the last years of his life, he could paint only in the summer. In May, Schiller wrote: "I hope to do a lot if the weather does not change for the worse."

From all these examples, it can already be concluded with some reason that a high temperature, which has a favorable effect on vegetation, contributes, with few exceptions, to the productivity of a genius, just as it causes a stronger excitement in lunatics.

C. Lombroso states: “If historians, who have written so much paper and spent so much time on the most detailed depiction of cruel battles or adventurous enterprises carried out by kings and heroes, if these historians had studied with the same thoroughness the memorable era when this or that great discovery, or when a wonderful work of art was conceived, they would almost certainly be convinced that the hottest months and days are the most fruitful, not only for the whole physical nature but also for brilliant minds.”

For all the seeming improbability of such an influence, it is confirmed by many undoubted facts. Dante composed his first sonnet on June 15, 1282, in the spring of 1300 he wrote Vita nuova, and on April 3 he began writing his great poem.

Milton conceived his poem in the spring.

Galileo discovered Saturn's ring in April 1611.

Foscolo's best things were written in July and August.

Voltaire wrote Tancred in August.

Byron finished in September the 4th song "Pelligrinaggio", in July "Dante's Prophecy", and in the summer in Switzerland - "The Prisoner of Chillon", "Darkness" and "Dream".

Leonardo da Vinci conceived the statue of Francesco Sforza and began writing his essay On Light and Shadow on April 23, 1490.

The first thought about the discovery of America came to Columbus at the end of May and at the beginning of June 1474, when he decided to find a western route to India.

Kepler in May 1618 discovered the laws of motion of the world's bodies.

Schiaparelli's discovery of shooting stars was made in August 1866.

Nicholson discovered the oxidation of metals using a voltaic column in the summer of 1800, and so on.

However, it must be said that almost all the works of great minds, and especially discoveries in physics, are not the result of instant inspiration, but rather the result of a whole series of continuous and slow research on the part of scientists who lived in the past, so that the newest inventor is, in essence, , only a compiler whose works are not chronologically applicable, since the numbers given determine the end time of this or that work rather than the moment when it was conceived. But almost all other manifestations of human activity, even the least arbitrary, can be brought under the same category. Fertilization, for example, even then depends on the good nutrition of the organism and on heredity; death itself and madness only seem to be caused by immediate or accidental causes, but in essence they are completely dependent, on the one hand, on atmospheric phenomena, and on the other, on organic conditions; in many cases it can be said that death and madness are prepared in advance and the time of their occurrence is precisely indicated at the moment of the birth of the individual.

Influence

meteorological phenomena

for the birth of brilliant people.

Convinced of the enormous influence of meteorological phenomena on the creative activity of brilliant people, it is easy to understand that the climate and soil structure must also have a powerful effect on their birth.

There is no doubt that race (for example, there are more great people in the Latin and Greek races than in others), political movements, freedom of thought and speech, the wealth of the country, finally, proximity literary centers- all this has a great influence on the appearance of brilliant people, but it is also undoubtedly that temperature and climate are no less important in this respect.

It has long been noticed by both the common people and scientists that in mountainous countries with a warm climate there are especially many brilliant people. A popular Tuscan proverb says: “Highlanders have thick legs and tender brains.” Vegezio wrote: “Climate affects not only physical but also mental health; Minerva chose the city of Athens as her residence for its favorable air, as a result of which wise men will be born there. Cicero also repeatedly mentions that in Athens, thanks to the warm climate, smart people will be born, and in Thebes, where the climate is harsh, stupid people. According to Vasari, Michelangelo told him: “If I managed to create something really good, then I owe this to the wonderful air of your native Arezzo.” Macaulay says that Scotland is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and ranks first in the number of scientists and writers; she owns: Michael Scott, Napier - the inventor of logarithms, then Buchanan, Walter Scott, Byron, Johnston and partly Newton.

Florence, where the climate is very mild and the soil extremely hilly, brought to Italy the most brilliant galaxy of great men. Dante, Giotto, Machiavelli, Lulli, Leonardo, Cellini, Beato Angelico, Andrea del Sarto, Vespucci, Boccaccio, Alberti, Nicolini and Donati and others are the main names that this city has the right to be proud of.

On the other hand, Pisa, being scientifically as a university city in no less favorable conditions than Florence, produced in comparison with it even a much smaller number of outstanding generals and politicians, which was the reason for its fall, despite the help of strong allies. Of the great men of Pisa, only Niccolò Pisano, Giunta, and Galileo belong to Pisa, whose parents, however, were Florentines. Meanwhile, Pisa differs from Florence only in its low-lying location.

Finally, how rich in people of genius is the mountainous province of Arezzo, where Michelangelo, Petrarch, Guido Reni, Redi, Vasari and the three Aretinos were born. Further, how many gifted personalities were from Asti (Alfieri, Ogero, S. Brunone, Belli, Natta, Cotta, Alione, Giorgio and Ventura) and so on indefinitely.

The indirect influence of the surrounding nature on the birth of brilliant people presents some analogy with its influence on the development of insanity.

The well-known fact that in mountainous countries the inhabitants are more prone to madness than in low-lying countries is confirmed by quite psychiatric statistics. In addition, recent observations prove that epidemic madness is much more common in the mountains than in the valleys. It must also not be forgotten that the hills of Judea were the cradle of many prophets, and that men gifted with clairvoyance appeared in the mountains of Scotland; both belong to the category of brilliant madmen and half-mad soothsayers.

Varieties

graphomaniac mattoids.

(according to C. Lombroso)

Mattoid graphomaniacs Cesare Lombroso names a species that constitutes an intermediate link, a transitional step between brilliant madmen, healthy people and really crazy.

