Creativity and madness: why Fulvio Scaparro’s “Il senno di prima” is still relevant

CThere are texts that age quickly and others that, reread after years, seem to have foreseen the future. This is the case of this chapter of The wisdom of beforewritten by Fulvio Scaparro in November 2004 and still extraordinarily contemporary in the way it addresses issues such as creativityThe conformismThe need to imagine and the social fear of what escapes the rules. The title plays ironically with the famous saying “The pits of hindsight are full“. Here, however, “sense” comes first: it is that of creativity, intuition, the ability to see possibilities that do not yet exist. A form of thought that is often irregular, restless, even uncomfortable, but essential for any authentic change. The following text is proposed in its entirety.

Us and “the crazy girl at home”

THE’genius-madness combination it still possesses an extraordinary power of attraction today, judging not only by the interest that doctors, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and philosophers continue to show it but by the space that the media dedicate to a topic that attracts the attention and curiosity of a large part of public opinion. The transformation of a legitimate scientific interest towards the study of complexity of the human being in spectacular revival of ancient ones stereotypes and prejudices, means that, alongside quite a few researches, reflections, essays, literary, cinematographic and television works worthy of respect, we witness a flourishing of wholly or partly unfounded speculations which transform the still mysterious relationship existing between thecreative exceptionality – not only in art and science – and psychopathology.

The misuse of the word “genius”

Suffice it to note the abuse and misuse of the word ‘genius’ itself, the most widespread meaning of which impliesunattainability of the characteraccompanied by a good dose of bizarreness, unpredictability and extravagance of behaviors. These stereotypes they contribute to making the exceptional creative individual who escapes any comparison with the ordinary individual, depriving him in whole or in part of his humanity. This radical diversity that is attributed to the brilliant individual exposes him to an ambiguous adoration ready to turn into debasement on the part of those who fear or envy the man or woman who dares to follow unusual paths and who must, so to speak, be brought back to earth by highlighting their human defects.

The conflict between the external world and the internal one

Vittorio Cerami[i] remember instead that genius does not only belong to inventors, scientists, tailors, artists, but also to thieves, swindlers, swindlers, anyone who feels, in the form of real compulsion, “the strong conflict between the world we live in and the universe closed within us. The ‘objects’ we create are the fruit of an attempt at conciliation. […] It means that we cannot be creative if the world in which we live and what is within us match: an idiosyncrasy is necessary, let’s even say an unhappiness.” And Cerami adds this amusing consideration: “By this I certainly don’t mean that the inventor of the corkscrew had suicidal temptations. But it is certain that the time dedicated to racking his brains on the best way to extract the cork from the bottle has distracted him from other vital tensions”.

Genius according to Schopenhauer and Jaspers

What Schopenhauer wrote also applies to the inventor of the corkscrew The world as will and representation: “[ richiedendo] a complete oblivion of one’s own person and his relationships, it follows that genius is nothing other than the most complete objectivity, that is, the objective direction of the spirit which is opposed to the subjective direction which tends towards one’s own person, that is, to the will”.

Karl Jaspers, recalls Umberto Galimberti, while noting a coincidence between the most creative moments of pathological genius and the most acute episodes of schizophrenia, believes that pathology can accompany geniusbut don’t explain it. Galimberti is a particularly reliable source of Jaspers’ thought, whom he considers one of his teachers, having met and frequented him in Basel between 1962 and 1965. In his Dictionary of psychology[ii]commenting on Jaspersian analyzes of the production of writers and artists by connecting them to their pathological lives, underlines how they, unlike many other pathographies, are placed not only on the scientific terrain of applied psychiatry investigations but also on the philosophical terrain of existential problems.

The pearl and the flaw in the shell

The works of the artists studied by Jaspers[iii] in light of the available biographical evidence, “far from being enclosed in the narrow spaces of alienation, they take on the meaning of paradigmatic moments of extreme human possibilities.”

Although conditioned by illness, the creative spirit is, writes Jaspers, “beyond the opposition between normal and abnormal, and can be metaphorically represented as the pearl that arises from the defect of the shell. Just as we do not think of the illness of the shell while admiring its pearl, so when faced with the vital force of a work we do not think of the schizophrenia which perhaps was the condition of its birth”. As I pointed out at the beginning, attention to the defect and not to the pearl too often characterizes the appeal that creative exceptionality has on the general public.

The risk of gossip about madness

This is the risk of reducing pathographies to gossip which should not, Galimberti writes, present the works as ‘symptoms’ of the disease, “but as materials that reveal the way in which the author became aware of his own spiritual world by exposing it in the work.” Jaspers was clear: “The spirit cannot become ill. But the spirit is supported by concrete experience. The illness of existence has consequences for the realization of the spirit which can be inhibited, deferred, or even favored and implemented in a unique way.”

Creativity and the price of freedom

Genius always pays for his talents, he wrote Henry James[iv]. In the face ofadmiration and amazement it arousesone cannot forgive the genius for existing if only because underlines the limits of normality which a large part of humanity cannot, or does not want, escape.

Moreover, although it is spoken of in enthusiastic terms in every pedagogical discourse, creativity is not encouraged except in moderation in educational practice[v] perhaps precisely because we fear its strongly initiatory character which always implies a death and rebirth.
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Children and “the beautiful adventure”

Children, at least until the obsession with the goals to be achieved is instilled in them – which usually happens very early – and if the material conditions of life allow it, they are naturally creative and for a short time they experience ‘the beautiful adventure’, as we read in Duino elegies by RM Rilke: “[…] in that walk alone / we had the joy that what does not change gives, / we were there in a space between the world and toys / in a place that from the beginning / was created for a pure event […]”.

Creativity and transgression

‘Creating’ is pushing the limits of reality by using the data of reality itself in unusual forms and ways. It is precisely the existence of limits that spurs us to cross them and create.

To explain what creativity is, Vygotsky used a Russian folk tale in which he described a little hut that rested on crow’s feet. No one has ever experienced such a construction except through the fairy tale and the elements (the hut + the crow’s feet) with which this image was constructed are part of real human experience. Only their combination bears the imprint of the creation of the imagination.

To create is to transgress the order which dictates that a hut must not rest on crow’s feet.

“Moderate creativity”

We must ask ourselves, however, if we really want children – and adults – who are creative and therefore a little unpredictable, distrustful of the obvious and conformism, sometimes skittish and with a suspicious independence of thought. I have the impression that we are satisfied with ‘moderate creativity’, a true oxymoron.

Dealing with the “crazy housewife”

In order not to be reduced to witnessing the exploits of those who did not want or were unable to ‘moderate’ their creativity, we should come to an agreement with the ‘mad at home’, as Saint Teresa of Avila called the imagination, instead of exorcising it, locking it up and banishing it from our lives.

The Madwoman at Home is also the title of an engaging and enlightening film essay-novel by Rosa Montero[viii]from whose pages it is possible to peek into the world of dreams, nightmares, fears, doubts, euphoria and despondency, of a talented writer.

Live to live

In children, in artists and from time to time, even if more rarely, in some of us the joy and exhilaration of living for the sake of living, of playing for the sake of playing, of expressing ourselves for the sake of expressing ourselves is felt.

It seems that man gets the best of life in being fertile rather than in contemplating the product of his fertility.

This need common to every human being must be recognized, a need therefore not exclusive to childhood, the scientist, the artist or the inventor of the corkscrew: to make, as far as possible, fertile every moment of our short day on this earth in the often fruitless search for our talents, whether small or large, without being frightened by the ‘crazy housewife’ and the defects that the shell must have to produce a pearl.

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