By THIRSTY
Kay Redfield Jamison is the leading
world expert on bipolar disorder and its relationship to creativity and art. In
her new book, Robert Lowell – Setting The
River On Fire, she brings a very special understanding to the life and
writings of poet Robert Lowell who won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book
Award, became the 6th Poet Laureate of the United States and
suffered throughout his life with bipolar disorder. Jamison herself has bipolar
disorder and her New York Times
bestselling memoir, The Unquiet Mind,
is regarded as the iconic personal
testament to the effects of this illness on one’s life.
Jamison’s insights into Robert
Lowell come with an extraordinary pedigree: She is the Dalio Family Professor
in Mood Disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine, as well as an honorary professor of English at
the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of the national
best sellers An Unquiet Mind, Night Falls Fast and Touched with Fire, and
is coauthor of the standard medical text on manic-depressive illness, Manic-Depressive
Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression. She is
a recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Rhoda and Barnard Sarnat
International Prize in Mental Health from the National Academy of Medicine and
a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.
With reviews like: “Ambitious…
Penetrating…. Absorbing….”; “Impassioned, intellectually thrilling …”;
“Groundbreaking”; “…a neat match between author and subject”; “one genius reaching back in time to
unpack the psyche of another”; and, “…the definitive study on Lowell,” it is no
surprise that Kay Redfield Jamison’s new book quickly found its place in
literary history.
Stay
Thirsty Magazine was truly thrilled to visit with her at her home in
Maryland for this Conversation.
STAY THIRSTY: Your new book, Robert
Lowell – Setting The River On Fire, explores and details the work and life
of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. What drew you to spend so much time
investigating this particular writer?
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| Kay Redfield Jamison (credit: Tom Traill) |
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: I have always loved his work and
admired his courage. After my first breakdown, when I was 17, my English
teacher gave me his poetry and said I “might find it helpful.” I did and it has
stayed with me since.
STAY THIRSTY: In your Introduction, you state that your book is not
a biography, but rather a psychological account of the life and mind of Lowell
and a narrative of his manic-depressive illness. You make it clear that your
book is about “fire in the blood and darkness…about mania…[and] about the
poetic imagination and how mania and imagination come together to create great
art.” Why do you believe that mania is such an important factor in the creative
process? Is mania more important than imagination? Can someone make great art
without being manic?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: People certainly can create great
art without being manic. Most creative people do not have a mental illness and
most people who are mentally ill are not creative. It is, rather, that there is
a disproportionate rate of bipolar illness in unusually creative people. Mania
has disinhibiting effects on temperament, behavior and verbal fluency.
STAY THIRSTY: How was Lowell able to contend with his
manic-depressive illness and still produce great works of poetry? How was he
able to survive for 60 years when so many of his contemporary writers and artists
committed suicide or met untimely ends?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: Lowell was a man of strong will,
intense discipline and an imagination that he put to use in surviving and
creating. He consciously studied the lives of those who faced great
psychological adversity, learned from them, used them as heroes and exemplars.
STAY THIRSTY: What patterns emerged from your research about
Lowell’s moods, temperament, character, thinking and imagination? Did the
patterns predict periods
when Lowell was exceptionally productive and when he
retreated from his art? Are Lowell’s patterns common to other writers and
artists? Are there similarities in how the brains of creative people function?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: Lowell, his doctors and fellow
poets believed that Lowell generated original poetic material as he escalated
into mania and then revised it, assiduously, when he was well and when he was
depressed.
STAY THIRSTY: Did Robert Lowell go “mad” as had his ancestors? Was his
heredity his destiny?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: Lowell certainly had a strong
family history of mania and depression. I wouldn’t say his heredity was his
destiny, but it was very determining. So too was his art and character and
capacity for love.
STAY THIRSTY: In your earlier book, Touched with Fire, and in this book about Robert Lowell, with the
sub-heading of “Setting The River On Fire,” fire plays a key role in your describing
the functioning of the artistic brain. Has fire played a part in your life,
your medical work and your literary work?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: Touched
with Fire and “Setting the River on Fire” share in common a belief
that the things that lead to great originality can at times destroy, as fire
can create and destroy.
STAY THIRSTY: If you could sit down with Robert Lowell over dinner
today, what would you want to know from him? What do you think he would want to
know from you?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: I would want to know what he most
loved in his life, in his work, in his friends and family, in his native New
England; what he most missed about the sea and land; what he would read if he
knew he had three months to live. I think he would want to know that I had
taken him seriously. Which I do. As seriously as anything I have thought or
written about.
STAY THIRSTY: Now that your book on Robert Lowell is complete, do
you miss spending time with his spirit? Is there another creative genius on
your radar for your next book or will you be doing something different?
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: I miss being in the presence of
such a great, complex and original mind. I want to continue in his company. I
have no plans to write about anyone else. Not as I have written about Lowell.
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