Sanity of True Genius by Charles Lamb (Essay & Summary)

 

Sanity of True Genius by Charles Lamb (Essay & Summary) 

So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking), has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. “So strong a wit,” says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend,

“—did Nature to him frame, As all things but his judgment overcame, His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, Tempering that mighty sea below.”

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl without dismay; he wins his flight without self-loss through realms of chaos “and old night.” Or if, abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a “human mind untuned,” he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon, neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that,—never letting the reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so,—he has his better genius still whispering at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or with the honest steward Flavius recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon possible existences, he subjugates them to the law of her consistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even when he appears most to betray and desert her. His ideal tribes submit to policy; his very monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein the great and the little wits are differenced; that if the latter wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, they lose themselves, and their readers. Their phantoms are lawless; their visions nightmares. They do not create, which implies shaping and consistency. Their imaginations are not active—for to be active is to call something into act and form—but passive, as men in sick dreams. For the super-natural, or something super-added to what we know of nature, they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and that these mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the treatment of subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wantonized: but even in the describing of real and every day life, that which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate from nature—show more of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance with frenzy,—than a great genius in his “maddest fits,” as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal to any one that is acquainted with the common run of Lane’s novels,—as they existed some twenty or thirty years back,—those scanty intellectual viands of the whole female reading public, till a happier genius arose, and expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms,—whether he has not found his brain more “betossed,” his memory more puzzled, his sense of when and where more confounded, among the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no-characters, of some third-rate love intrigue—where the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and Bond-street—a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. In the productions we refer to, nothing but names and places is familiar; the persons are neither of this world nor of any other conceivable one; an endless string of activities without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive:—we meet phantoms in our known walks; fantasques only christened. In the poet we have names which announce fiction; and we have absolutely no place at all, for the things and persons of the Fairy Queen prate not of their “whereabout.” But in their inner nature, and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a dream; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every day occurrences. By what subtile art of tracing the mental processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all the treasures of the world; and has a daughter, Ambition, before whom all the world kneels for favours—with the Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but not impertinently, in the same stream—that we should be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations of the most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy,—is a proof of that hidden sanity which still guides the poet in his widest seeming-aberrations.

It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the mind’s conceptions in sleep; it is, in some sort—but what a copy! Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained all night with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty was passive, when it comes under cool examination, shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so deluded; and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a god. But the transitions in this episode are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them.

 

Summary

In his essay, Sanity of True Genius, Lamb argues against the common belief that genius is connected to madness. He explains that, contrary to this idea, the greatest writers—those with exceptional intelligence and creativity—are often the most mentally balanced. He gives Shakespeare as an example, suggesting that it's hard to imagine someone like Shakespeare being insane because his genius lies in his ability to keep all aspects of his mind in harmony.

Lamb explains that madness comes from an extreme focus or overdevelopment of one mental quality, while true genius comes from the balanced use of all mental faculties. He quotes Cowley, who praises a poet for having a mind so powerful that it could overcome anything, but always with good judgment that kept everything in check, much like the moon controlling the ocean’s tides.

People sometimes think that poets are like dreamers or feverish people because their poetry is full of intense emotions and visions that regular people don't usually experience. But Lamb argues that while poets may seem to be dreaming, they are actually fully awake and in control. The poet does not lose himself in his subject; instead, he masters it. He can explore the most fantastic and chaotic ideas—like walking through heaven, hell, or chaos—without being overwhelmed.

Even when a poet seems to descend into madness, as in Shakespeare’s characters King Lear or Timon, he never completely loses his reason. The poet, like Lear’s servant Kent or Timon's steward Flavius, always has a guiding voice of reason in his mind, helping him stay grounded. In fact, when the poet seems most distant from reality, he is often most faithful to it. Even the most fantastic creations of the poet’s imagination follow a sense of internal consistency and truth.

Lamb compares great poets to lesser writers. Lesser writers may try to imitate this imaginative power, but they fail because they lose the connection to reality. Their works become chaotic and incoherent, like a bad dream, and the reader feels confused. In contrast, even when a great poet creates something supernatural or strange, it feels real and consistent within its own world.

Lamb suggests that while lesser writers turn life into a confusing dream, great poets can take the wildest dreams and make them feel as real and grounded as everyday life. The genius of a true poet lies in maintaining a "hidden sanity" even in the most creative and imaginative moments.

Charles Lamb says that we might think a vivid and imaginative story is similar to the wild dreams we have at night. In some ways, that's true—but what a difference! He asks us to imagine someone who has had an exciting and fantastical dream. In the dream, everything seems to make sense, even though it's chaotic. But when that person wakes up and tries to think about the dream clearly, they realize how random and nonsensical it actually was. They feel embarrassed that they could have been fooled into thinking the dream made sense, even though it was just a jumble of strange events.

However, Lamb points out that in a genius's creation, even if the events seem just as wild and unpredictable as a dream, when we look at them with our clear, awake mind, they still make sense. The genius's imagination, unlike a dream, holds up under careful thought. Even though the transitions between events are just as sudden and strange, our rational mind can accept and approve of them.