The subject himself, or his legacy?......

                    I have been planning to write this post since a long time. Given my fascination with books, it was natural that my thoughts wandered off to the lives of authors/artists who wrote/created such everlasting, eternally inspiring books/art. Maybe the recent death of one of my favorite actors, Robin Williams also made me ponder more about these issues, because the more you probe, the more you discover the truth behind such great artists who exemplified in their respective fields, had larger-than-life personas despite personal lives that simply failed to live up to the grandeur of their work.

                    Which also brings me to the next existential dilemma- are you known for what you did and achieved in your lifetime, or simply how well you led your life? Or, lets put it like this: 

What is more important? The legacy of the subject or the subject himself?

Well, here are some insights into the lives of some of my favorite authors/artists:

D H Lawrence: 

                 " Lady Chatterley's Lover", Lawrence's last great work,  redefined sexuality and ushered a new paradigm in the representation of sexuality in literature forever. The book was written by him in the last three years of his life ( 1927-1930) when he was suffering with acute tuberculosis. The book was banned in the US until 1959 and in England until 1960, when the ban was lifted and Penguin Books was allowed to publish it.

                I've read the book countless times, seen the many movie adaptations that it inspired, and each time, the experience has been very, very satisfying and, ahem, invigorating. Yet, what is unimaginable is envisioning Lawrence awaiting his imminent death, with a wife he seldom spent any time with, capable of generating prose that, almost a century later, can still evoke such intense feelings. It is, nonetheless, a credit to his genius that he turned a death-bed work into a generation defining piece of literature.

Here's one of his quotes:

“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.”

Vincent van Gogh:

                     No life can be as tragic as the one Van Gogh led. An inimitable artist whose body of work needs no words of introduction, he was, perhaps, the saddest, loneliest artist ever to have lived to create such astoundingly beautiful paintings, yet not living long enough to see the huge impact that his work would cause in the art world. He was, at different stages of his life, a victim of temporal lobe epilepsy, bipolar disorder , hypergraphia and suffered from lead and thujone poisoning. He checked himself into a mental asylum at St Remy after he partially mutilated his own ear. He finally committed suicide by shooting himself. In the ten years that he painted, he produced some 900 paintings that were never really appreciated, but within 20 years of his death, became famous and were sold for millions. 

                   I am an ardent fan, and sometimes, when I see his paintings, the kaleidoscopic visuals that create the illusion of movement and change, I wonder what went on inside the head of this brilliant, gifted man who never found peace, solace or tranquility that so define his works.  

        

Enid Blyton:   

       

                Now, this one is something that's even more bizarre. I mean, the mere mention of Enid Blyton brings to my memory the insane amount of time and love I had for " The Famous Five, " The Secret Seven", "Noddy", " Shadow, the sheepdog" etc. Our school's junior library had a stock of all these and I recall the moment I opened one of her books, it was an instant transportation into a world of adventure, fun, magic, friendship and all things associated with childhood's innocence.

              And that is the reason I call this bizarre, because when I recently happened to see a biopic based on her life, called "Enid", with the acclaimed British actress Helena Bonham Carter playing the titular role, I was struck by how utterly different this writer of children's classics was in real life. She was a far cry from the matronly, bookish, mild and good natured author I had envisioned. She was this prim, stylish, savvy business woman, who had a tight rein on her two daughters who were perpetually afraid to even appear in front of her. And she had a troubled marriage, which made her even more self-centered. At the precise time that she created her most popular character of "Noddy", she was in fact in the throes of a divorce. Now imagine that!!

      Maybe, as the cliche goes, real life tragedy does indeed provide fuel for creativity and spontaneity.

William S Burroughs:

Imagine someone who came up with:

" The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do."

Now that is food for thought! Burroughs, the writer. Burroughs, the man who was a conundrum personified. The man who was the founder of the "Beats", whose work ranged from surreal to nostalgic, autobiographical to anarchic, and who revelled in drugs and bisexuality, and was grimly unapologetic about it all. Now that's a real man for you.

I did know about the "Beatnik" writers, essentially Jack Kerouac's On the Road and stuff, but it was while watching Anthony Bourdain's acclaimed travel series "Parts Unknown" on CNN in an episode on Tangier, Morocco, that I came to know more about this unconventional writer who gave us the Beats. And pioneered the modern graphic novel form.

So imagine this guy, who actually shot his wife during a drunken game, and was a drug addict throughout his life, was a bisexual, and this featured in his literary style of the cut-up technique, wild, surrealistic satire and essentially an inspiration to modern day cyber Punk. A life of complete and absolute abandon with no regrets. And yet, highly respected in select circles and an important counterculture figure of the seventies.

There! I finally wrote about these figures!

There are quite a few other people I think about, but lets call it a day for now. :)

But it does tell mere mortals like us that, despite all these struggles and vicissitudes, pain, loss and failure, we can rise above all these through what we do and create and the legacy that we leave behind for an increasingly chaotic world to come.