“sober certainty of waking bliss”

I was listening to the NPR Books podcast this morning during work and they featured an interview with Patrick Hemingway, one of Ernest Hemingway’s sons. He celebrated his 80th birthday last Saturday and was interviewed to mark the occasion and talk about his father and, of course, his father’s books. There was a question concerning the prevalence of suicide in the Hemingway family and Mr. Hemingway responded to the question very interestingly and it reminded me of several things we have been talking about in class, so I feel really compelled to share it. (I copied this down by pausing my ipod every few words, but you can actually listen to the whole interview here, it’s pretty cool).

Mr. Hemingway said: “There’s a tendency in the public to want to endow all geniuses with some sort of madness, I think i must be envy on their part. I mean, to be a great writer…I mean, there’s three or four of them in every generation and people have to accept this, it’s not democracy.”

For some reason, this reminded me so much of Milton and the discussion we had on Monday. We are used to artists and writers having some sort of neuroses or mental illness (Freud’s view of art, as Professor Campbell said, this is what we’re accustomed to think in this century). That’s how great poems are written and how great art is made. It has to be a struggle. Milton must be sp arrogant because he is delusional, insecure - oh, he just has a superiority complex, that’s why he’s so great. But is Mr. Hemingway right? Are we just envious of Milton’s abilities and the security he find in them? Can’t we just accept that he’s just one of the greats and he was confident enough to recognize that for himself? I think we can. I feel like I’ve talked about this issue a lot, but it’s one that I keep coming back to, and this interview and Patrick Hemingway’s remarks just reminded me of it. It’s kind of fun to have everyday things remind me of Milton. He clearly has begun to infiltrate my subconscious.

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