This is a special type of individuals, who were first pointed out by Maudeli, who called them "people with the temperament of lunatics" and who were later called by Morel, Legrand de Sol and Schulet "suffering from hereditary neurosis", Ballinsky and others - psychopaths, and Raji - neuropaths.

This latter, who had studied such subjects carefully and for a long time, proposed to divide them into four categories, according to whether their abnormality belongs to the field of sensual, affective or intellectual.

first category are partly hysterical subjects, partly hypochondriacs, with a sharper impressionability than other people, and with a tendency to explain their imaginary misfortunes by invented causes.

To the second category there are subjects with perverted instincts, abusing either excesses or abstinence and prone to various abnormalities. affective moral mattoid form in the full sense of the word a substratum or a transitional stage to inborn criminals. Usually such individuals become, according to Lombroso, at the head of secret societies. sitting in a cafe or a political club become the founders of new sects, and so on. Vain to the extreme, they often commit crimes out of a desire to become famous, while forgetting that along with the loss of prestige, they lose both their honest name and the respect of others, which they so passionately sought.

Smart mattoids - these, according to the Raja, are those irrepressible talkers who, once having spoken, can no longer stop the flow of their eloquence, even if they wished to. Under the influence of some kind of feverish mental excitement, they speak without logical connection and often come to conclusions that are completely opposite to what they wanted to prove. Sometimes they have an unusually developed memory, so that they remember whole pages from what they read, or they only remember numbers well, foreign words but forget the facial features of even their friends. Such subjects differ very little from the mentally ill, suffering from proud insanity, etc., and often become so at the first opportunity.

A variation of the same type, connecting the intellectual mattoid with the moral or affective, is graphomaniacs. A distinctive feature of the mattoid is an exaggerated opinion of himself, of his merits, and at the same time, his exclusively inherent ability to express his convictions more on paper than in words or deeds, without being indignant at all with those hardships and contradictions that are encountered at every step in practical life. and usually haunt both brilliant people and crazy people. The abnormality of mattoid writers is not always easy to notice if, for all the seeming seriousness and enthusiasm for this idea - in which they show similarities with monomaniacs and brilliant people - their writings were not often mixed with a lot of ridiculous conclusions, constant contradictions, verbosity and the main image of selfishness and vanity, which are the predominant property of brilliant people who have lost their minds.

Guiteau intended to save the republic by assassinating its president and proclaiming himself a great jurist and philosopher.

Leroux, the famous Parisian deputy, who believed in the transmigration of souls and in Kabbalah, defined love this way: “the ideal reality of one part of the whole in an infinite being, etc.”.

Asgil argued that a person can live forever, if only he had faith in immortality.

Filapanti recognized the existence of three Adams and with the greatest accuracy determined in which year they lived and what they did.

It happens, however, that among the chaotic delirium in the works of graphomaniac mattoid come across completely new, sound judgments.

Passanante, in his articles, and especially in conversation, sometimes expressed apt original judgments, making many doubt whether he was really crazy. For example, his saying: "Where the scientist is lost, the ignoramus succeeds." Or here's another one: "History taught by peoples is more instructive than that which is studied from books."

However, the abnormality is expressed not so much in exaggerations regarding this or that tendency, but rather in inconsistency, in constant contradictions, so that next to sublime, sometimes beautifully stated views, there are miserable, absurd, paradoxical judgments that contradict the main plan of the work and social position. author. When reading such articles, one involuntarily recalls Don Quixote, whose magnanimous deeds, instead of sympathy, evoke a smile of compassion, although at another time they might perhaps have been recognized as heroic, worthy of admiration. In general, genius traits are a rare exception in the works of mattoids.

Genius Mattoids . Intermediate forms and imperceptible gradations exist not only between the mad and the healthy, but also between the lunatics and the mattoids. Even among these latter, representing a complete lack of genius, there are individuals who are so richly gifted that it is difficult to determine whether they are mattoid or brilliant people.

It is quite natural, therefore, to conclude that if such transitional steps exist in the realm of, so to speak, literary madness, then they are possible in the realm of criminal insanity, and that mitigating circumstances must be allowed for the so-called criminals or lunatics, although there is hardly a human mind. able to draw a very precise line between crime and insanity .

"Prophets" and revolutionaries.

It is curious how great advances in the politics and religion of nations have often been brought about, or at least projected, by the lunatics or the semi-lunatics.

The reason for this phenomenon is obvious: only in them, in these fanatics, next to originality, which is an integral part of both brilliant people and crazy people, and even more brilliant madmen, exaltation and passion reach such strength that they can cause altruism that makes a person to sacrifice one's interests and even life itself for the promotion of ideas to the crowd, which is always hostile to any novelty and is sometimes capable of bloody reprisals against innovators.

“Look,” says Maudsley, “how such subjects can catch the most intimate shades of an idea that have gone unnoticed by more powerful minds, and thereby shed light on a given phenomenon in a completely different way. And this ability is seen in people who have neither genius nor talent; they consider the subject from new points of view, not noticed by others, and in practical life they deviate from the generally accepted course of action... obstacles and without the doubts that plague skeptical, calm minds.”

That is why these people so often come out as reformers.

It goes without saying that they do not create anything new, but only give impetus to the movement prepared by time and circumstances; obsessed with a positive passion for every novelty, for everything original, they are almost always inspired by a newly discovered discovery, an innovation, and are already building their conclusions about the future on it. So, Schopenhauer, who lived in an era when pessimism, with an admixture of mysticism and enthusiasm, began to come into fashion, according to Ribot, only combined the ideas of his time into a coherent philosophical system.

In the same way, Luther only summarized the views of his predecessors, as evidenced by the sermons of Savonarola.

On the other hand, we should not forget that when a new doctrine is too sharply contrary to the beliefs that have taken root among the people, or is too absurd in itself, it disappears along with its herald and often becomes the cause of his death.

