Kay Redfield Jamison - Touched with fire : manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament

Manic-Depressive Illness and
the Artistic Temperament

Kay Redfield Jamison

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Published by Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 1993 by Kay Redfield Jamison

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First Free Press Paperback Edition 1994

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jamison, Kay R.

Touched with fire : manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament / Kay Redfield Jamison.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-684-83183-X
eISBN: 978-1-439-10663-1

1. Manic-depressive illness. 2. ArtistsMental health. 3. AuthorsMental health. 4. Creative ability. 5. Genius and mental illness. I. Title.

[RC516.J36 1996]

616.89500887dc20 96-21444

CIP

For Richard Jed Wyatt, M. D.

To those who, by the dint of glass and vapour, Discover stars, and sail in the winds eye

BYRON

Grateful acknowledgment is given to the publishers for permission to reprint excerpts from the following works:

I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great, from Collected Poems 1928-1953 by Stephen Spender. Copyright 1934 and renewed 1952 by Stephen Spender. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from Elegy, from Field Work by Seamus Heaney. Copyright 1976, 1979 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpts from Visitors and Suicide from Day by Day by Robert Lowell. Copyright 1975, 1976, 1977 by Robert Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from Elegy, copyright 1955 by New Republic, Inc., from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from Mays Truth and Mays Falsehood, in Delmore Schwartz: Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Laurence Pollinger Limited.

Excerpt from Its After One by Vladimir Mayakovsky, in Edward J. Brown, Mayakovsky: A Poet in Revolution. Copyright 1973 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Excerpt from The First Days Night Had Come (poem 410): Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Excerpt from In a Dark Time, copyright 1960 by Beatrice Roethke, Administratrix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from 90 North from The Complete Poems by Randall Jarrell. Copyright by Mrs. Randall Jarrell. Renewal copyright 1968 by Mrs. Randall Jarrell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from The Deceptive Present, The Phoenix Year in: Delmore Schwartz: Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge. Copyright 1959 by Delmore Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Laurence Pollinger Limited.

Excerpt from Little Gidding in Four Quartets, copyright 1943 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Limited.

Excerpt from Glen Eyre from Spring Tide and Neap Tide: Selected Poems, 1932-1972 by Sorley MacLean (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1977). Reprinted by permission of Canongate Press PLC.

Excerpt from 384. The Marker Slants from The Dream Songs by John Berryman. Copyright 1969 by John Berryman. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from The Cuillin, Part VII from From Wood to Ridge by Sorley MacLean. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.

I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the souls history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire, Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song. And who hoarded from the Spring branches The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light Nor its grave evening demand for love. Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, See how these names are fted by the waving grass And by the streamers of white cloud And whispers of wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fires centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

STEPHEN SPENDER

CONTENTS

1.
THAT FINE MADNESS
Introduction

2.
ENDLESS NIGHT, FIERCE FIRES AND SHRAMMING GOLD
Manic-Depressive Illness

3.
COULD IT BE MADNESSTHIS?
Controversy and Evidence

4.
THEIR LIFE A STORM WHEREON THEY RIDE
Temperament and Imagination

5.
THE MINDS CANKER IN ITS SAVAGE MOOD
George Gordon, Lord Byron

6.
GENEALOGIES OF THESE HIGH MORTAL MISERIES
The Inheritance of Manic-Depressive Illness

7.
THIS NET THROWNE UPON THE HEAVENS
Medicine and the Arts

An Angel Descending: Dantes Divine Comedy. William Blake, c. 1826 (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York)

his raptures were, All air, and fire, which made his verses clear, For that fine madness still he did retain, Which rightly should possess a poets brain.

MICHAEL DRAYTON