The star. (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1874-1875, 1875-06-11
GENIUS AT WORK.


GENIUS AT WORK.
The history of how imaginative work
Is done, reads very like q deliberate and
apparently insane effort to keep up the
action of brain-fever by artificial stimu-
lus, as if creative genius were literally
an unsound habit Of mind, requiring an
unsound habit OF body--naens tnSdnd In
cO1pOre insane. Balzac, who had the dis
ease of creative genius in its most out
rageous form, "preached to u.s." says
Theophile Gautier, "the strangest hy-
giene ever propounded among laymen.
If we desired 10 hand OUR names down
to posterity as authors, it was indis-
pensable that we should immure our
selves absolutely for two or three years; |;
that we should drink nothing but water,
and only eat soaked beans, like Proto-
genes; that we should go to bed at sun
set and rise at midnight, to work hard
till morning; that we should spend the
whole day in revising, amending, eX-
tending, pruning, perfecting and polish
ing our nights work, i'll correcting
proofs or taking notes, or in other neces-
sary study"
Ii the author happened to be In love, he
was only to see the lady of his heart for
one-half hour year; but he might write
to her for the co,d-blooded reason that
letter-writing improves the style. Leon
GoZlan's account of the daily life OF the
author of the "Comedie Humaine" has
often been quoted. He began his day
with dinner at six in the afternoon, at
which, while he led his friends gener-
ously, he himself ate little besides fruit
and drank nothing but water. At seven
ptf N ion fri Is nH-rai u
and went to bed. At midnight he rose
and worked-atill dinner-time the next
day; and SO the world went round.
George Sand described him as "Drunk
on water, intemperate in work, and sober
in all other passions" When he sat
down to his desk his servant used to
place coffee within reach, and upon this
he worked Till his full brain would drive
his starved and almost sleepless body
into such serf-forgetiuiness that he often
found himself at daybreak bare-headeu
and in dressing-gown and slippers In the
Place e-du-CarrOusel, not knowing how he
came there, and miles away from home.
Now, coffee acts upon some tempera-
like laudanum upon Others, and
many of the manners and customs OF
Baizac were those OF confirmed opium
eater. Byron affords similar, though,
OF course, less consistent illustration of
q tendency to put himself out of work
ing condition in order to work the better.
.eAt DisLati," says Moore, "his life was
passed in the same regular round oil hab-
its into which he naturally fell" These
habits included very late hours and
assisted by smoking
cigars and chewing tobacco, and by
green tea in the evening without milk or
sugar. Like Baizac, he avoided meat
xrip nd GO q "a hp, in
food room iOr more active play. ~ '-1
Schiller was nlght-werker and a cof-
and used to work on cham
pagne. Not only SO, but he used an arti-
1icial stimulus altogether peculiar to
himself-he found it impossible, accord
ing to the wellknoWn anecdote, to work
except in room filled with the scent al
rotten apples, which ne kept in drawer
of his wriling-table, in order to keep up
his necessary mental atmosphere. Shell
ley's practice OF continually munching
bread while composing is not mere trivial
gossip when taken in connection with
more striking aud intelligible attempts
to ruin the digestion by the way OF ex-
citing the brain, and when it is remem-
bered that his delicate and almost iem-
mime organization might require tar less
to throw itloff the balance tnan naturally
stronger frames. ~
That night and not morning is most
appropriate to imaginative work is sup
ported by general consent among those
who have followed instinct in this mat
ter. Upon this question, which can
scarcely be called Yexed, Charles Lamb
is the classical authority. s'No true
poem ever owed it's birth to the SUMS
light. The mild internal light; that re.
veais the fine shapings of poetry, like
fire on the domestic hearth, goes out in
the sunshine. NJ ilton's morning hymn
in Paradise, we would hold good wager,
was penned at midnight; and Taylor's
rich description Of sunrise smells de-
cidedIy of the taper" Southey, who
knew how to work and how to yet The
best and the most out of himself as well
as anybody who ever put pen to paper,
and who pursued the same daily routine
throughout his whole literary life, per-
formed his tasks in the following order:
From breakfast till dinner, history,
transcription for the press, and in gen
eral all the work that Scott calls ttwa1k-
ing on all follrs.n From dinner till tea,
reading, letter-witing, the newspapers,
and frequently a siesta--he also was a
heroic sleeper, and slept Whenever he
had the chance. after tea. poetry, or
whatever else his fancy ehose--whateyer
1t is true, be went to. bed regularly AT
half-past 10, 50 that his actual copsump D.
tion Of midnight oil WAS not extrava-
CANT. But such of it as lie did consume
Was taken as a stimulant fof the purely
imaginatiye part Of his work, when the
Labor that required no stimulant was
over and done. Blake was a painter by
day and poet by night; be often got out
6fbed at niidnighc and wrote for hours,