Maudeli says in his book "On Responsibility" that since the lunatic does not share the opinions of the majority, he is by his very nature a reformer; but when his convictions penetrate the masses, he again remains alone with a small circle of persons devoted to him.

It should also be added that the lunatics have always, since ancient times, aroused reverence among the common people.

Among the savages, for example, or among the ancient semi-barbarian peoples, the insane person was not only not considered sick, but inspired respect for himself; the crowd trembled before him, adored him, and he often became an unlimited master over them. In the old days in Rus' they looked at holy fools, epileptics, etc., in the same way, considering them prophets, people inspired by God himself, and often even saints.

The existence of epidemic madness among the ancient Jews and their brethren - Phoenicians, Carthaginians, etc. - is proved by biblical history and by the language itself, in which the same words are used to designate a prophet, a madman, and a criminal. The Bible tells that David, fearing to be killed, pretended to be crazy, soiled his beard and put a special sign over the door of his house, which made King Ahiz say: “Are not I crazy enough without David?” This fact indicates the frequent repetition of cases of insanity and the fact that the lunatics were inviolable, probably due to the prejudice that passed to the Jews from the Arabs, who have the same name for the prophet and the madman - “navvi”.

In Algeria, according to Berbruger, there are very numerous individuals who, under certain conditions, fall into a state very reminiscent of S. Medardo's convulsions. To see how respected madmen are in Morocco and among the neighboring nomadic tribes, one should read the book of Dummond-Gay, who, among other things, says: “According to the Berbers, only the body of madmen is on earth, their mind is held by a deity in heaven and returns to them only when they have to speak, whereby every word they say is considered a revelation.” The author of the book himself and the English consul were almost killed by one of these "saints", who often run around with weapons in their hands.

The Turks treat madmen with the same respect as they do dervishes, considering them the closest people to the deity, as a result of which they have access even to the houses of ministers.

In Bataki, according to Ida Pfeifer, the possessed person is given the greatest respect: every word of his is considered a prophecy, and his desire is a law.

In China, the only representative of mass insanity is one sect of religious fanatics - a phenomenon unusual for this skeptical nation. In addition, the followers of Tao revere the mad, the mad and carefully record their sayings, thinking that they serve as spokesmen for the demon's thoughts regarding the future.

In Oceania, on the island of Tahiti, there are also their own prophets, that is, the same madmen, who, according to the people, are under the special protection of the divine spirit.

In Peru, besides its own clergy, there are also prophets who utter various “truths” during fits of terrible convulsions. These people are highly respected by the common people, but the upper class treats them with contempt.

Such a similarity in views on insanity in different countries must be due to common causes. C. Lombroso gives the following:

1) Having only a small number of familiar sensations, the common people are amazed at every new phenomenon and are ready to worship everything unusual; adoration is, one might say, a necessary reflex for him, as a result of every too strong new impression.

2) Some of the lunatics have an extraordinary physical force and the people respect strength.

3) Often they show a striking insensitivity to cold, hunger, and all kinds of physical suffering.

4) Some of them, obsessed with religious or prideful insanity, pretend themselves to be inspired by the gods, as rulers, masters of the people, and thereby dispose of it in advance in their favor.

5) But the main reason lies in the fact that many of the madmen often showed intelligence and will that significantly exceeded the general level of development of these qualities among the mass of other fellow citizens, absorbed in worries about satisfying their material needs. Further, it is known that under the influence of passion, the strength and tension of the mind increase markedly. The deep faith of these people in the reality of their hallucinations, the powerful eloquence with which they expressed their convictions, the contrast between their miserable obscure past and the grandeur of their present position naturally gave such crazy people an enormous importance in the eyes of the crowd and elevated them above the general level of sane, but ordinary, ordinary people. An example of such charm is Lazaretti, Briand, Loyola, Malinas, Joan of Arc, Anabaptists, etc.
VII.

Exceptional Features

brilliant people.

Conclusion.

The question arises, is it possible on the basis of all of the above to come to the conclusion that genius in general is nothing but neurosis, insanity? No, such a conclusion would be erroneous. True, in the stormy and anxious life of people of genius there are moments when these people are very similar to the madmen, and in the mental activity of both there are many common features, for example, heightened sensitivity, exaltation, giving way to apathy, the originality of aesthetic works and the ability to discover, unconsciousness creativity and the use of special expressions, a strong absent-mindedness and a tendency to suicide, as well as often the abuse of alcoholic beverages, and, finally, enormous vanity. True, among the people of genius there were and are lunatics, just as among these latter there were subjects in whom the disease caused glimpses of genius, but to draw from this the conclusion that all brilliant personalities must necessarily be mad would mean to fall into an enormous misleading and repeating, only in a different sense, the erroneous conclusion of savages who consider all madmen to be divinely inspired people.

If genius was always accompanied by madness, then how to explain that Galileo, Kepler, Columbus, Voltaire, Napoleon, Michelangelo, Cavour, people who are undoubtedly brilliant and, moreover, who were subjected to the most difficult trials during their lives, never showed signs of insanity?

In addition, genius usually manifests itself much earlier than madness, which for the most part reaches its maximum development only after the age of thirty-five, while genius is revealed from childhood, and in young years it is already revealed in full: Alexander the Great was at the height of his fame at twenty years old , Charlemagne - at thirty, Charles XII - at eighteen? D'Alembert and Bonaparte - at twenty-six (Ribot).

Further, while madness is more likely than all other diseases to be inherited and, moreover, increases with each new generation, genius almost always dies with a man of genius, and hereditary genius, especially in some generations, is a rare exception. Let us suppose that a genius can also err, let us suppose that he is always distinguished by originality; but neither delusion nor originality in him ever reaches the point of complete contradiction with himself or of obvious absurdity, which so often happens with mattoids and lunatics.

If some of these latter show remarkable mental abilities, it is only in relatively rare cases, and, moreover, their mind is always one-sided: much more often we notice in them a lack of perseverance, diligence, firmness of character, attention, accuracy, memory - the main qualities of a genius. And for the most part they remain lonely, uncommunicative, indifferent or insensitive to what worries the human race, as if they are surrounded by some special atmosphere that belongs to them alone. Is it possible to compare them with those great geniuses who calmly and with consciousness of their own strengths steadily followed the once chosen path to their own? high purpose without losing heart in adversity and not allowing yourself to be carried away by any passion!

These were: Spinoza, Bacon, Galileo, Dante, Voltaire, Columbus, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Cavour. All of them were distinguished by the enormous strength of their mental abilities, restrained by a mighty will, but in none of them did love for truth and beauty drown out love for family and fatherland. They never changed their convictions and did not become renegades, they did not deviate from their goal, they did not abandon the work once started. How much perseverance, energy, tact they showed in carrying out the undertakings they had conceived, and what moderation, what an integral character they distinguished themselves in life!

But they also suffered a lot of suffering from the persecution of the ignorant, they also had to experience fits of exhaustion that followed the impulses of inspiration, and the torment of doubt and hesitation that seized them, but all this never made them turn off the straight path to the side.

The only, favorite idea, which constituted the goal and happiness of their life, completely took possession of these great minds and, as it were, served as a guiding star for them. To accomplish their task, they spared no effort, did not stop at any obstacles, always remaining clear and calm. Their errors are too few to be worth pointing out, and even they are often of such a nature that in ordinary people they would pass for real discoveries.

Summarizing these provisions, we can come to the following conclusions: physiologically, there are many points of contact between the normal state of a man of genius and the pathological state of a madman. Among people of genius there are lunatics and among lunatics there are geniuses. But there have been and are many men of genius in whom not the slightest sign of insanity can be found, with the exception of some abnormalities in the sphere of sensitivity.

Having established such a close correspondence between men of genius and lunatics, nature seemed to want to point out to us our obligation to treat indulgently the greatest of human disasters - madness, and at the same time warn us not to be too carried away by the brilliant ghosts of geniuses, many of which are not only they do not rise to the transcendental spheres, but, like sparkling meteors, having flared up once, they fall very low and drown in a mass of delusions.

Cruel and sad as this kind of paradox may be, but, considering it from a scientific point of view, we will find that in some respects it is quite reasonable, although at first glance it seems absurd.

Many of the great thinkers are subject to, like crazy, convulsive contractions of the muscles and are distinguished by sharp, so-called "choreic" body movements. So, about Lenau and Montesquieu, they say that on the floor near the tables where they studied, one could notice indentations from the constant twitching of their legs. Buffon, immersed in his thoughts, once climbed the bell tower and descended from there by a rope quite unconsciously, as if in a fit of somnambulism. Santeil, Crebillon, Lombardini had strange facial expressions, similar to grimaces. Napoleon suffered from constant twitching of his right shoulder and lips, and during fits of anger, also of his calves. "I must have been very angry," he himself once confessed after a heated argument with Lowe, "because I felt my calves trembling, which had not happened to me for a long time." Peter the Great was prone to twitching of facial muscles, which terribly distorted his face.

"Carducci's face," says Mantegazza, "at times resembles a hurricane: lightning flashes from his eyes, and the trembling of muscles is like an earthquake."

Ampère could not speak otherwise than by walking and moving all his limbs. It is known that the normal composition of the urine, and in particular the content of urea in it, changes markedly after manic attacks. The same thing is noticed after intensive mental exercises. Already many years ago, Golding Bird made the observation that an English preacher, who spent the whole week in idleness and only on Sundays delivered sermons with great fervour, on that very day the content of phosphate salts in the urine increased significantly, while on other days it was extremely insignificant. Subsequently, Smith confirmed by many observations that with any mental exertion the amount of urea in the urine increases, and in this respect the analogy between genius and madness seems undoubted.

On the basis of this abnormal abundance of urea, or rather on the basis of this new confirmation of the law of balance between force and matter, which governs the whole world of living beings, other, more amazing analogies can be deduced: for example, gray hair and baldness, thinness of the body, and also bad muscular and sexual activity, characteristic of all lunatics, are very common among great thinkers. Caesar was afraid of the pale and thin Cassians. D "Alamber, Fenelon, Napoleon were as thin as skeletons in their youth. Segur writes about Voltaire: "Thinness proves how much he works; his emaciated and bent body serves only as a light, almost transparent shell, through which one seems to see the soul and genius of this man.

There are frequent cases when, due to the same causes that so often cause insanity, i.e. due to diseases and injuries of the head, the most ordinary people turn into brilliant ones. As a child, Viko fell from the highest stairs and crushed his right parietal bone. Gratry, at first a bad singer, became a famous artist after being severely bruised on the head with a log. Mabil-on, completely imbecile from his youth, achieved fame for his talents, which developed in him as a result of a head wound he received. Gallus, who reported this fact, knew one half-idiot Dane whose mental abilities became brilliant after he, at the age of 13, fell head first down the stairs 3) . A few years ago, a cretin from Savoy, bitten by a mad dog, became a perfectly reasonable man in the last days of his life. Dr. Galle knew limited people whose mental faculties developed unusually as a result of diseases of the brain (mi-dollo).

“It may very well be that my illness (disease of the spinal cord) gave my last works some kind of abnormal connotation,” Heine says with amazing perspicacity in one of his letters. It must, however, be added that the illness affected in this way not only his latest works, and he himself was aware of this. A few months before the intensification of his illness, Heine wrote about himself (Correspondace inedite. Paris, 1877): “My mental excitement is more the result of illness than genius - in order to at least slightly alleviate my suffering, I wrote poetry. In these terrible nights, distraught from pain, my poor head tosses from side to side and makes the bells of a worn-out foolish cap ring with cruel gaiety.

