Divine Fury (22 page)

Through the rapture of enthusiasm and the sublime, genius revealed aspects of the world otherwise hidden to the naked eye, dazzling with the capacity to summon the marvelous, to move and enchant and inspire. Yet there was more to the power of genius than just the ability to reveal and disclose: genius also possessed the capacity to conceive and bring into being what did not already exist. To some extent, genius’s creative fecundity was an old association, tracing back to the Roman root
gignere
, to generate, father, beget. That original sexual connotation, linking the
genius
, as the god of one’s birth, to procreation, was tied to the creative faculty in the late Middle Ages. Well-known chronicles—such as the
Romance of the Rose
, or Alain de Lille’s
The Plaint of Nature
—depicted the figure of Genius as an allegorical artist (
artifex
), a priest who exercised mastery over the organs of reproduction, wielding his great spermatic stylus to summon the whole of creation into existence. A similar association—described as the “great analogy” between the artist and God—was implicit in the discourse around the divine Michelangelo at the height of the Renaissance. But although this analogy had deep roots, it was ultimately only with the waning of mimetic aesthetics—and the demise of the theological assertion that God alone could create—that creative and imaginative capacities came to be celebrated as the highest of human powers. Freed not only from the thrall of the ancients, but also from the sacred injunction to faithfully “re-present” God’s world, creative genius dreamed of conceiving the unprecedented, conjuring worlds undreamed of. Imagination, which had long been viewed as a potentially dangerous force in need of vigilance and restraint, was enlisted as an indispensable partner in the creative act. Eighteenth-century critics continued to caution creators of the need to keep imagination within the bounds of reason, judgment, and taste. But whereas a man of the old school, such as Samuel Johnson, might decry imagination as a “licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations, and impatient of restraint,” an unabashed proponent of original genius, such as the Scottish writer and Presbyterian minister William Duff, was at least willing to entertain, if not fully accept, the proposition that “genius and imagination are one and the same thing.” Increasingly, imagination was celebrated as the very source of genial power.
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It was precisely as bearers of imaginative and creative force, moreover, that men of original genius showed themselves to be just that—original, unprecedented, and new. Novelty—originality—was central to the genius’s self-presentation and reception. For though genius was ever conceived as a mediating force that pushed those who came into contact with it across the “boundaries of the surrounding world,” to catch glimpses of the universal, it was also, like the Roman god of old, particular to the person in whom it was embodied. The new embrace of genius placed a premium on individuality and uniqueness, heightening the growing eighteenth-century appreciation of the self. As Diderot observed, “the man of genius has a way of seeing, of feeling, of thinking that is unique to him alone.” It was a belief that imparted courage to challenge tradition. “Let not great examples, or authorities, browbeat thy reason into too great a diffidence of thyself,” Edward Young implored
in the
Conjectures on Original Composition
. “Thyself so reverence, as to prefer the native growth of thy own mind to the richest import from abroad.” Young did much to cultivate the metaphor of organic growth in connection with genius, emphasizing that what was new or original pushed up its shoots from the seed of the soul. “An Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of genius. It grows, it is not made,” he wrote. Or, as the philosopher Sulzer observed, the expression of genius was like a flowering plant, which “ripens gradually within us,” and then “emerges suddenly into the light.” Each flower, each petal, was one of a kind.
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Hence the widespread use of the term “original” to imply both point of origin and individual particularity, the ability to do what no one else had done or thought or seen. Duff spoke for many when he explained that, “by the word original, when applied to Genius, we mean that native and radical power which the mind possesses, of discovering something new and uncommon.” Voltaire, though by no means an unqualified proponent of original genius, could nonetheless agree that, “however perfect [an artist] may be[,] . . . if he be not original, he is not considered a genius.” Young put the stress the other way around, saying that “originals can arise from genius only.” And Kant, who crystallized advanced reflection on the subject toward the end of the century, observed, in a celebrated discussion in his
Critique of Judgment
, that “everyone agrees that genius must be considered the very opposite of a spirit of imitation.” From which it followed, naturally enough, that “originality must be its foremost property.”
