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The New York Times July 21, 1918
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DRUGS AND GENIUS
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That subject of perennial literary interest, the relationship between drugs and genius,
comes up again for discussion in an article by Jeannette Marks, appearing in the current
number of the Yale Review. It is too often the case that writers on the subject assume
that there must be some abnormality, either of the mind or temperament, in the world's
great poets and novelists. The creator of a Hamlet or a Falstaff, a Faerie Queene or a
David Copperfield, seems scarcely to conform to the ordinary rules of psychiatry. Hence,
there has grown up about the lives of many of our men of genius an accumulating tradition
exhibiting them as victims of drugs, alcohol, mental disease--- and this to such an extent
that we are half inclined to regard as inevitable the pathological explanation of any
great creative force in literature.
Shakespeare's playful satire---
The lunatic lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact---
is partly to blame for this. And then there is Dreyden's still more familiar view of the
matter---
Great wits are sure to madness near allied---
in which, borrowing authority from an old Latin proverb, the morbid element in genius is
emphasized. Later writers have given quite a different explanation for the phenomenon that
we call genius, ranging in their views all the way from Thackery's satirical reflection
that the only difference between a genius and a fool is the difference between the length
of two worms, to the theory that geniuses are, above all men, common sense, normal human
beings.
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In her study of the pathological view of genius in literature, Miss Marks, although
attributing a great deal to morbid, abnormal influence, at least admits the tremendous
part played by thoroughly Normal tastes and characteristics. "Let us not
assert," she says. " as if there were some demonical logic in it, that Coleridge
and De Quincey were geniuses and ate opium." And then she hastens to point out the
fact that must, or ought to be in the mind of every student of the subject---
"Chaucer, Milton and Wordsworth, Blake, George Eliot and Browning were geniuses and
they did not take opium." The citation of Blake in this connection is,
perhaps, a trifle unfortunate, since, although not addicted to drugs or alcohol, he was
sufficiently "peculiar" in his habits to be considered, with some justice, at
least "mad north-northeast" and hence scarcely a good example of the
"sanity, balance of thought and form of expression that must ever be part of the
Anglo-Saxon ideal for poetry and prose." But we find it particularly difficult to
follow Miss Marks in her detection of the drug or alcohol influence in certain specific
pieces of poetry and imaginative prose. The following is a curious and suggestive
collection of such instances, undoubtedly, but it is hardly convincing:
- "Why," said a young woman, "does Swinburne use these words in this
way?" She pointed to a group of words whose toes were doing all the steps known to
accomplished bacchantes.
- "Alcohol," was the reply.
- "Why," she might have asked, " did De Quincey write so unequally often,
so strangely sometimes?"
- Laudanum, the alcoholic tincture of opium."
- "How did Coleridge manage to create 'Kubla Khan' ?"
- That question is not yet decided. Probably a long history of unintentional drug-taking
lay behind this poem. The "paper books," however, in which Coleridge recorded
his confessions are lost.
- "Why did Poe write 'Ulalume'?"
- "Opium and alcohol."
- "Why the peculiar, relentless pessimism of the 'City of Dreadful Night'?"
- "Alcohol and some opium."
- "Why some of the words unnatural, tortured, of the 'Hound of Heaven' and 'Sister
Songs'?"
- "Laudanum."
- "Why the jerk of light and color and flex of motion, the sudden terrible sounds in
Christabel'?"
- "Laudanum--- somewhat."
There can be no question that in certain instances--- happily few ---the influence of
drugs or alcohol has stimulated the creative faculty in literature. Such an instance is
graphically described in Mrs. Atherton's "The Gorgeous Isle," a story based on
the strange fatality that haunted the genius of Ernest Dowson. It has been said, also,
that Swinburne's work deteriorated in fire and originality on account of the comparatively
ascetic life the poet was forced to live with Watts-Dunton. But in this case it might well
be argued that Swinburne, whether helped or hindered by the wildness of his early years,
had exhausted his rich vein of gold before he settle down to the sober life at Putney, and
hence, in the natural order of things, no more Atalantas, or Poems and Ballads, or Songs
Before Sunrise were to be expected of him. But, after all, his "Tristram of
Lyonesse" was written at Putney--- and what could be more brilliant. More touched
with the true Swinburnian fire, than this re-creation of the old Arthurian legend? All of
which warns us that the traditional influence of drugs and alcohol on genius is by no
means so easy to trace as it appears. In the much cited case of Poe also, what proof is
there, after all, that, as Miss Marks indicates, "opium and alcohol" were joint
authors of "Ulalume" and "The Pit and the Pendulum"? From the
testimony of those who knew him, alcohol had a peculiarly disorganizing effect on Poe's
mental activities, rendering him illogical and incoherent while under its influence. His
work, characterized by its keen logic quite as much as by its glowing imagination, seems,
on that basis, rather the result of nonalcoholic moods than the reverse. In his case, at
least, it might be interesting to inquire how much splendid verse and prose was lost to
the world through the use of drugs or alcohol.
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