Bisha and von der Kolk noticed that people with a twisted neck have a sharper mind than ordinary people. Conolly had one patient whose mental faculties were excited during operations on him, and several such patients who showed special talent in the first periods of consumption and gout. Everyone knows how wit and cunning humpbacks are; Rokitansky even tried to explain this by saying that their aorta, having given the vessels going to the head, makes a bend, as a result of which the volume of the heart expands and blood pressure in the skull increases.

This dependence of genius on pathological changes can partly explain the curious feature of genius compared to talent, in that it is something unconscious and appears quite unexpectedly.

Haydn attributed the creation of his famous oratorio The Creation of the World to a mysterious gift sent down from above. “When my work did not move forward well,” he said, “I, with a rosary in my hands, retired to the chapel, read the Mother of God - and inspiration returned to me again.”

The Italian poetess Milli, during the creation, almost involuntarily, of her wonderful poems, is agitated, screams, sings, runs back and forth and seems to be in a fit of epilepsy.

Those of genius who have observed themselves say that, under the influence of inspiration, they experience some inexpressibly pleasant feverish state during which thoughts involuntarily arise in their minds and splash out of themselves, like sparks from a burning brand.

This is beautifully expressed by Dante in the following three lines:

... I mi son un che, guando

Amore spira, noto ed in quel modo

Che detta dento vo significando.

(Inspired by love, I say what she tells me.)

Foscolo confesses in his Epistolario, the best work of this great mind, that the creative ability of the writer is determined by a special kind of mental excitement (fever), which cannot be caused at will.

“I write my letters,” he says, “not for the fatherland and not for glory, but for that inner pleasure that the exercise of our abilities gives us.”

Bettinelli calls poetry a sleep with open eyes, without loss of consciousness, and this is perhaps fair, since many poets dictated their poems in a dream-like state.

Goethe also says that a certain brain irritation is necessary for a poet, and that he himself composed many of his songs, being, as it were, in a fit of somnambulism.

Klopstock confesses that when he wrote his poem, inspiration often came to him during sleep.

In the dream, Voltaire conceived one of the songs of the Henriade, Sardini the theory of playing the harmonica, and Seckendorf his lovely song about Fantasia. Newton and Cardano solved mathematical problems in their sleep.

"Kubla" by Coleridge and "Fantasy" by Golde were composed in a dream.

Mozart admitted that musical ideas appear to him involuntarily, like dreams, and Hoffmann often told his friends: "I work, sitting at the piano with my eyes closed, and reproduce what someone tells me from outside."

Lagrange noticed an irregular beating of his pulse when he wrote, while Alfieri's eyes grew dark at that time.

Lamartine often said: "It is not I who think, but my thoughts think for me."

Alfieri, who called himself a barometer - his creative abilities changed to such an extent depending on the time of year - with the onset of September, he could not resist the involuntary impulse that seized him, so strong that he had to give in and wrote six comedies. On one of his sonnets, he made the following inscription with his own hand: "Random. I did not want to write it." This predominance of the unconscious in the work of brilliant people was noticed even in antiquity.

“All works of genius,” says Voltaire in a letter to Diderot, “are created instinctively. The philosophers of the whole world together could not write Armida Kino or the fable “The Sea of Beasts”, which La Fontaine dictated, without even knowing well what would come of it. Corneille wrote tragedy "Horace" as instinctively as a bird builds a nest.

Thus, the greatest ideas of thinkers, prepared, so to speak, by the impressions already received and by the highly sensitive organization of the subject, are born suddenly and develop as unconsciously as the rash actions of madmen. The same unconsciousness explains the steadfastness of convictions in people who have assimilated fanatically known convictions. But as soon as the moment of ecstasy, excitement has passed, the genius turns into an ordinary person or falls even lower, since the lack of uniformity (balance) is one of the signs of a genius nature. Disraeli put it well when he said that the best English poets, Shakespeare and Dryden, have the worst poetry. It was said about the painter Tintoretto that he was sometimes higher than Carracci, sometimes lower than Tintoretto.

There is no doubt that there is a complete resemblance between a madman during a fit and a man of genius who thinks and creates his work.

Remember the Latin proverb: "Aut insanit homo, aut versus fecit" ("Either a madman, or a poet").

Here is how the doctor Revelier-Parat describes Tasso's condition:

“The pulse is weak and uneven, the skin is pale, cold, the head is hot, inflamed, the eyes are shiny, bloodshot, restless, running around. At the end of a period of creativity, the author himself often does not understand what he expounded a minute ago.”

Marini, when writing Adone, did not notice that he had badly burned his leg. Tasso during the period of creativity seemed completely crazy. In addition, thinking about something, many artificially cause a rush of blood to the brain, as, for example, Schiller, who put his feet on ice, Pitt and Fox, who prepared their speeches after immoderate use of porter, and Paisiello, who wrote only under a lot of blankets. Milton and Descartes threw their heads down on the sofa, Bossuet retired to a cold room and put warm poultices on his head; Cujas worked lying face down on the carpet. There was a saying about Leibniz that he thought only in a horizontal position - to such an extent it was necessary for him for mental activity. Milton composed with his head thrown back on the pillow, and Thomas (Thomas) and Rossini - lying in bed; Rousseau pondered his works under the bright midday sun with an open head.

Evidently they all instinctively used such remedies as temporarily increase the flow of blood to the head to the detriment of the rest of the body. Here, by the way, to mention that many of the gifted and especially brilliant people abused alcoholic beverages. Not to mention Alexander the Great, who, under the influence of intoxication, killed his best friend and died after draining the cup of Hercules ten times, soldiers often carried Caesar himself home on their shoulders. Socrates, Seneca, Alcibiades, Cato, and especially Septimius Severus and Mahmud II, were so intemperate that they all died of drunkenness due to delirium tremens. The constable of Bourbon, Avicenna, who is said to have devoted the second half of his life to proving the futility of scientific information acquired by him in the first half, and many painters, such as Carracci, Steen, Barbatelli, and a whole galaxy of poets - Murger, Gerard de Nerval, Musset, Kleist, Mailat and, at the head of them, Tasso, who wrote in one of his letters: "I do not deny that I am mad; but I am pleased to think that my madness came from drunkenness and love because I really drink a lot."

