This article will focus on people whose illness, in fact, gave rise to their genius. This list will include people whose ideas at one time became truly progressive.
Surely many of you have heard that genius borders on insanity. Genius people can be found in any country at various times, but we will talk about our compatriots.
And we will start with a person well known to a wide range of people:
Konstantin Tsialkovsky. His «originality» began to manifest itself in his school years after suffering from scarlet fever, a complication of which was his deafness. For this reason, he could not continue his studies at school, and lost his social orientation, becoming unsociable and wary, he was afraid of the future, which directly affected his character.
But his deafness was more than compensated for by his memory. He began to study those areas of science that to many to this day seem «absurd» — this is the study of cosmic life forms. It was these studies that led him to believe in the need for space flights, which he successfully carried out.
But the price for his genius was that even his own children and grandchildren considered him a «schizophrenic», shunned his father and grandfather, tried not to remember him. This is evidenced by one small phrase from the memoirs: “Grandfather was a terrible person. Fanatic and despot. And a schizophrenic….
Tsiolkovsky’s brilliant insights are difficult to explain only by the education he received. In his case, we have an almost complete set of symptoms of schizotypal disorder. The main ones are transient hallucinations and impaired thinking, which lead to the selection of unlikely associations and combinations, which is characteristic of both schizophrenic patients and inventors.
Anna Golubkina. This is a sculptor who can be called one of the foremost in Art Nouveau and Impressionism. Her illness developed gradually and was aggravated by the events taking place in Tsarist Russia. Multiple riots, revolutions, protest movements. She was directly involved in them. Namely: in 1905, she rushed towards the Cossacks, begging not to shoot at people, and was also arrested for possession of forbidden literature.
The first signs of the disease were noticed as early as 1895-1896. In 1907, she was arrested, but there she experienced repeated mental attacks that frightened even the worldly-wise guards. In 1915, she was placed in a private psychiatric clinic.
At the same time, in 1914, her personal exhibition was held, which was a huge success. Later they said about her: “Passion for art was in the nature of a monoidea, and a very noticeable “excessive expression and deformation” of sculptural compositions, which critics talk about, can be attributed to mental pathology (delusional interpretation of the object). It is this originality of the sculptural solution of the image that gives the works of Golubkina a unique and easily recognizable appearance — the main feature of any talented work.
Pavel Filonov. avant-garde artist. He was recorded in the ranks of «schizophrenics» because of his adherence to principles, self-torture and rejection of standards. Like any Soviet fanatic genius, he was persecuted. He was repeatedly offered to organize an exhibition abroad, but each time he refused, wanting first of all to show his work at home. And in his homeland he had the stamp “unsociable, crazy enemy of the working class” and so on. He died of exhaustion in 1941 at the very beginning of the siege of Leningrad.
Much later, his work was recognized as unique not only for Russian, but also for the world avant-garde. It does not fit into certain trends and styles.