What Did literary Geniuses Think of Themselves

[Transmodernism]

In a recent thread, JCamilo pointed out that T.S. Elliot considered himself perhaps lower in poetic stature than W.B. Yeats. This shocked me. And it raised, in my mind, interesting questions about how great authors thought of themselves.

Of course, there are always authors with a god-complex. But I've heard of a number of authors who didn't esteem their works as highly as we might think. For example, at the end of his life Goethe said his poetics were of little consequence compared to his scientific works. In The Four Quartets T.S. Elliot indicated that his poetry had been somewhat a waste of time, and ineffective (East Coker, sections II and V). Elizabeth Browning would eventually become somewhat annoyed at how much people appreciated her poetry more than her husband's.

So I'm interested in hearing, based on your knowledge, how great literary geniuses thought of themselves. Where they always megalomaniacs? Or did they often lightly esteem their work?

I have a little theory that excessive pride begets complacency, which begets mediocrity. Thus I think that many great artists may not have had as high self-esteem as we might think. What do you think?

[JCamilo]

Some of those guys have a humble arrogance. Like Borges who said that just handful of his poems and short stories would even be remembered and was surprised to see his work published in the 70's with popular editions.

Eliot in the case, is just praising a great poetic Genius. If I recall in his speech for the Nobel he also mentions that he was surprised to be considered as a poet since according to him, he wrote too little of it. Goethe is special. He is a genius and know it. I do not think he ever considered to be a great poet (Faust apart) and the relative proximity to Schiller helped it. Robert would today show a similar annoyance seeing his work shadowing Elizabeth work.

We have egomaniacs like Byron or Voltaire, albeit they are more about them than their works (Voltaire always reckonized the genius of Racine and Corneille over himself). But we have Keats that for many reasons died thinking to be a complete failure and expressing the wish to have more time to do something meaningful. Flaubert who hated all and was always not satisfacted with his work. Dostoievisky always admired Tolstoy and once wished to have as much time as Tolstoy had to "finish" a work and achive the count level of excellence. Meiville had great visions for Moby Dick but afterwards he became more shy, suspecting every work. Coleridge never considered himself higher and often used this to praise Wordsworth.

[Jeremydav]

And then there was Kafka who ordered his work to be burned. Not everyone is so confident.

[Transmodernism]

And then there was Kafka who ordered his work to be burned. Not everyone is so confident.

See, it is things like that which lead me to believe that truly great genius requires a strong sense of inferiority. Only a powerful insecurity and sense of some lack can provide the drive to do better and improve.

This is why it is foolish to try to inflate children's self-esteem, as the education system in my country is bent on doing. High self-esteem leads only to mediocrity, because you won't strive unless you feel there is a lack.

This is not to say, of course, that we should be masochistic self-flagellators; neither does it mean children should be put down. It means that to be great you have to have a sense that there are unscaled heights and unplumbed depths to be explored and attained.

[JCamilo]

Kakfa is repeating an arquetypical story. Mallarme did the same. Nabokov with Laura. And Virgil did first. But for Virgil was a strong sense of perfectionism, not inferiority.

There is enough big egos among genius. Dante is not humble (he basically equate himself to Homer, Ovid, Horace, Virgil,etc) and even a little more, since Virgil cannt go with him to heaven.

Cervantes is not humble, his rivalirity with other authors was not small. Milton, Joyce, Tolstoy are hardly humble either.

[Transmodernism]

Kakfa is repeating an arquetypical story. Mallarme did the same. Nabokov with Laura. And Virgil did first. But for Virgil was a strong sense of perfectionism, not inferiority.

There is enough big egos among genius. Dante is not humble (he basically equate himself to Homer, Ovid, Horace, Virgil,etc) and even a little more, since Virgil cannt go with him to heaven.

Cervantes is not humble, his rivalirity with other authors was not small. Milton, Joyce, Tolstoy are hardly humble either.

Good points. James Joyce' ego was infamous ("It will take the scholars centuries to figure out what I meant," to paraphrase). I love the story about how when someone remarked to Joyce' wife that she was married to a great man, she replied, "But you don't have to live with the bloody fool!"

BUT, having said that, you could make the argument that Joyce' greatest work (Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses) were written before his egomania reached its highest peak; after Ulysses he wrote Finnagin, which everyone considers inferior to the foregoing. Maybe he got too big for his britches and thus ceased to write as well as he had before.

[JCamilo]

I would think not. Ulysses is the work of an ambition that is imense.

[MystyrMystyry]

I think it's not totally about ego. It's a feeling of satisfaction perfectionists derive from putting a lot of effort into their words. The picture of themselves artists and writer send to the public is often one of arrogance, but what they might be saying is 'Leave me - I've got work to do.'

