TMoP - Dostoevsky and the creative power of epilepsy
Bekah
Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
Fri Oct 10 23:15:25 CDT 2008
On the mood swings, the spells, fits and seizures, the fear and
shame, I really think the epileptic seizures are very important in
Dostoevsky's creativity and Coetzee, without belaboring the point,
makes this clear.
Myshkin, the protagonist of The Idiot is a holy fool, an epileptic:
From The Idiot:
"[Myshkin) remembered that during his epileptic fits, or rather
immediately preceding them, he had always experienced a moment or two
when his whole heart, and mind, and body seemed to wake up to vigour
and light; when he became filled with joy and hope, and all his
anxieties seemed to be swept away for ever; these moments were but
presentiments, as it were, of the one final second (it was never more
than a second) in which the fit came upon him. That second, of
course, was inexpressible. When his attack was over, and the prince
reflected on his symptoms, he used to say to himself: ‘These moments,
short as they are, when I feel such extreme consciousness of myself,
and consequently more of life than at other times, are due only to
the disease—to the sudden rupture of normal conditions. Therefore
they are not really a higher kind of life, but a lower.’
>>> snipped>>>
That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments,
that they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could
not doubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they
were not analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to
intoxication by hashish, opium or wine.
(Part II, Chapter 5)
*
And Dostoevsky's description of his own ailment from: http://
www.charge.org.uk/htmlsite/dost.shtml:
" For several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in
an ordinary state, and of which other people have no conception. I
feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling
is so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could
give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life.
I felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me. I really
attained god and was imbued with him. All of you healthy people
don't even suspect what happiness is , that happiness that we
epileptics experience for a second before an attack."
Bekah
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