Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character

by Kay Redfield Jamison

“Courage,” Lord Moran said: Lord Moran, The Anatomy of Courage (1945; New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007), 67.

  “exercise of mind over fear”: Ibid., xvi.

  “There are many reasons”: Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (1922; New York: Penguin, 2005), 564.

  “Much of that risk”: Ibid., 532.

  “in wind and drift”: Ibid., 220.

  “Oak and three layers of brass”: Horace, “To Vergil Setting Out for Greece,” Horace: Odes and Epodes, 29.

  “The man with the nerves goes farthest”: Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, 563–64.

  “an overdraft on my vital capital”: Ibid., 536.

  “sheer good grain”: Ibid.

  “The man with nerves”: Ibid.

  “as fine a death”: Ibid.

  “Surely the greatest was”: Ibid.

  “We took risks”: Robert Falcon Scott, The Last Expedition (1913; London: Vintage, 2012), 442.

  “It fares, indeed”: J. C. Bucknill and D. H. Tuke, A Manual of Psychological Medicine (London: John Churchill, 1858), 220–36.

  “like prehistoric monsters dragged down”: Robert Lowell, “On ‘Skunk Hour,’ ” Collected Prose, 227.

  “medieval armor’s undermining”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, December 3, 1957, Letters, 306.

  “alive maybe, if anything can breathe”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, February 26, 1967, Letters, 484.

  “A poet can be intelligent”: Robert Lowell, “Afterthought,” Notebook (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 263.

  “I too wore armor”: Robert Lowell, “1930’s 2,” Collected Poems, 503.

  “Lowell’s poetry didn’t attack”: Seamus Heaney, “The Lively Arts: Robert Lowell.”

  “Don’t keep me waiting”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Giovanna Madonia Erba, March 6, 1954, Letters, 212.

  “shedding one’s costume”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Ezra Pound, April 17, 1955, Letters, 246.

  “The thought of going back”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, July 16, 1955, Letters, 248.

  “the shell breaks”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, February 10, 1963, Words in Air, 445.

  “great callousness”: Ibid., 444.

  “battle array against the fire”: Robert Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Collected Poems, 59.

  “with one skin-layer missing”: Robert Lowell, “Home,” Collected Poems, 825.

  “I pray for memory”: Robert Lowell, “Turtle,” Collected Poems, 809.

  “ ‘Of late they leave’ ”: Robert Lowell, “Words for Muffin, A Guinea-Pig,” Collected Poems, 633.

  “I hear”: Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour,” Collected Poems, 192.

  “white stripes, moonstruck”: Ibid.

  “This is the dark night”: Robert Lowell, “ ‘On ‘Skunk Hour,’ ” Collected Prose, 226.

  “indomitable”: Robert Lowell, Remarks on “Skunk Hour,” Audio, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1978.

  “horrible blind energy”: Letter from Robert Lowell to John Berryman, March 18, 1962, Letters, 400.

  “freedom and an accomplishment”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Richard Tillinghast, August 1969, Letters, 522.

  “ruthless cutting edge”: George Mackay Brown, “Hawkfall,” in Hawkfall and Other Stories (1974; Edinburgh: Polygon, 2004), 128.

  “A too-refined sensibility”: Ibid.

  “We must all live by taking”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Philip Booth, October 10, 1966, Dartmouth College Library.

  “I saw the spiders”: Robert Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Collected Poems, 59–60.

  “He was an ancestor”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Richard Tillinghast, August 1969, Letters, 519.

  “often threaten[ed] my Life”: Ava Chamberlain, The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle: Marriage, Murder, and Madness in the Family of Jonathan Edwards (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 86–87, 184–86.

  “I have a constitution”: Letter from Jonathan Edwards to the Trustees of the College of New Jersey, October 19, 1757, in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. J. E. Smith, H. S. Stout, and K. P. Minkema (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 321.

  “The immense magnificence”: Jonathan Edwards, “Images of Divine Things,” A Jonathan Edwards Reader, 21.

  “exuberant goodness”: Jonathan Edwards, “The Spider Letter,” October 31, 1723, A Jonathan Edwards Reader, 5.

  “The Future Punishment”: Jonathan Edwards, “The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. Edward Hickman (London: Westley and Davis, 1834), 78.

  “What art thou”: Ibid.

  “shuts and no man opens”: Ibid.

  “trying to get a little prose piece”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Babette Deutsch, February 24, 1955, Letters, 244.

  “I have seen vast multitudes”: Jonathan Edwards, “The Spider Letter,” October 31, 1723, A Jonathan Edwards Reader, 2.

  “As a boy”: Robert Lowell, “Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts,” Collected Poems, 354.