In the case of Kafka, there's a self-loathing depressive aspect to the poor guy. Who knows how many times in his social isolation he debated with himself to burn, not to burn, to burn, not to burn. It's just that we're left with the last one.

Tolstoy wouldn't have wanted his enormous life's work to go up in flames - he knew how much of a cultural contribution they would be.

But Shakespeare evidentally, didn't really care what happened to the plays - they'd served their purpose, and new playwrites will come and write new ones - because for him the thing was performance. 'The play's the thing' may refer to his attitude - the play, not the published text. Just a little entertainment - one that's become a pretty big industry.

[Transmodernism]

But then there's Emily Dickinson, who wrote solely for herself. This indicates that at least some artists create for non-egotistical reasons.

[stlukesguild]

Shakespeare never even thought highly enough of his plays to push for their publication... which he could easily have afforded... and did do for his sonnets and other poems. Kafka, as already mentioned, sought to have the majority of his writings burned. Dante, on the other hand, had no small ego... and admits to as much in the Inferno when he places himself among the greatest poets of history, and in Purgatorio when he admits that he will certainly be doing time for the sin of pride.

Within the field of the visual arts, the critic Robert Hughes stated that doubt always comes with the highest genius, while absolute self-certainty is but the consolation prize of the mediocre. I wonder about this with Picasso... and yet Pablo did roll up his great breakthrough painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (perhaps THE touchstone of Modern painting) after a slew of negative criticism... including the famous comment by Matisse who declared, "Pablo is trying to make us drink gasoline and eat fire." Michelangelo, on the other hand, had his nose broken as the result of a punch in the face from a fellow artist whose drawing he had mocked, while his own auto de fe, undertaken at his orders upon his death bed, was intended to eliminate any insight into his working process as well as any less-than-satisfactory art that might undermine his reputation as El Divino (the Divine One).

[stlukesguild]

But then there's Emily Dickinson, who wrote solely for herself. This indicates that at least some artists create for non-egotistical reasons.

Did she? Samuel Bowles published some few poems and later she would reach out to the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who would do the same. You also must consider the manner in which she carefully preserved her poems and you suspect that she may have imagined a future audience. Of course, like most artists, Dickinson carried on with or without an audience... driven by the need to create.

[Alexander III]

I know Victor Hugo had a massive ego, he considered himself the greatest french writer, the Shakespeare of france.

But as to the question, I doubt there is any general rule, great writers of the past have had completely different personalities. One one side of the scale we have Byron's and Rimbaud's, the former bedding 200 venetians in one year and considering himself a little demi-god (which makes his death all the more tragic, he wanted a glorious death in war and well...). The latter at the age of 17 wanted to revolutionize poetry and though himself above all poets except Baudelaire. All the while both of them abused drugs and alcohol and lived lives riddles in excess and depravity.

On the other hand we have men like Kafka who were extremely shy and wrote most often in a very private manner living quiet and calm lives.

These various character stereotypes go back to ancient times. We have Sophocles the womanizer ( or rather the boyizer) and Aeschylus the soldier, both knowing to have had a passionate taste for drinking wine pure. (drinking wine pure, as we drink it today, was considered the ancient greek equivalent of using drugs, as the greeks had 1 part wine, 2 parts water and one part honey; only barbarians drank pure wine). And then there is Euripides the quite recluse.

There is no golden rule, with writers of genius, much like any man of genius in a specific field. especially in art, that's the beauty of it. We have the poetry of mad Verlaine and the poetry of perfectionist Virgil, and both are of genius, though in this case Virgil ranks higher than Verlaine by popular consensus.

[MystyrMystyry]

Shakespeare may have initially thought the plays were fairly top notch - let's not presume he wasn't aware.

But there's a chance that learning, hearing and reciting his own words at two performances per day over whatever length of time started to pall.

Imagine being Richard Grant walking into the local and a bunch of drunks shout out 'You've got to help us - we've come of holiday by mistake!'

Night after night after night...

[Sancho]

Ernest Hemingway thought highly of himself, and he was willing to fight if you disagreed.

[JCamilo]

Oh many did. Rousseau got crazy because Voltaire give a damn about him, which meant Rouseau ego asked for the reckongnition of the most influential thinker of France. Virginia Woolf was not exactly humble, Eça de Queiroz was a puncher, Pushkin certainly had enough ego to stand before the Emperor and Chekhov who told society to go to hell but at same time was always humble about his work.

In the end, many are both, humble and unsecure until creation and then, afronting and arrogant to defend what they have created.

As the Emiliy, she didnt took as much care, there is slightly difference between the few poems that were published and those that did not. The punctuation mostly. Since it is hard to tell what she did thought, reading her work in order gave me the impression this subject of fame and publishing was later in her work, as if she accepted some battle between her own temperament and editing process... Kafka also carried about publishing during his lifetime. The other Emily (Bronte) was true shily, not showing her poems even to her sisters.