In recent times insanity has shown itself in Farini, Brougham, Southey,
Govone, Gounod, Gutzkow, Monge, Fourcroy, Cowper, Rocchia, Ricci,
Fenicia,[149] Engel, Pergolese, Batjusckoff, Mürger, William Collins,
Techner, Hölderlen, Von der West, Gallo, Spedalieri, Bellingeri,
Salieri, Johannes Müller, Lenz, Barbara, Fuseli, Petermann, the
caricaturist Cham, Hamilton, Poe, Uhlrich.
In France, remarks Martini, many young and original poets have died
insane.[150] Such also seems to have been the fate of Briffault, and of
Laurent attacked by a veritable mania of calumny.[151] Among women
Günderode, Stieglitz (who both committed suicide with great
deliberation), Brachmann, L. E. Landon lived and died insane.[152]
Montanus, a victim to solitude and a disordered imagination, was
convinced that he had become a grain of wheat. He refused to move for
fear of being swallowed by birds.[153] Harrington is said to have
imagined that diseases took the form of bees and flies, and for this
reason he retired to a cabin armed with a broom to disperse them. Haller
believed that he was persecuted by men and damned by God on account of
the vileness of his soul and his heretical works. He could only soothe
his excessive terror by enormous doses of opium and by converse with
priests.[154] Ampère burnt a treatise on the future of chemistry
believing he had written it by Satanic suggestion. The great Dutch
artist, Van Goes, thought he was possessed. Carlo Dolce, a prey to
religious monomania, vowed only to paint religious pictures. He devoted
his pencil to Madonnas, though his Madonna, indeed, is the portrait of
Balduini. On his wedding-day he alone was missing; after some hours he
was found prostrated before the altar of the Annunciation. Nathaniel
Lee, the dramatist, composed thirteen tragedies during the course of his
disease; one day a feeble dramatic colleague told him that it was easy
to write like a madman. “It is not easy to write like a madman,” he
replied, “but it is very easy to write like a fool.” Thomas Lloyd, who
wrote excellent verse, was a strange mixture of malice, pride, genius,
and insanity.[155] If he was not satisfied with his verses he put them
in his glass to polish them, as he said. Everything that he came across,
even coal, paper, and tobacco, he was accustomed to mix with his food
for hygienic reasons; the carbon purified it, stone imparted mineral
virtues, &c. Charles Lamb in early life had an attack of insanity which
was hereditary in his family; writing of this to Coleridge, he said: “At
some future time I will amuse you with an account, as full as my memory
will permit, of the strange turns my frenzy took. I look back upon it at
times with a gloomy kind of envy, for, while it lasted, I had many,
many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all
the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad. All now seems
to me vapid, or comparatively so.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account