Creative Maniacs

On page 119, Hughes says, "Mental suffering is even more pervasive in creative production. In fact, inner conflict is often seen as the cause of creativity itself. However, it is the ability to transcend conflict rather than merely to describe it that endows great art with its unique quality."

I think this statement from Hughes declares why writing, painting, dancing, drawing, etc. can all be therapeutic. Anything we associate with creativity can be therapeutic. But it's not just the act of writing about your pain that is healing. By writing about your pain, eventually you begin to understand your pain and overcome your pain. Then when you write about your pain, you're actually writing beyond your pain, which is when your writing becomes art.

On page 126, Hughes says, "Madness is a painful, tragic, dangerous, and often life-threatening affliction."

But Edgar Allen Poe begs to differ in his quote on page 124. He basically admits people see him as mad, but maybe being mad is simply being more intelligent, and maybe all his profound thoughts actually come from his madness. I feel like Poe is refuting Hughes by saying, "I'm actually better than you because I'm mad."

On a personal note, when I was depressed in 7th grade, before being diagnosed, I was miserable. If you were to read the poetry I wrote from that period, you would think I was living the worst life imaginable. But really I was a 12-year-old kid who never wanted for anything, got good grades, and had a fair amount of friends. But when I was depressed, I felt a lot. And I felt strongly. So I wrote about it, because if I didn't, I thought I was going to explode. It was like only so much of my anguish could come out of my body in the form of tears, so the rest came out in the form of creativity.

My personal theory is that there are so many depressed artists because depressed people feel so much that they need to express themselves. It's not necessarily that these artists choose to share their talents with the world, but maybe more that they need to get all this emotion out of themselves before they explode.

On that same thought, I love the quote from Graham Greene on page 131. Greene says, "Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in the human situation."