In others the indecency is, if possible, still more evident, especially
in cases of paralytic dementia. I remember an old man who used to draw a
vulva on the address of his letters to his wife, surrounding it with
obscene couplets in dialect.
It is a curious coincidence that two artists--one at Turin and the other
at Reggio--who were both megalomaniacs, should both have had sodomitic
instincts, which they combined with the delusion of being deities, and
lords of the world, which they had created and emitted from their
bodies. One of them (who, nevertheless, had a real artistic sense)
painted a full-length picture of himself, naked, among women, ejecting
worlds, and surrounded by all the symbols of power. This repeats, and at
the same time explains, the Ithyphallic divinity of the Egyptians.
_Criminality and Moral Insanity._--In this connection it is important to
notice that the greater number of these artists show, in addition to
their other forms of mania, a marked tendency to moral insanity,
especially in the form of unnatural vice. The painter who produced the
picture of “Delirium” was a pederast. The man who constructed the
marvellous model of the Reggio Asylum, already alluded to, was neither
draughtsman, sculptor, nor engineer. He was a madman, and, in addition,
a thief, with unnatural tendencies. This man, whenever the fancy took
him, escaped from the asylum, wandered about for some days, began to
steal when he had exhausted the small amount of money he had about him,
and when imprisoned declared himself a lunatic, and so got acquitted
and sent back to Reggio, when, after a short interval, he would repeat
the same line of conduct.
Dr. Tamburini told me that he, too, had been struck by the co-existence
of artistic faculty and moral insanity in these patients.
_Uselessness._--A characteristic common to many is the complete
uselessness of the work to which they devote themselves; and here I
recall once more Hécart’s dictum:--
“_C’est le travail des fous d’épuiser leurs cervelles_
_Sur des riens fatigants, sur quelques bagatelles._”[328]
A Genevan, affected by persecutory monomania, spent years in
embroidering on egg-shells and lemons. Though her work was most
beautiful, it could be of no advantage to her, for she kept it jealously
concealed; and I myself, though she was very fond of me, never saw any
of it till after her death.
Here we have, as in the case of artists of genius, the love of truth and
beauty for their own sake alone, only that the aim is reversed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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