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“The simultaneous existence and shared residence of such opposite moods and feelings is well-illustrated by Franz Schubert's assertion that whenever he sat down to write songs of love he wrote songs of pain, and whenever he sat down to write songs of pain he wrote songs of love.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
“So it became,
the law of universe,
to have the,
profoundest,
of the words,
cloaked in the,
darkest of the masks.”
―
the law of universe,
to have the,
profoundest,
of the words,
cloaked in the,
darkest of the masks.”
―
“(It is of no little interest and irony that Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and proponent of selective breeding in humans in order to obtain a "highly gifted race of man," was himself subject to "nervous breakdowns"; he was also appreciative of the "thin partitions" between greatness and psychopathology. Dr. Daniel Kevles, in his book In the Name of Eugenics, quotes Galton as saying that "men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity.")”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
“Circadian rhythms are implicated in some of the symptoms of depression, such as early awakening and diurnal variation in mood. The possible importance of the circadian system in its pathogenesis is suggested by the capacity of experimental alterations in the timing of sleep and wakefulness to alter clinical state." Biological rhythms range in frequency from milliseconds to months or years. Most rhythmic disturbances identified in the symptoms of manic-depressive illness occur over the course of a day-that is, they are circadian rhythms-and are most apparent in the daily rest-activity cycle. The episodic recurrences of the illness, on the other hand, are usually infradian, oscillating over periods of months or years. Episodic mania and depression may also reflect disturbances in ultradian rhythms, those that oscillate more than once a day, which are common at the cellular level and in hormone secretion, as well as in such autonomic functions as circulation, blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and in the cycles of sleep.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
“The emphasis on shifting essences, uncertainty, and fiercely contrasting opposite states was, of course, neither new nor unique to Byron. He and the other Romantic poets, however, took the ideas and emotions to a particularly intense extreme. Shelley's belief that poetry "marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change," and that it "subdues to union, under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things," was in sympathy not only with the views of Byron but those of Keats as well. "Negative capability," wrote Keats, exists "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching out after fact & reason." The "poetical Character," he said:
has no self-it is every thing and nothing-It has no character-it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated-It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
has no self-it is every thing and nothing-It has no character-it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated-It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
Dagan’s 2025 Year in Books
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