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Here was a profound departure from the mimetic impulse that had guided Western reflection for centuries, and the principal source of what would become a Romantic fixation on creative autonomy and the indispensable need to be new. “Genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe,” William Wordsworth would famously declare in his 1815 edition of the
Lyrical Ballads
. With our reverence for novelty and innovation in the twenty-first century, we have so assimilated the assumptions behind the thought that it is easy to overlook how radical a departure it really was. Rather than simply register the truth and beauty of God’s world, imitate the classics, or “re-present” nature, the man of genius was called upon to create, to bring something new and unprecedented into being. It is hardly a coincidence that it was precisely at this moment that questions of copyright, plagiarism, and intellectual property came to the fore. For the decline of the mimetic ideal opened the way to seeing an imitation as a cheap “knock-off” or worthless “copy.” “Copying” came to be regarded as a transgression and even
a crime. Only with the demise of mimesis did authors begin to demand acknowledgment in footnotes and a stake in the financial rewards of their labor. To bring something new into being, after all, to harvest fruit that one had cultivated within, implied ownership and a stake in the pickings.
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But there was another implication just as dramatic as the genesis of intellectual property, and in the long run perhaps even more profound. For the power of creation was a power hitherto reserved exclusively for God. In the Renaissance, the humanist scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger and a handful of other intrepid souls had dared to suggest that the poet could be an
alter Deus
, a comparison that the third Earl of Shaftesbury echoed in the eighteenth century with his reflection that the true poet was a “second Maker, a just Prometheus under Jove.” But Shaftesbury’s claim was bolder than that of the Renaissance humanists, for if Prometheus was “just,” he had committed no crime; in stealing from the gods, he had taken what was rightfully his. The creative flame belonged to man; seizing it was a heroic act. Men of genius, like God the Father, now created for themselves.
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Claims of this kind could still provoke outrage and charges of blasphemy in the eighteenth century. But in an age that was more conscious than earlier ones of the possibilities and predicament of human autonomy, in an age of a withdrawing God, committed Christians could reconcile themselves to the new notion easily enough. In many cases, they actively embraced it. It is revealing that Edward Young, Alexander Gerard, and William Duff were not only enthusiastic commentators on genius, but also Protestant clergymen. Jews, too, would show themselves amenable to the faith, proudly embracing such heroes of the mind as the “Jewish Socrates” Moses Mendelssohn, as well as the “
Gaon
[Genius] of Vilna,” the Rabbi Elijah Ben Solomon, as contrasting images of Jewish genius in a cult that took on increasing importance in the nineteenth century. If nothing else, the genius filled a need, occupying a space that had long been kept exclusively by God and his ministering powers, those higher beings, the prophets, angels, apostles, and saints, who shared in his glory and partook of his power. Hovering between this world and whatever might lie beyond it, the genius was a testament to the miracle of creation, and so could be deemed a miracle himself, an exception to the ordinary laws of nature. Geniuses, as the critic Joseph Addison put it, were the “prodigies of mankind.” In the person of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the world was offered the possibility of observing a genius in his infancy, with all his newly assembled powers.
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“H
ERE THE BOY’S GENIUS
first came to light,” recounts Mozart’s earliest biographer, Franz Niemetschek. The prodigy was but three years old, and “he would often sit at the clavier of his own accord and amuse himself for hours harmonizing in thirds, and when he found them he would play them and was greatly delighted. So his father began to teach him easy pieces; and he saw with delight and astonishment that his pupil exceeded all human expectations.” By age six, the boy was composing his own music, which was published the following year, and soon he was astonishing the courts and concert halls of Europe. In Paris in December 1763, he dazzled with his improvisational skills, which gave “free rein,” as Friedrich Melchior von Grimm declared in his
Correspondance littéraire
, to “the inspiration of his genius.” Helvétius, who was little inclined to marvel at the wonders of nature, nonetheless felt moved to describe the boy to a correspondent in London as “one of the most singular beings in existence.” And when the singular being himself traveled to London the following spring at the advanced age of eight, he amazed the king and queen with his virtuosity and invention. A concert announcement published shortly thereafter proclaimed that “the celebrated and astonishing” child was “justly esteemed the most extraordinary Prodigy, and most amazing Genius, that has appeared in any Age.”