It has been noticed that almost all the great creations of thinkers receive their final form, or at least come to light under the influence of some special sensation, which plays here, so to speak, the role of a drop of salt water in a well-arranged voltaic column. The facts prove that all great discoveries were made under the influence of the senses, as Moleschotte confirms. Several frogs, from which it was supposed to prepare a healing decoction for Galvani's wife, served to discover galvanism. The isochronous (simultaneous) swings of the chandelier and the fall of the apple prompted Newton and Galileo to create great systems. Alfieri composed and pondered his tragedies while listening to music. Mozart, at the sight of an orange, remembered a Neapolitan folk song that he heard five years ago, and immediately wrote the famous cantata for the opera Don Giovanni. Looking at some porter, Leonardo conceived his Judas, and Thorvaldsen found a suitable pose for a seated angel at the sight of his sitter's antics. Inspiration first struck Salvatore Rosa while admiring the view of Posilino, and Hogarth found types for his caricatures in a tavern after a drunkard had broken his nose in a fight there. Milton, Bacon, Leonardo, and Warburton needed to hear the bells in order to get to work; Bourdalou, before dictating his immortal sermons, always played some aria on the violin. The reading of one of Spenser's odes aroused in Cowley a penchant for poetry, and Sacrobose's book made Gammad addicted to astronomy. Considering cancer, Watt attacked the idea of developing an extremely useful machine in industry, and Gibbon decided to write the history of Greece after he saw the ruins of the Capitol 4) .

But in exactly the same way, certain sensations cause insanity or serve as the starting point of it, being sometimes the cause of the most terrible attacks of rabies. Thus, for example, Humboldt's nurse confessed that the sight of the fresh, tender body of her pet aroused in her an uncontrollable desire to kill him. And how many people were involved in murder, arson or grave digging at the sight of an ax, a blazing fire and a corpse!

It should also be added that inspiration, ecstasy always turn into real hallucinations, because then a person sees objects that exist only in his imagination. So, Grossi said that one night, after he had worked for a long time on describing the appearance of the ghost of Prien, he saw this ghost in front of him and had to light a candle to get rid of him. Ball talks about the son (successore) Reynolds, that he could make up to 300 portraits a year, since it was enough for him to look at someone for half an hour while he sketched, so that later this face would constantly be in front of him, as if alive . The painter Martini always saw the pictures he was painting in front of him, so one day, when someone stood between him and the place where the image appeared to him, he asked this person to step aside, because it was impossible for him to continue copying while existing only in in his imagination the original was closed. Luther heard arguments from Satan that he could not have come up with before.

Haller wrote about himself: “What is left for me, besides impressionability, this powerful feeling, which is the result of a temperament that vividly perceives the joys of love and the wonders of science? Even now I am moved to tears when I read the description of some generous act. sensitivity, of course, and gives my poems that passionate tone that other poets do not have.

"Nature has not created a more sensitive soul than mine," Diderot wrote about himself. Elsewhere he says, "Increase the number of sensitive people and you will increase the number of good and bad deeds." When Alfieri heard the music for the first time, he was, in his words, “astonished to such an extent, as if the bright sun blinded my eyesight and hearing; for several days after that I felt an unusual sadness, not without pleasantness; fantastic ideas crowded into my head, and I would be able to write poetry if I knew then how it is done ... " In conclusion, he says that nothing affects the soul so irresistibly powerful as music. A similar opinion was expressed by Stern, Rousseau and J. Sand.

Corradi proves that all the misfortunes of Leopardi and his very philosophy were caused by excessive sensitivity and unsatisfied love, which he first experienced in the 18th year. Indeed, Leopardi's philosophy took on a more or less gloomy tone, depending on the state of his health, until at last the melancholy mood became a habit with him.

Urquizia fainted when he smelled the rose.

Sterne, after Shakespeare, the most profound of the poets-psychologists, says in one letter: “Reading the biographies of our ancient heroes, I weep for them as if for living people ... Inspiration and impressionability are the only tools of genius. The latter evokes in us those delightful sensations that give great strength to joy and cause tears of tenderness.

And how early passions manifest themselves in people of genius! Dante and Alfieri were in love at 9 years old, Rousseau - 11, Carron and Byron - 8. With the latter, already in the 16th year, convulsions began when he found out that the girl he loved was getting married. “Grief choked me,” he says, “although I was still unfamiliar with sexual desire, I felt love so passionate that it was unlikely that I later experienced a stronger feeling.” At one of the performances, Kitz and Byron had a fit of convulsions.

Lorby saw scholars swooning with delight while reading the writings of Homer.

Painter Francia (Francia) died of admiration after he saw a painting by Raphael.

Ampère felt the beauty of nature so vividly that he almost died of happiness when he found himself on the shores of Lake Geneva. Having found a solution to some problem, Newton was so shocked that he could not continue his studies. Gay-Lussac and Davy, after their discovery, began to dance in their shoes in their office. Archimedes, delighted with the solution of the problem, in the costume of Adam ran out into the street shouting: "Eureka!" ("Found!") In general, strong minds also have strong passions, which give special vivacity to all their ideas; if in some of them many passions fade, as it were, die away with time, it is only because they are gradually drowned out by the predominant passion for fame or science.

But it is precisely this too strong impressionability of people of genius or only giftedness that in the vast majority of cases is the cause of their misfortunes, both real and imaginary.

