Tuberculosis and the creative mind / by Arthur C. Jacobson.

  • Jacobson, Arthur C.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tuberculosis and the creative mind / by Arthur C. Jacobson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    consequence until after he became afflicted. His work improved as his malady advanced, and his greatest work, Sunrise, was composed on his death-bed (1881). Making all allowance for natural improvement in technique and for increased intellectual breadth, we cannot summarily dismiss consideration of the phthisical element. It stirred his soul into expression in the beginning and as time passed on became more and more excita- tive. The fire in the flint showed not until it was struck. Early in 1874, Lanier, then greatly wasted, having been tuberculous since January, 1868,9 a period of six years, wrote to his wife: So many great ideas for art are born to me each day, I am swept away into the land of All-Delight by their strenuous sweet whirlwind; and I find within myself such entire, yet hum- ble, confidence of possessing every single element of power to carry them all out, * * * I do not understand this. Lanier's mother died of tuberculosis. No tuberculous genius has, himself, so well expressed the psychology of the tuberculous. Thus, in 1873, he writes to his wife from Texas: Were it not for some circumstances which make such a proposition seem absurd in the highest degree, I would think that I am shortly to die, and that my spirit hath been singing its swan-song before dissolution. All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody. The very inner spirit and essence of all wind-songs, sex-songs, soul-songs and body-songs hath blown upon me in quick gusts like the breath of passion,10 and sailed me into a sea of vast dreams, whereof each wave is at once a vision and a melody. Pathological, of course. This man's children were badly off for the necessaries when he wrote the lines just quoted, yet he was in the seventh heaven. Later he wrote again to his wife: Know, then, that disappointments were inevitable, and will still come until I have 9 There are reasons for believing that his tuberculosis dated from 1865. 10 Compare Shelley's Ode to the West Wind (see Shelley sketch) : Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of its mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be though, spirit fierce, My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to_ quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind?