Reading Van Gogh

[cyrus]

I wonder if you had encountered either Van Gogh or Gaugan on the street, if you woud have recognized either as an artist. I suspect I would have thought Van Gough to be a weirdo, and Gaugan as a spoiled rich kid who was trying to hard to be bohemian while living off his father's trust fund.

[Mark Sawyer]

Mark,

"Marcel Proust, and quite a few others in the arts were diagnosed with TLE."

Certainly I am surprised to read his name here. Reading him for years, very first time to see TLE linked to him. Any other proof?

Hugo

I took my reference from Eve LaPlante's book, where she credited William Gordon Lennox as the doctor who named TLE as Proust'd condition. Lennox was one of the world's leading neurologists, and began the practice of using EEG's as a test for epilepsy. This has become the standard practice, still in use worldwide today.

~ Mark

[Mark Sawyer]

TLE was a popular diagonsis at the time. Consider it about as accurate as "the vapors."

"The vapors" was an archaic term referring very vaguely to a wide range of emotional disturbances from depression to PMS.

TLE is a recognized specific condition. It wasn't a "popular" diagnosis at that time; it had just been recognized as a separate type of epilepsy (it was called "psychic epilepsy" at the time) and was underdiagnosed for decades. TLE has some unique and easily recognizable symptoms that make it fairly reliable to diagnose, even in retrospect. Besides auras and seizures, recognized symptoms may include strong spells of deja vu, auditory hallucinations, heightened religiosity, and hypergraphy (the urge to write/draw/paint in obsessive quantities). The asymmetry of Van Gogh's face is also typical of someone with scarring to one side of the brain from birth. Van Gogh is known to have had a very difficult birth; scarring to the brain from lack of oxygen would account for his face and his seizures.

Van Gogh was diagnosed with epilepsy on December 26, 1888 by Dr. Felix Rey, a French doctor. Van Gogh was hospitalized for epilepsy and responded well to potassium bromide, the main treatment for epilepsy at the time. When he drank absinthe, known to aggravate epilepsy, his seizures worsened.

There is a lot of documentation of Van Gogh's case. It is pretty well accepted today that he had TLE.

[paulr]

I suspect I would have thought Van Gough to be a weirdo, and Gaugan as a spoiled rich kid who was trying to hard to be bohemian while living off his father's trust fund.

i've wondered about that kind of thing too. if i had the chance (or misfortune) to go back in time and meet some of my heroes, how many would i recognize? how many would i like? how many would turn around and punch me in the nose?

[Hugo Zhang]

Mark,

I would agree with you on most names there. Eve Plante should have added Flaubert to that list too. But how could Dr. Lennox, a living professor of UCLA, diagnose Proust with TLE using EEG test? Proust died in 1922. I am intimately familiar with Proust and it was a surprise to see him on the list.

Hugo

[Mark Sawyer]

Mark,

I would agree with you on most names there. Eve Plante should have added Flaubert to that list too. But how could Dr. Lennox, a living professor of UCLA, diagnose Proust with TLE using EEG test? Proust died in 1922. I am intimately familiar with Proust and it was a surprise to see him on the list.

Hugo

I just checked; LaPlante refers to Flaubert's TLE eight times in the index of her book. My list of epilepsy victims was a very condensed version. It's scary how many in the arts are now thought (among neurologists) to have had TLE. Oddly, however, none that I know of in photography...

Lennox's very-post-mortem diagnosis was based on accounts of Proust's life and medical history from his doctors, his contemporaries, and from Proust's own writings. The opening of Swann's Way, the first in the five volumes in Remembrances of Things Past, (note: the American translation is always "Past", not "Passed", which would have been the correct translation. American publishers opted to save two letters...) of having memories for the entire anthology recalled by ther aroma of "petite madelines" is now regarded among neurologists as a classic description of a TLE aura.

[Hugo Zhang]

Mark,

The new and correct English translation of the title A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is In Search Of Lost Time. I like it better.

In one of his letters to his brother, van Gogh wrote: "Greatness is not accidental, it has to be willed." He, as well as Proust, simplifying their life in their last 15-20 years, did nothing but painted and wrote for us later generations.

Maybe LaPlante is right, but I just can't accept the implied view that their greatness is accidental partly because they are simply sick people with TLE and that sickness drove them to create.

Hugo

[paulr]

you guys could turn this into a talk show. Have a pannel of shrinks and psychopharmacologists who argue about diagnosing great historical figures. You could do artists, musicians, dictators, captains of industry, criminals, etc. etc.

[Mark Sawyer]

you guys could turn this into a talk show. Have a pannel of shrinks and psychopharmacologists who argue about diagnosing great historical figures. You could do artists, musicians, dictators, captains of industry, criminals, etc. etc.

Sorry, Paul. I just find it a fascinating topic, as it deals so directly with some of the mechanics of creativity, an area we usually only can speak of in the very abstract...

[Mark Sawyer]

Mark,

The new and correct English translation of the title A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is In Search Of Lost Time. I like it better.

In one of his letters to his brother, van Gogh wrote: "Greatness is not accidental, it has to be willed." He, as well as Proust, simplifying their life in their last 15-20 years, did nothing but painted and wrote for us later generations.

Maybe LaPlante is right, but I just can't accept the implied view that their greatness is accidental partly because they are simply sick people with TLE and that sickness drove them to create.

Hugo

I like that title better too. Amazing how hard a simple translation can be...

I don't mind accepting that a medical condition, especially one as bizarre as TLE, can have a serious influence on an artist's work. Look at how many great love poems and songs we owe to momentary over-abundances of hormones...