“terrified of being mad alone”: Caroline Blackwood, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1979, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“if we see a light”: Robert Lowell, “Since 1939,” Collected Poems, 741.
“Lithium Salts in the Treatment”: J. F. Cade, “Lithium Salts in the Treatment of Psychotic Excitement,” Medical Journal of Australia 36 (1949): 349–52. The history of the use of lithium in mania and depression is extensively covered in F. N. Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy (London: Macmillan, 1984). John Cade is quoted as asking why anyone should consider the use of lithium in manic episodes—“Why not potable pearl, or crocodile dung or unicorn horn?” Johnson discusses in detail lithium’s long medicinal history going back to the ancient physicians and healing waters to its more systematic use in the treatment of depression in the nineteenth century.
“Experiences of Treatment”: G. P. Hartigan, “Experiences of Treatment with Lithium Salts,” in F. N. Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 183–87.
“Some Australian physiologists”: Ibid., 183.
“It is widely distributed”: J. F. Cade, “Lithium Salts in the Treatment of Psychotic Excitement,” 351.
Soranus of Ephesus: F. N. Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 146. See S. W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression, as well as G. Roccatagliata, A History of Ancient Psychiatry.
it treats and prevents mania: For reviews of lithium’s efficacy, see J. R. Geddes, S. Burgess, K. Hawton, K. Jamison, and G. M. Goodwin, “Long-Term Lithium Therapy for Bipolar Disorder: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials,” American Journal of Psychiatry 161 (2004): 217–22; M. Bauer, P. Grof, and B. Müller-Oerlinghausen, eds., Lithium in Neuropsychiatry: The Comprehensive Guide (Abingdon: Informa UK, 2006); F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness; J. R. Geddes, G. M. Goodwin, J. Rendell, et al., “Lithium Plus Valproate Combination Therapy Versus Monotherapy for Relapse Prevention in Bipolar I Disorder (BALANCE): A Randomised Open-Label Trial,” Lancet 375 (2010): 385–95; E. Severus, M. J. Taylor, C. Sauer, et al., “Lithium for Prevention of Mood Episodes in Bipolar Disorders: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” International Journal of Bipolar Disorders 2 (2014): 1–17.
it acts to prevent suicide: For example, R. J. Baldessarini, L. Tondo, P. Davis, et al., “Decreased Risk of Suicides and Attempts During Long-Term Lithium Treatment: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Bipolar Disorders 8 (2006): 625–39; A. Cipriani, K. Hawton, S. Stockton, and J. R. Geddes, “Lithium in the Prevention of Suicide in Mood Disorders: Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, British Medical Journal 346 (2013), DOI: 10.1136/bmj.f3646; U. Lewitzka, E. Severus, R. Bauer, et al., “The Suicide Prevention Effect of Lithium: More Than 20 Years of Evidence—A Narrative Review,” International Journal of Bipolar Disorders (2015), DOI: 1186/s40345_015_0032_2; J. F. Hayes, A. Pitman, L. Marston, et al., “Self-Harm, Unintentional Injury, and Suicide in Bipolar Disorder During Maintenance Mood Stabilizer Treatment: A UK Population-Based Electronic Health Records Study,” JAMA Psychiatry (May 11, 2016): E1–E7.
protect and heal the brain: The potential neuroprotective and neurogenerative qualities of lithium have been studied extensively over the past several years. A small sampling of the studies includes H. K. Manji, G. J. Moore, and G. Chan, “Clinical and Preclinical Evidence for the Neurotropic Effects of Mood Stabilizers: Implications for the Pathophysiology and Treatment of Manic-Depressive Illness,” Biological Psychiatry 61 (2000): 740–54; S. A. Johnson, J.-F. Wang, X. Sun, et al., “Lithium Treatment Prevents Stress-Induced Dendritic Remodeling in the Rodent Amygdala,” Neuroscience 163 (2009): 34–39; C. I. Giakoumatos, P. Nanda, I. T. Mathew, et al., “Effects of Lithium on Cortical Thickness and Hippocampal Subfield Volumes in Psychotic Bipolar Disorder,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 61 (2015): 180–87; T. Gerhard, D. P. Devan, C. Huang, et al., “Lithium Treatment and Risk for Dementia in Adults with Bipolar Disorder: Population-Based Cohort Study,” British Journal of Psychiatry 207 (2015): 46–51; A. G. Gildengers, M. A. Butters, H. J. Aizenstein, et al., “Longer Lithium Exposure Is Associated with Better White Matter Integrity in Older Adults with Bipolar Disorder,” Bipolar Disorders 17 (2015): 248–56; P.-M. Martin, R. E. Stanley, A. P. Ross, et al. “DIXDC1 Contributes to Psychiatric Susceptibility by Regulating Dendritic Spine and Glutamatergic Synapse Density via GSK3 and Wnt/β-catenin Signaling,” Molecular Psychiatry (2016), DOI: 10.1038/mp.2016.184.
“certain modest magical qualities”: G. P. Hartigan, “Experiences of Treatment with Lithium Salts,” 187.
“Nothing new worth writing about”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, February 26, 1967, Letters, 483.
“I’m in terrific shape!”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, June 4, 1967, Vanderbilt.
“Yes, I’m well”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, January 12, 1968, Letters, 494.
“These pills for my manic seizures”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Al Alvarez, n.d. May 1968, Letters, 501.
his attacks of mania preceded: This clinical pattern of a more favorable response to lithium being associated with mania preceding depression rather than the other way around has been observed in many studies; they are reviewed in F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness.
“He is taking some new drug”: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, September 12, 1967, Between Friends, 204.
“became much more frazzled”: Jonathan Miller, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“Lithium had made a terrible difference”: Grey Gowrie, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“he appeared to be released”: Esther Brooks, “Remembering Cal,” 42–43.
His stepdaughter Ivana: Interview with the author, New York, April 16, 2014.
poet Kathleen Spivack agreed: Kathleen Spivack, With Robert Lowell and His Circle (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2012), 163; also, interview with the author, March 19, 2014, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“I think it was a dampener”: Sidney Nolan, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“I never wrote more”: Robert Lowell, “A Conversation with Ian Hamilton,” Collected Prose, 271–72.
“I guess the summer goes”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, July 30, 1968, Words in Air, 643.
“This beautiful summer”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich, August 23, 1968, Letters, 506.
“Words came rapidly”: Robert Lowell, “A Conversation with Ian Hamilton,” Collected Prose, 271–72.
“He had a massive drive to write”: Helen Vendler, correspondence with the author, February 9, 2011.
“different from the more pointed articulation”: Ian Hamilton, “Robert Lowell,” in The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 314.
Two small studies during the 1970s: M. H. Marshall, C. P. Neumann, and M. Robinson, “Lithium, Creativity, and Manic-Depressive Illness: Review and Prospectus,” Psychosomatics 11 (1970): 406–8; M. Schou, “Artistic Productivity and Lithium Prophylaxis in Manic-Depressive Illness,” British Journal of Psychiatry 135 (1979): 97–103.
A study of the impact: L. L. Judd, B. Hubbard, D. S. Janowsky, et al., “The Effect of Lithium Carbonate on the Cognitive Functions of Normal Subjects,” Archives of General Psychiatry 34 (1977): 355–57. L. L. Judd, “Effect of Lithium on Mood, Cognition, and Personality Function in Normal Subjects,” Archives of General Psychiatry 36 (1979): 860–65.
Other studies of patients: E. D. Shaw, J. J. Mann, P. E. Stokes, and A. Z. A. Manevitz, “Effects of Lithium Carbonate on Associative Productivity and Idiosyncrasy in Bipolar Outpatients,” American Journal of Psychiatry 143 (1986): 1166–69; L. Pons, J. Nurnberger, D. Murphy, et al., “Mood-Independent Aberrancies of Word Responses and Action of Lithium on Their Repetition in Manic Depressive Illness,” Pharmacopsychiatry 20 (1987): 2
27–29; J. H. Kocsis, E. D. Shaw, P. E. Stokes, et al., “Neuropsychologic Effects of Lithium Discontinuation,” Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 13 (1993): 268–75.
“We’d all been to the opera”: Robert Silvers, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1981, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“A week ago, you called”: Letter from Curtis Prout, M.D., to Robert Lowell, May 13, 1975, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
Mania often comes back: T. Suppes, R. J. Baldessarini, G. L. Faedda, and M. Tohen, “Risk of Recurrence Following Discontinuation of Lithium Treatment in Bipolar Disorder,” Archives of General Psychiatry 48 (1991): 1082–88; G. M. Goodwin, “Recurrence of Mania After Lithium Withdrawal: Implications for the Use of Lithium in the Treatment of Bipolar Affective Disorder,” British Journal of Psychiatry 164 (1994): 149–52; R. J. Baldessarini, L. Tondo, and A. C. Viguera, “Discontinuing Lithium Maintenance Treatment in Bipolar Disorders: Risks and Implications,” Bipolar Disorders (1999): 17–24.
risk of suicide increases: R. J. Baldessarini, L. Tondo, and J. Hennen, “Effects of Lithium Treatment and Its Discontinuation on Suicidal Behavior in Bipolar Manic-Depressive Disorder, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 60 (1999): 77–84; L. Tondo and R. J. Baldessarini, “Reduced Suicide Risk During Lithium Maintenance Treatment,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 61 (2000): suppl. 09, 97–104.
“I suppose it is back to the lithium”: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, January 29, 1976, Vassar.
He was taking lithium: Medical records of Robert Lowell, Massachusetts General Hospital. Lowell was admitted to the Boston hospital on February 1, 1977, and discharged on February 9, 1977. His medical history, including the findings from his hospitalization at Massachusetts General Hospital, is discussed in Appendix 3.
“Of all our conversations”: Robert Giroux, in his introduction to Collected Prose, xiii–xiv.
“I am at the end of something”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, January 23, 1963, Letters, 414.
“I have a formidable new doctor”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, February 25, 1966, Letters, 468.
“Sickness, methinks”: K. R. Eissler, Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study: 1775–1786, vol. 2 (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1963), 1182.
“Sometimes nothing is so solid”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, July 2, 1948, Letters, 103.
“If I don’t write”: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, October 17, 1969, Between Friends, 248.
“Directly I am not working”: Virginia Woolf, diary entries, August 6, 1937, and December 18, 1928, in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, ed. Anne Olivier Bell (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1977), vol. 3 (1925–30) and vol. 5 (1936–41).
“For the last four months”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Harriet Winslow, January 23, 1963, Houghton Library.
“I fight depression by work”: George Mackay Brown, December 11, 1982, George Mackay Brown: The Life (London: John Murray, 2006), 38.
“All sorrows can be borne”: Isak Dinesen, quoting a friend, in an interview with Bart Mohn, New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1957.
“To go through a terrible time”: Apsley Cherry-Garrard, in T. E. Lawrence: By His Friends, ed. A. W. Lawrence (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), 192.
“morbid self-introspection”: Ibid.
“were worse than anything”: Ibid.
“Then as th’earth’s”: John Donne, “The Triple Fool,” in John Donne, ed. John Carey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 96.
“Dejection of spirits”: Letter from William Cowper to Lady Hesketh, October 12, 1785, in The Correspondence of William Cowper, vol. 2, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904).
“Working, I sit groping”: Robert Lowell, “15. Writing,” draft manuscript, HRC.
“Writing fell to me”: Robert Lowell, essay written for Vernon Williams, M.D., n.d. 1950s, HRC.
“The onionskin typing paper I bought”: Robert Lowell, “Onionskin,” Collected Poems, 589.
“But, for the unquiet heart”: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, ed. Erik Gray (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 9.
“No one has ever written”: Antonin Artaud, “Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947),” in Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 497.
“Sometimes I wonder”: Graham Greene, Ways of Escape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 285.
“What it usually lights on”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, June 15, 1964, Words in Air, 542.
“I think I am escaping”: Letter from Robert Lowell to William Meredith, July 16, 1966, Connecticut College.
“I gather from your phone calls”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Frank Bidart, September 4, 1976, Letters, 656.
“Is getting well ever an art”: Robert Lowell, “Unwanted,” Collected Poems, 834.
writing prose was less likely: Charlotte Lowell wrote to Jean Stafford on October 31, 1943, that she blamed the Tates for making Lowell more vulnerable to the “emotional excitement of poetry”; Blair Clark Papers, HRC. Elizabeth Hardwick wrote to Blair and Holly Clark on November 29, 1954, that prose writing was good for Lowell since prose, unlike poetry, “need not thrive…on bouts of enthusiasm”; Blair Clark Papers, HRC.
“I’ve just started messing around”: Letter from Robert Lowell to John Berryman, October 6, 1954, Letters, 240.
“intolerable poetic darkness”: Letter from Robert Lowell to J. F. Power, October 29, 1956, Letters, 264.
“I find it hard to be”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Flannery O’Connor, January 16, 1956, Letters, 253.
“How different prose is”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, April 15, 1976, Letters, 648.
“Near the Unbalanced Aquarium”: Robert Lowell wrote many drafts of “Near the Unbalanced Aquarium.” His editor Robert Giroux believes the final version was probably written in 1957 (Collected Prose, 377). It was published in the March 12, 1987, edition of the New York Review of Books. Quotations in the text are from Collected Prose, 346–63. Draft manuscripts are in Houghton Library.
“stirring up the bottom”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, November 18, 1949, Letters, 150.
“a huge affair with snails”: Robert Lowell, quoted in forthcoming book on Lowell’s prose: Memoirs, ed. Steven Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kose (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018). Draft manuscripts in Houghton Library.
“remained in its recollections”: Robert Lowell, “Near the Unbalanced Aquarium,” Collected Prose, 348.
“trying as usual”: Ibid., 346.
“the yeasty manic lift”: Robert Lowell, draft 1, “The Balanced Aquarium,” Houghton Library.
“seemed to change shape”: Ibid., 346.
“purely and puritanically confined”: Ibid.
“Tireless, madly sanguine”: Ibid., 350.
“its own shuffle”: Robert Lowell, draft 6, “The Balanced Aquarium,” Houghton Library.
Dr. James Masterson: James Masterson, M.D., was Robert Lowell’s psychiatrist during his hospital stay at Payne Whitney from May 21, 1954, until September 15, 1954. Dr. Masterson’s clinical notes are in Robert Lowell’s medical record.
“Was I paying Dr. Masterson”: Robert Lowell’s medical records, Payne Whitney Clinic, New York, 1954.
“Suddenly I felt”: Robert Lowell, “Near the Unbalanced Aquarium,” 352–53.
“For holding up my trousers”: Ibid., 353.
“ ‘Why don’t I die’ ”: Ibid., 354.
“I am writing my autobiography”: Ibid., 362.
“symbolic and sacramental act”: Robert Lowell, “On the Gettysburg Address,” Collected Prose, 165.
“a symbolic significance”: Ibid., 166.
IV. CHARACTER: HOW WILL THE HEART ENDURE?
“Your lacerations tell”: Robert Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Collected Poems, 59.
9. WITH ALL MY LOVE, CAL
“Bringing
ice out”: Philip Booth, “Summers in Castine,” 37–53.
“I think of my life”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, November 16, 1964, Words in Air, 559.
“his life was once more broken”: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 209. Byron too wrote of reweaving the web of life:
All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy’d,
Even by the sufferer; and, in each event
Ends:—Some, with hope replenish’d and rebuoy’d,
Return to whence they came—with like intent,
And weave their web again; some, bow’d and bent,
Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time,
And perish with the reed on which they leant.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, vol. 2, ed. Jerome McGann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 131.
“You play against a sickness”: Robert Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Collected Poems, 59.
“The channel gripped our hull”: Robert Lowell, “For Frank Parker 2,” Collected Poems, 508.
“Cal was a big man”: Derek Walcott interview, “The Art of Poetry, No. 37,” Paris Review 101 (Winter 1986).
“attractive, rather feverish-faced”: Joyce Carol Oates, Salmagundi (Winter–Spring 2004): 119.
“achingly well-mannered”: James Atlas, “Robert Lowell in Cambridge: Lord Weary,” 56–64.
“troubled blue eyes”: Stanley Kunitz, “Talk with Robert Lowell.”
“The ashtray was heaped”: James Atlas, “Robert Lowell in Cambridge: Lord Weary,” 62.
“At submanic velocity”: Dudley Young, “Life with Lord Lowell at Essex U.,” PN Review 28 (1982): 46.
“seemed to come out all in a heap”: Jason Epstein, letter to Ian Hamilton, January 21, 1981, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“Lowell was the most engaging man”: Peter Levi, in “Remembering Lowell,” Listener 98 (September 22, 1977): 379.
“I feel almost too much”: Letter from Flannery O’Connor to Betty Hester, April 21, 1956, in Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Library of America, 1988), 992.
Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character Page 53
