Artists with Bipolar: Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all... 

(XIX, p. 19)

I have decided to start a series of postings about famous artists which had Bipolar, discussing the clear connection between artistic creativity and the disorder. As a writer of poetry, piano player and occasional visual art maker myself, this is of utmost interest to me. Also, having started looking into this topic, I am startled by the amount of Bipolar artists/writers/musicians whose style and subject I have enjoyed for a long time, without knowing the connection. My first entry of the Artists with Bipolar is the poet Emily Dickinson.

Emily Dickinson was a Victorian writer, who lived in Amherst, MA in the United States in the mid 19th Century. Her life was a hard one: full of loneliness and misfortune. Known as a eccentric and a recluse, she mainly kept within intense family circles, never marrying and dying at a relatively early age, of kidney dysfunction. Her mother was a very depressed individual, showing hereditary roots behind the Bipolar disorder, alongside clear environmental factors that she faced during her lifetime.

Dickinson is seen as a founding figure in American Poetry history, heralding the start of various pre-modernist forms such as slant rhyme, short lines and unconventional punctuation and capitalization. She was startlingly original and unconventional in comparison to other Victorian poets. For example:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

(XVII, p. 18)

Within her poetry, she deals with subjects such as issues of death and mortality, which clearly points to depressive tendencies. However, what clearly links her work to Bipolar in particular, is the pattern of different phases in her life and writings. She is known to have had two four-year phases (from 1858-1865) of intense emotion and therefore productivity, followed by many years of moderate to low creative turn-out. During her most active phase, she developed her characteristic topics, probably most famously known in poems such as 'XV':

There's a certain slant of light,

On winter afternoons,

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes.

(XV, p. 87)

and 'XXXVII':

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane; 
Demur,-- you're straightaway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
(XXXVII, p. 30)

Quotation source: Dickinson, Emily, Selected Poems (New York: Random House, 1993)

Book Review: An Inquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Kay Redfield Jamison

Jamison, Kay Redfield, An Inquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (New York: Vintage, 1995)

When I was diagnosed with Bipolar, many of the closest people in my life recommended I read a book called An Inquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. My mother herself read the book that month and then even sent me a copy. It was unanimously agreed upon within my circle of friends and family that this memoir would be helpful to me. So I read it.

What followed was very unexpected and perhaps unusual: this book actually made me worse. Jamison's memoir didn't aid me, it put me into a severely depressed state; it didn't inform me further, it made me feel less able to cope with having Bipolar Disorder. From looking at reviews into this title, it seems as though my reaction was in the minority, but I thought I'd share a few of my opinions on it.

Looking back on this experience, I wonder why this happened. Much of my reaction I feel comes from the message behind the book. The two biggest lessons I learnt from Redfield, were that it is an incurable and to a certain extent uncontrollable disease, the only real answer being a life of medication. The book is almost painfully negative. Like the term "manic depressive", I take exception to her reclaiming of being "mad" and "madness" in general, which I find derogative and insulting in this day and age.

However, it wasn't all bad, and there were times where she made absolute sense and I could relate well to her experiences. This is a passage that I did relate to, describing the feeling of mania which ends in deep depression:

"There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistable. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against -- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality." (p. 67)

In conclusion, I feel that this book is best read by people who are not themselves Bipolar, as a reference point to understand the condition. It's depiction of someone with Bipolar is accurate and interestingly written, and much of the research and information within the book is good.