“A precious and rare gift, which is the privilege of great geniuses,” writes Mantegazza, “is accompanied, however, by painful sensitivity to all, even the smallest, external stimuli: every breath of the breeze, the slightest increase in heat or cold, turns for them into that dried rose petal who kept the unfortunate sybarite awake." Lafontaine may have had himself in mind when he wrote:

"Un souffle, une rien leur donne la fievre".

[The slightest breath of wind, the smallest cloud, every little thing makes them feverish.]

Genius is irritated by everything, and what for ordinary people seems to be just pinpricks, then with his sensitivity it already seems to him a blow of a dagger.

Boileau and Chateaubriand could not indifferently hear the praise of anyone, even their shoemaker.

When Foscolo once spoke with Mrs. S., writes Mantegazza, whom he greatly courted, and she laughed at him evilly, he became so furious that he shouted: "You want to kill me, so I will immediately crush my skull at your feet" . With these words, he flung himself headlong into the corner of the fireplace with all his might. One of those who stood nearby managed, however, to hold him by the shoulders and thereby save his life.

Painful impressionability also gives rise to exorbitant vanity, which distinguishes not only people of genius, but also scientists in general, starting from ancient times; in this respect, both of them are very similar to monomaniacs suffering from prideful insanity.

"Man is the most vain of animals, and poets are the most vain of people," wrote Heine, meaning, of course, himself. In another letter, he says: "Do not forget that I am a poet and therefore I think that everyone should stop all their affairs and start reading poetry."

Menke talks about Filelfo, how he imagined that in the whole world, even among the ancients, no one knew better than him. Latin language. Abbot Cagnoli was so proud of his poem about the battle of Aquileia that he was furious when one of the writers did not bow to him. "What, you don't know Cagnoli?" he asked.

The poet Lucius did not get up when Julius Caesar entered the meeting of poets, because he considered himself superior to him in the art of versification.

Ariosto, having received Laurel wreath from Charles V, ran like a madman through the streets. The famous surgeon of Porta, when present at the Lombard Institute when reading medical writings, did his best to express his contempt and displeasure with them, whatever their dignity, while he listened calmly and attentively to writings on mathematics or linguistics.

Schopenhauer was furious and refused to pay bills if his last name was written in two paragraphs.

Barthez lost sleep with despair when, when printing his "Genie" (Genie), a sign was not placed over e. Whiston, according to Arago, did not dare to publish a refutation of Newtonian chronology for fear that Newton would not. killed him.

Everyone who had the rare happiness of living in the company of brilliant people was amazed at their ability to reinterpret every act of those around them in a bad way, to see persecution everywhere and in everything to find a reason for deep, endless melancholy. This ability is due precisely to a stronger development of mental powers, due to which a gifted person is more able to find the truth and at the same time more easily invents false arguments in support of the solidity of his painful error. Part of the gloomy view of geniuses on the environment also depends, however, on the fact that, being innovators in the mental sphere, they express convictions with unshakable firmness that are not similar to the generally accepted opinion, and thereby repel most ordinary people from themselves.

But still, the main cause of melancholy and dissatisfaction with the life of the chosen natures is the law of dynamism and balance, which also governs the nervous system, the law according to which, after the excessive expenditure or development of force, there is an excessive decline of the same force - the law, as a result of which none of the miserable mortals can show a certain strength without paying for it in another respect, and, finally, the law that determines the unequal degree of perfection of their own works is very cruel.

Melancholy, despondency, shyness, selfishness - this is a cruel retribution for the higher mental gifts that they spend, just as the abuse of sensual pleasures entails a disorder of the reproductive system, impotence and diseases of the spinal cord, and excess in food is accompanied by gastric catarrhs.

After one of those ecstasies during which the poetess Milli discovers such an enormous power of creativity that it would be enough for a lifetime of minor Italian poets, she fell into a semi-paralytic state that lasted several days. Mohammed, at the end of his sermons, fell into a state of complete stupefaction, and one day he himself told Abu-Bakr that the interpretation of three chapters of the Koran had driven him to stupefaction.

Goethe, himself a cold Goethe, confessed that his mood was sometimes too cheerful, sometimes too sad.

In general, I do not think that in the whole world there is at least one great person who, even in moments of complete bliss, would not consider himself, without any reason, unhappy and persecuted, or at least temporarily would not suffer from painful fits of melancholy.

Heine, who himself admitted that he was incapable of understanding simple things, Heine, paralyzed, blind and already on his last breath, when he was advised to turn to God, interrupted the wheezing of agony with the words: "Dieu me pardonnera - c" est son metier ", ending with this last irony of his life, which was not more aesthetically cynical in our time.About Aretino they say that his last words were: "Guardatemi dai topi or che son unto".

Malherbe, already quite dying, corrected grammatical errors his nurse and refused the parting words of the confessor because he spoke awkwardly.

Bogur (Baugours), a grammarian, dying, said: "Je vais ou je va mourir" - "both are correct."

Santenis (Santenis) went crazy with joy, having found an epithet, which he searched in vain for for a long time. Foscolo said of himself: "Meanwhile, as in some things I am extremely understanding, regarding others, my understanding is not only worse than that of any man, but worse than that of a woman or a child."

It is known that Corneille, Descartes, Virgil, Addison, La Fontaine, Dryden, Manzoni, Newton were almost completely unable to speak in public.

Poisson said that life is worth living just to do mathematics. D "Alamber and Menage, who calmly endured the most painful operations, wept from the light injections of criticism. Lucio de Lanceval laughed when his leg was cut off, but could not bear the sharp criticism of Geoffroy.

Sixty-year-old Linnaeus, who had fallen into a paralytic and senseless state after an apoplexy, awoke from drowsiness when he was brought to the herbarium, which he had previously especially loved.

