By Elena Hijazi | Staff Writer

Artists have a preceding reputation of having mental issues that often lead them to a tragic death, and this is mainly because there is no nuance between the artist and the art.

What do Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf all have in common? They were all impeccable writers that suffered from melancholia and eventually killed themselves. Tragically, this is a very common phenomenon among writers and artists, so common that we do not even blink when we hear such things. There is always something “not quite right” when it comes to the mental health of artists, but why is that so? Why is it that we believe the notion that suffering and creativity are somehow linked, and that artistry will ultimately lead to anguish? Has this always been the case? These questions will be explored throughout the article below as we dive into the history of the source of creativity and its significance in artistic creations and the artists’ mental health.

In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, people did not believe that creativity came from human beings but rather from some distant, unknowable source that chooses the artist as their vessel of expression. The Greeks called this source a “damon”, and the Romans called this source a “genius”. (1) Nowadays, this is what we refer to as a “muse” which is defined as “a person, or an imaginary being or force that gives someone ideas and helps them to write, paint, or make music”. (2) This created a psychological construct between the artist and the art because it shielded artists from the results of their work. It prohibited them from narcissism and protected them from misery as they were not the ones to be fully praised for their great creations nor fully ridiculed for their lame ones. They were believed to be merely the messengers of the muse that happened to choose them. 

However, during the Renaissance period, the human being started to become the source of creativity and that shattered the protective layer that the muse had built around the artist’s mentality, and this phenomenon continues till this day. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the novel “Eat, Pray, Love”, confessed in a TED talk that after writing this mega-hit, bestselling sensation, she had this feeling that her best work is already behind her when she was just at the age of 40. (1) This is the type of pressure that is put on one soul that ultimately leads them to woe. 

Now, you might think that saying writers become depressed just because they have reached a peak in their career is a dramatic accusation, but it is more complex than that. A career in writing, or in any artistic field for that matter, is innately personal. There is no 9-to-5 routine that comes with it and that distances the work from the person. The artist’s career is their whole life. Writers pour their thoughts and emotions on pieces of paper then publish them for the world to judge. If that work is not critically acclaimed, it does not tell the writer “You suck at your job.”, it tells him “You suck at life, your thoughts and emotions are boring, inferior, you wasted your life doing nothing and adding nothing into this world”. If we think about it for one moment, no one is concerned for a person’s mental health when they say, “I’m a lawyer… I’m an engineer”, but many eyebrows are raised when someone says, “I’m a writer…I’m an artist”. Putting the financial reasons aside, this is because artists have created a reputation for themselves for dying young and often at their own hands.

To sum up, the nuance between the artist and the art is a significant element that should still be discussed today. As inarguably one of the greatest writers of all time, William Shakespeare once said, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” In other words, melancholy has become a prodigy that has pulled various artists together. Worded in this manner, it seems quite comforting and heart-warming, but it is a devastating reality.