  “They purpose nothing”: Robert Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Collected Poems, 59.

  “the bowels of fierce fire”: Ibid.

  “How then will thine hands”: Jonathan Edwards, “The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable.”

  “Your lacerations”: Robert Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Collected Poems, 59.

  V. ILLNESS AND ART: SOMETHING ALTOGETHER LIVED

  “During this time”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Chard Powers Smith, October 3, 1959, Letters, 354.

  11. A MAGICAL ORANGE GROVE IN A NIGHTMARE

  “There is personal anguish”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Philip Booth, October 10, 1966, Dartmouth College Library.

  “brilliant, mordant, and lighthearted”: Robert Fitzgerald, “The Things of the Eye,” Poetry 132 (May 1978): 108.

  “I saw the best minds”: Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights, 1956).

  “I’m cross with god”: John Berryman, “153,” in The Dream Songs (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 172.

  “I feel the jagged gash”: Robert Lowell, “John Berryman,” Collected Prose, 114–15.

  “Ah the swift vanishing”: Robert Lowell, “Last Night,” Collected Poems, 601.

  “He seemed to throb”: Robert Lowell, “John Berryman,” Collected Prose, 104–5.

  “Hyper-enthusiasms made him”: Ibid., 112.

  “I felt frightened”: Letter from Robert Lowell to William Meredith, July 16, 1966, Connecticut College.

  “the most hopeful”: Ibid.

  “some germ in the mind”: Ibid.

  “It seems there’s been something curious”: Letter from Robert Lowell to John Berryman, March 15, 1959, Letters, 338.

  “What you said about the other poets”: Letter from Robert Lowell to John Berryman, March 18, 1962, Letters, 400.

  “all the best of life”: Robert Lowell, “For John Berryman,” Collected Poems, 737.

  “I feel I know”: Robert Lowell, “For John Berryman 1,” Collected Poems, 600.

  “a magical orange grove”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Blair Clark, August 6, 1954, Letters, 239. Lowell was referring to his affair with Giovanna Madonia, which began when he was manic. “The whole business was sincere enough,” he wrote to Clark, “but a stupid pathological mirage, a magical orange grove in a nightmare. I feel like a son of a bitch.” Ibid., 239.

  “are a lot like yours”: Letter from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell, January 8, 1963, Words in Air, 440.

  “I have thought twice”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Randall Jarrell, April 29, 1965, Letters, 458.

  “the most heartbreaking”: Robert Lowell, “Randall Jarrell,” Collected Prose, 91.

  “It was sad to hear”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Ezra Pound, February 10, 1963, Letters, 419.

 
; “I feel a great kinship”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Theodore Roethke, June 8, 1958, University of Washington Libraries.

  “What we share”: Frederick Seidel, “The Art of Poetry: Robert Lowell,” Paris Review 7 (Winter–Spring 1961): 56–95.

  “Well, it’s happened again”: Letter from Theodore Roethke to Robert Lowell, October 8, 1957, Houghton Library.

  “our dizzy explosions”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Theodore Roethke, April 19, 1958, Letters, 320.

  “Our troubles are a bond”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Theodore Roethke, March 15, 1958, Letters, 318.

  “For months (perhaps always)”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Theodore Roethke, September 18, 1958, University of Washington Libraries.

  “We couldn’t be more different”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Theodore Roethke, July 10, 1963, Letters, 428.

  “the price one pays”: Letter from Philip Larkin to Caroline Blackwood, February 4, 1976, HRC.

  “Their senses are acute”: Aretaeus, The Extant Works of Aretaeus, 303.

  “advantages in disease”: Ibid., 302.

  “wrote poetry truly from the muses”: Ibid.

  “the senses of hearing and seeing”: Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind (Philadelphia: Kimber and Richardson, 1812), 765.

  “Where is the hospital for mad people”: Ibid., 152.

  “cause surprise by the activity”: J. P. Falret, “Memoire sur la folie circulaire,” Bulletin de l’Académie de Médecine 19 (1854): 382–415.

  “associates the ideas most unlike”: J. E. D. Esquirol, Des maladies mentales (Paris: Balliere, 1838). Translated by E. K. Hunt, Mental Maladies: A Treatise on Insanity (Philadelphia: Lea and Blachard, 1845), 378.

  “become unbridled”: Emil Kraepelin, Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia, 66.

  “veritable passion for writing”: Ibid.

  “very fond of composing”: Ibid., 68.

  “often able to recall”: John Macpherson, Mental Affections: An Introduction to the Study of Insanity (London: Macmillan, 1899), 175.

  “mental brilliancy”: Ibid.

  “wonderful facility”: Ibid.

  “Urged on by the pressure”: John D. Campbell, Manic-Depressive Disease.

  Epidemiologic studies: The epidemiology of bipolar disorders is reviewed by M. Weissman in F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 155–86; K. R. Merikangas, R. Jin, J. P. He, et al., “Prevalence and Correlates of Bipolar Spectrum Disorder in the World Mental Health Survey Initiative,” Archives of General Psychiatry 68 (2011): 241–51; C. B. Pedersen, O. Mors, A. Bertelsen, et al., “A Comprehensive Nationwide Study of the Incidence Rate and Lifetime Risk for Treated Mental Disorders,” JAMA Psychiatry 71 (2014): 573–81.

  Biographical Studies of Depression: A. Juda, “The Relationship Between Highest Mental Capacity and Psychic Abnormalities,” American Journal of Psychiatry 106 (1949): 296–307; C. Martindale, “Father’s Absence, Psychopathology, and Poetic Eminence,” Psychological Reports 31 (1972): 843–47; W. H. Trethowan, “Music and Mental Disorder,” in M. Critchley and R. E. Henson, eds., Music and the Brain (London: Heinemann, 1977), 398–442; K. R. Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993), 61–72; J. J. Schildkraut, A. J. Hirshfeld, and J. M. Murphy, “Mind and Mood in Modern Art, II: Depressive Disorders, Spirituality, and Early Deaths in the Abstract Expressionist Artists of the New York School,” American Journal of Psychiatry 151 (1994): 482–88; A. M. Ludwig, The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy (New York: Guilford, 1995); F. Post, “Verbal Creativity, Depression and Alcoholism: An Investigation of One Hundred American and British Writers,” British Journal of Psychiatry 168 (1996): 545–55; A. Preti and P. Miotto, “Suicide Among Eminent Artists,” Psychological Reports 84 (1999): 291–301; E. Czeizel, Aki költö akar lenni, pokolra kell annak menni? (Budapest: GMR Reklámügynökség, 2001); G. I. Wills, “Forty Lives in the Bebop Business: Mental Health in a Group of Eminent Jazz Musicians,” British Journal of Psychiatry 183 (2003): 255–59; J. C. Kaufman, “The Door That Leads into Madness: Eastern European Poets and Mental Illness,” Creativity Research Journal 17 (2005): 99–103.

  In 1987, Nancy Andreasen: N. C. Andreasen, “Creativity and Mental Illness: Prevalence Rates in Writers and Their First-Degree Relatives,” American Journal of Psychiatry 144 (1987): 1288–92.

  eminent British artists and writers: K. R. Jamison, “Mood Disorders and Seasonal Patterns in British Writers and Artists,” Psychiatry 52 (1989): 125–34.

  Arnold Ludwig, a psychiatrist: A. M. Ludwig, “Mental Illness and Creative Activity in Female Writers,” American Journal of Psychiatry 151 (1994): 1650–56.

  Population Studies: S. Zammit, P. Allebeck, A. S. David, et al., “A Longitudinal Study of Premorbid IQ Score and Risk of Developing Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Severe Depression, and Other Nonaffective Psychoses,” Archives of General Psychiatry 61 (2004): 354–60; K. C. Koenen, T. E. Moffitt, A. L. Roberts, et al., “Childhood IQ and Adult Mental Disorders: A Test of the Cognitive Reserve Hypothesis,” American Journal of Psychiatry 166 (2009): 50–57; J. H. MacCabe, M. P. Lambe, S. Cnattingius, et al., “Excellent School Performance at Age 16 and Risk of Adult Bipolar Disorder: National Cohort Study,” British Journal of Psychiatry 196 (2010): 109–15; C. H. Tremblay, S. Grosskopf, and K. Yang, “Brainstorm: Occupational Choice, Bipolar Illness and Creativity,” Economic and Human Biology 8 (2010): 233–41; S. Kyaga, P. Lichtenstein, M. Boman, et al., “Creativity and Mental Disorder: Family Study of 300,000 People with Severe Mental Disorder,” British Journal of Psychiatry 199 (2011): 373–79; C. R. Gale, G. D. Batty, A. M. McIntosh, et al., “Is Bipolar Disorder More Common in Highly Intelligent People? A Cohort Study of a Million Men,” Molecular Psychiatry 18 (2013): 190–94; S. Kyaga, M. Landen, M. Boman, et al., “Mental Illness, Suicide and Creativity: 40-Year Prospective Total Population Study,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 47 (2013): 83–90; B. Biasi, M. S. Dahl, and P. Moser, “Career Effects of Mental Health,” Social Science Research Network, September 21, 2015. Available at http://dx.​doi.​org/​10.​2139/​ssrn.​2544251; D. J. Smith, J. Anderson, S. Zammit, et al., “Childhood IQ and Risk of Bipolar Disorder in Adulthood: Prospective Birth Cohort Study,” British Journal of Psychiatry Open 1 (2015): 74–80, DOI: 10.1192/bjpo.bp.115.000455.

  A study of fifty thousand individuals: S. Zammit et al., “A Longitudinal Study of Premorbid IQ Score.”

  Two others: K. C. Koenen et al., “Childhood IQ and Adult Mental Disorders”; C. R. Gale et al., “Is Bipolar Disorder More Common in Highly Intelligent People?”

  In a study of academic performance: J. H. MacCabe et al., “Excellent School Performance at Age 16.”

  A recent study from Stanford University: B. Biasi et al., “Career Effects of Mental Health.”

  A recent Swedish total population study: S. Kyaga et al., 2013.

  marked deficits: See for example: F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 273–322; I. Torres, V. Boudreau, and L. Yatham, “Neuropsychological Functioning in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder: A Meta-analysis,” Acta Psychiatrica Supplement 434 (2007): 17–26; B. Arts, N. Jabben, L. Krabbendam, and J. van Os, “Meta-Analyses of Cognitive Functioning in Euthymic Bipolar Patients and Their First-Degree Relatives,” Psychological Medicine 38 (2008): 771–85; M. J. Kempton, J. R. Geddes, U. Ettinger, et al., “Meta-Analysis, Database, and Meta-Regression of 98 Structural Imaging Studies in Bipolar Disorder,” Archives of General Psychiatry 65 (2008): 1017–32.

  prevailing mood during mania: T. A. Greenwood, Bipolar Genome Study (BiGS), and J. R. Kelsoe, “Genome-Wide Association Study of Irritable Versus Elated Mania Suggests Genetic Differences Between Clinical Subforms of Bipolar Disorder,” 2013, PLOS ONE 8: e53804.PMC3542199; A. Stringaris, N. Ryan-Castellanos, T. Banaschewski, et al., “Dimensions of Manic Symptoms in Youth: Psychosocial Impairment and Cognitive Performance in the IMAGE
N Sample,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 55 (2014): 1380–89.

  An American study: Tremblay et al., “Brainstorm.”

  The first looked at three hundred thousand patients: S. Kyaga et al., “Creativity and Mental Disorder.”

  the second at more than one million: S. Kyaga et al., “Mental Illness, Suicide and Creativity.”

  a recent study from Yale University: R. G. Higier, A. M. Jimenez, C. M. Hultman, et al., “Enhanced Neurocognitive Functioning and Positive Temperament in Twins Discordant for Bipolar Disorder,” American Journal of Psychiatry 171 (2014): 1191–98.

  An investigation conducted in Iceland: J. L. Karlsson, “Genetic Basis of Intellectual Variation in Iceland,” Hereditas 95 (1981): 283–88; J. L. Karlsson, “Creative Intelligence in Relatives of Mental Patients,” Hereditas 100 (1984): 83–86.

  Nancy Andreasen, in her study of writers: N. C. Andreasen, “Creativity and Mental Illness,” 123–31.

  In the late 1980s: R. L. Richards, D. K. Kinney, I. Lunde, et al., “Creativity in Manic-Depressives, Cyclothymes, Their Normal Relatives, and Control Subjects,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 97 (1988): 281–88.

  family histories of eminent writers: K. R. Jamison, Touched with Fire, 149–237.

  a study of nearly ninety thousand: R. A. Power, S. Steinberg, G. Bjornsdottir, et al., “Polygenic Risk Scores for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Predict Creativity,” Nature Neuroscience, June 8, 2015, DOI: 10.1038/nn.4040.

  “eugenic interest”: B. Onuf, “The Problem of Eugenics in Connection with the Manic Depressive Temperament,” New York Medical Journal 3 (March 13, 1920): 461–65.

  Two decades later: A. Myerson and R. Boyle, “The Incidence of Manic-Depressive Psychosis in Certain Socially Important Families,” American Journal of Psychiatry 98 (1941): 11–21.

  “It does not necessarily follow”: Ibid.

  A study published in Germany: H. Luxenburger, “Berufsglied und soziale Schichtung in den Familien erblich Geisteskranker,” Eugenik 3 (1933): 34–40.

  If we purify: Robert Lowell, “River God,” Collected Poems, 583.

  “I think that your friends”: Letter from Stephen Spender to Robert Lowell, December 13, 1965, British Library.