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Mozart continues to serve as a consummate “symbol of genius.” We are so accustomed to thinking of him in these terms that it is difficult to conceive of him in any other way. Surely, it must be the case that Mozart’s “genius” was self-evident from the start? In certain respects, it surely was, as all these exclamations attest. Yet, Mozart’s contemporaries demanded confirmation. After seeing the prodigy perform in 1767, Father Beda Hübner, a librarian at St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg, observed in his diary, “Nobody can believe it, and it is indeed inconceivable, except to those who have themselves heard him play, who can and must believe it.” The real presence of Mozart’s genius compelled assent. In Mantua, before “civic authorities” and “distinguished professors,” the
Wunderkind
gave such “proofs” of his gifts as to “astonish everyone,” a newspaper reported. And in Rome, in a much recounted feat, Mozart was said to have memorized Gregorio Allegri’s entire
Miserere
—a piece of exquisite beauty and complexity, for two full choirs of nine voices each—after one hearing in the Sistine Chapel. The popes had long guarded the secrecy of the score, preventing it from being published outside the Vatican’s walls. But the fourteen-year-old recorded it in his mind, and later committed it to paper. Or so the story goes. The feat seems to have been slightly less prodigious in point of fact, with Mozart remembering only parts of the score, not the whole. But the point is that the miracle was believed
and recounted again and again. After scores of direct sightings, firsthand reports, and eyewitness accounts, Europeans were ready to accept such tales of genius on faith.
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It wasn’t always so. Indeed, what is curious about many of these early reports is how much they sound like the testimonies of scientific demonstrations. Published in great volume, and circulated widely in the republic of letters, scientific accounts of this kind were likewise reported firsthand, providing evidence of experimental veracity and truth. Mozart’s recitals, seen in this light, were not just musical performances; they were public spectacles, scientific demonstrations of a wonder of nature. When an announcement “To All Lovers of Sciences,” published in London’s
Public Advertiser
in 1765, invited spectators to confirm the “miracle” of Mozart firsthand—to see “the greatest Prodigy that Europe, or that even Human nature, has to boast of”—it was asking witnesses to verify with their own eyes what they might not otherwise believe.
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The Honourable Daines Barrington, a member of the British Royal Society and an amateur natural philosopher, took this process of investigation even further, performing a series of experiments on the eight-year-old prodigy while Mozart was still in London. In a report sent to the Royal Society several years later chronicling his “amazing and incredible” findings, Barrington described in detail how he had put the boy’s genius to the test. Bidding Mozart to play a series of complex compositions, which he never could have seen before, Barrington marveled at his sight-reading abilities and improvisational skills, which “prove his genius and invention to have been most astonishing.” In the end, Barrington assured the members of the Royal Society, there could be no doubt. He had verified the existence of a “very extraordinary genius” indeed.
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In this respect, Mozart’s genius
was
self-evident. It proclaimed itself from the stage, offering to Europeans a perfect illustration of a theory developed over the preceding decades. As the German critic Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart put it, looking back in 1784, a true musical genius like Mozart “announces himself already in his youth.” “The heavenly flash of genius is of such divine nature that it cannot be concealed. It presses, forces, pushes, and burns so long until it bursts forth as a flame and glorifies itself in its Olympian splendor. . . . The musical genius awakes and rises heavenwards. Yet he has room enough also to carry up the listener on his cherubic wings.” Such magnificent power of lift and ascent was present from birth; it could never be learned. It overwhelmed and imposed itself on its contemporaries.
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