When Lanyi lay in a deep faint and the most powerful means could not arouse consciousness in him, someone took it into his head to ask him how much 12 would be squared, and he immediately answered: 144.

Sebuya, an Arabic grammarian, died of grief because Caliph Haroun al-Rashid did not agree with his opinion regarding some grammatical rule.

It should also be noted that among people of genius or rather scientists, there are often those narrow specialists whom Wachdakoff calls monotypic subjects; all their lives they are engaged in one kind of conclusion, which first occupies their brain and then already covers it completely: for example, Beckman studied the pathology of the kidneys throughout his whole life, Fresner - the moon, Meyer - ants, which is very similar to monomaniacs.

Because of this exaggerated and concentrated sensibility, both great men and lunatics are extremely difficult to convince or dissuade of anything. And this is understandable: the source of true and false ideas lies deeper with them and is more developed than among ordinary people, for whom opinions are only a conditional form, a kind of clothing, changed at the whim of fashion or at the request of circumstances. From this it follows, on the one hand, that no one should be trusted unconditionally, not even great men, and, on the other hand, that moral treatment is of little use to lunatics.

The extreme and one-sided development of sensibility is no doubt the cause of those strange behaviors due to temporary anesthesia* and analgesia 2) that are characteristic of great geniuses as well as lunatics. Thus, it is said of Newton that one day he began to fill his pipe with his niece's finger, and that when he happened to leave the room to fetch something, he always returned without taking it. They say about Tucherel that once he even forgot his name.

Beethoven and Newton, having begun - one for musical compositions, and the other for solving problems, became so insensitive to hunger that they scolded the servants when they brought them food, assuring them that they had already had dinner.

Gioia, in a fit of creativity, wrote an entire chapter on a desk board instead of paper.

The abbot Beccaria, busy with his experiments, during the mass service, said, forgetting: "Ite, experientia facta est" ("And yet experience is a fact").

Diderot, hiring cabs, forgot to let them go, and he had to pay them for the whole days that they stood idle in front of his house in vain; he often forgot months, days, hours, even the faces with whom he began to talk, and, as if in a fit of somnambulism, uttered whole monologues in front of them.

In the same way it is explained why great geniuses sometimes fail to assimilate the concepts accessible to the most ordinary minds, and at the same time express such bold ideas that most seem absurd. The fact is that a greater impressionability corresponds to a greater limitation of thinking (concetto). The mind under the influence of ecstasy does not perceive too simple and easy positions that do not correspond to its powerful energy. So, Monge, who made the most complex differential calculations, found it difficult to extract the square root, although any student could easily solve this problem.

Hagen considers originality to be precisely the quality that sharply distinguishes genius from talent. Similarly, Jurgen Meyer says: “The fantasy of a talented person reproduces what has already been found, the fantasy of a genius is completely new. The first makes discoveries and confirms them, the second invents and creates. to a goal that is not even visible to us. Originality is in the nature of a genius. "

Bettinelli considers originality and grandiosity to be the main hallmarks of genius. "That's why," he says, "the poets used to be called trovadori" (inventors).

A genius has the ability to guess what he does not quite know: for example, Goethe described Italy in detail before he saw it. Precisely because of this perspicacity, which rises above the general level, and because the genius, absorbed in higher considerations, differs from the crowd in super-deeds or even, like madmen (but in contrast to talented people), exhibits a propensity for disorder, genius natures meet contempt with the side of the majority, which, not noticing the intermediate points in their work, sees only the contradiction between their conclusions and generally recognized ones and the oddities in their behavior. Not so long ago, the public booed Rossini's Barber of Seville and Beethoven's Fidelio, and in our time Boito (Mephistopheles) and Wagner have suffered the same fate. How many academicians with a smile of compassion reacted to poor Marzolo, who opened up an entirely new field of philology; Bolyai, who discovered the fourth dimension and wrote anti-Euclidean geometry, was called a mad geometer and compared with a miller who would think of grinding stones to make flour. Finally, everyone knows with what distrust Fulton, Columbus, Papin, and in our time Piatti, Prague and Schliemann were once met, who found Ilion where he was not suspected, and, having shown his discovery to academic academics, silenced their mockery of yourself.

By the way, the most cruel persecution of people of genius has to be experienced precisely from academic academics, who, in the struggle against genius, conditioned by vanity, use their “scholarship”, as well as the charm of their authority, which is mainly recognized for them both by ordinary people and by the ruling classes. , also for the most part consisting of dozens of people.

There are countries where the level of education is very low and where, therefore, not only brilliant, but even talented people are treated with contempt. There are two university cities in Italy, from which the people who were the only glory of these cities were forced to withdraw by all kinds of persecution. But originality, although almost always aimless, is also often noticed in the actions of mad people, and especially in their writings, which only as a result sometimes acquire a shade of genius, as, for example, the attempt of Bernard, who was in the Florentine hospital for the insane in 1529, to prove that monkeys have the ability to articulate speech (linguaggio). Incidentally, men of genius are as distinguished as lunatics by a propensity for disorderliness and complete ignorance of practical life, which seems to them so insignificant in comparison with their dreams.

Originality, on the other hand, determines the tendency of people of genius and mental illness to invent new words that are incomprehensible to others, or to give famous words a special meaning and significance, which we find in Vico, Carraro, Alfieri, Marzolo and Dante.

1) The late Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, who was distinguished by a remarkably bright mind, was such a sickly and stupid child that he could not study at all. But in the seminary, one of the comrades, during a game, hit his head with a stone, and after that Macarius's abilities became brilliant, and his health completely recovered.

2) Goethe created his theory of the development of the skull according to the general type of spinal vertebrae during a walk, when, pushing a sheep's skull lying on the road with his foot, he saw that it was divided into three parts.

3) Loss of tactile sensitivity.

4) Loss of pain sensitivity.