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Le Figaro
3 days ago
- Health
- Le Figaro
Does Lady Macbeth Have Brain Cancer? A Psychiatrist Decodes the Mental Health of Writers and Their Characters
Literature is filled with characters suffering from mental health issues… and with authors who weren't necessarily much better off. In a fascinating book, a psychiatrist and a journalist attempt to unravel the mysteries of these minds. Does Lady Macbeth suffer from a brain disorder? Is Don Quixote delusional? Did Montaigne experience post-traumatic stress disorder? Did Baudelaire really have 'spleen'? And we —who delight in delving into the flaws and wanderings of great authors and their characters — might we all be a bit depressed, perverse, voyeuristic or addicted? It certainly seems that way: psychic suffering, often taboo in real life, 'erupts from all sides in literary masterpieces,' where it is not only 'tolerated' but 'magnified, sublimated,' notes psychiatrist Patrick Lemoine. After examining The Psychological Health of Those Who Made the World in his 2019 book, he now joins journalist Sophie Viguier-Vinson in exploring The Psychological Health of Writers and Their Characters. Together, they analyze some of literature's most beautiful pages to unearth madness. Are geniuses mad? Probably a little — otherwise, their works might be more reasonable — and probably far less beautiful. 'Literature reflects the world's complexity' and how each era and society perceives it. 'But it also reveals… the inner self and its fractures… Many writers were at the forefront of modern psychiatry,' the authors emphasize. Some because they could describe the depths of the human soul with astonishing precision; others because they were fascinated by the emerging science of mental illness; and some because they personally lived through the very torments they described. Each gets a diagnosis and prescription Just as a doctor questions a patient to understand their suffering, the authors delve into the works of Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Stefan Zweig, Toni Morrison and others to find signs of mental illness. For each, the psychiatrist offers a diagnosis and a prescription — an original way to reread works everyone claims to know by heart… and discover surprising insights. In some cases, the ailment is clear. Unsurprisingly, the book opens with French poet Baudelaire. Drug-addicted, syphilitic, the author of Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) lays bare his distress, starting with the spleen born of the 'low heavy sky [which] weighs like a lid.' Did the brilliant poet suffer from seasonal depression? From a neurological complication from syphilis, which a simple course of antibiotics could have spared him if only antibiotics had existed in his day? Or perhaps from bipolar disorder, explaining his creative bursts, disdain for norms, and reckless spending? As for Lady Macbeth — William Shakespeare's guilt-consumed heroine who becomes obsessive and sleepwalks — the diagnosis is more surprising: 'I think Lady Macbeth suffers from RBD,' or REM sleep behavior disorder, 'very often a warning sign of a serious neurological disease such as brain cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc.' The prescription? Unfortunately, not much: perhaps an MRI to detect a possible early-stage neurological disorder, and melatonin to help with sleep disturbances. Gregor Samsa, the young man who turns into a cockroach in Kafka's Metamorphosis, could have been treated. He clearly suffers from early-stage schizophrenia, observing with horror his body's transformation and falling into neglect while his family gradually gives up on him. Madness or rebellion? In other cases, the diagnosis is murkier, and the line between illness and rebellion against societal norms becomes blurred. Take Don Quixote: He doesn't seem to be lying, as a liar knows what he's doing. A mythomaniac? Maybe, but that's tricky to treat. There's no medication, and you shouldn't confront the mythomaniac with the truth (lest they mentally collapse), nor should you encourage the delusion. So let's keep believing that the man of La Mancha is a gentle dreamer, who harms only windmills and scientific rationality. The Marquise de Merteuil in Choderlos de Laclos's Dangerous Liaisons is probably a narcissistic pervert 'and the term sadomasochism must be mentioned'; but she is also (above all?) a woman rebelling against male dominance, even if it means leaving victims in her wake. Elsewhere, the psychiatrist has fun, as literature reflects our own inner flaws. Take French playwright Molière's Monsieur Jourdain: dreamy, naïve, a bit foolish but not mentally ill. Unless Alzheimer's is 'lurking,' which would explain a lot... Or the clients in Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Paradise), caught in a shopping frenzy (with one even resorting to theft), which we can't entirely mock — especially during sale season. With Michel de Montaigne, it was a fall from a horse, recounted in Essays, that triggered a 'vertigo of death.' Yet after discussing PTSD, which traps the sufferer in a loop of traumatic reliving, the psychiatrist concludes Montaigne likely had sound mental health. He may have experienced 'a certain form of traumatic dissociation' — but recovered and transformed it into the basis of his introspective philosophy. Lemoine is less sure, however, about Blaise Pascal's mental integrity. The mathematician became a philosopher after a serious carriage accident in which he almost fell off the Neuilly bridge. Could his Pensées (Thoughts) have been erased with a simple stroke of the pen by a psychiatrist prescribing EMDR sessions? Lifting us out of our inner turmoil 'The mark of literary genius is the ability to convey a clinical truth with extreme accuracy and precision, as if it had been lived, even by those who may never have experienced it,' Lemoine writes. Zola describes delirium tremens in L'Assommoir, while Zweig and Fyodor Dostoevsky masterfully depict gambling addiction. Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe likewise brilliantly portray madness — Le Horla's psychosis and The Black Cat's alcoholic downfall — probably drawing from their own hallucinatory experiences. 'Of course, reading doesn't cure... but it can help us project ourselves beyond the torment,' Lemoine and Viguier-Vinson conclude. 'Because an author has turned suffering into something more: a moment of humanity and beauty to be shared.' Literature also gives us hope, the psychiatrist adds, when its characters 'strangely adapt to their quirks, flaws and misadventures… These are all valuable lessons about the strengths of the psyche that give us hope and set us on our path.' According to the World Health Organization, mental illness affects one in five people. That does not include the everyday disappointments that depress, sadden, exhaust or anger us. And literature, in all this? It's here to make us 'a little freer, perhaps'…
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Hong Kong, a Vibrant Art Scene Thrives in an Industrial District
On a recent cool, damp, overcast afternoon in Hong Kong, a modest crowd of artists, collectors and curious browsers filled a gallery for the opening of 'The Flowers of Evil,' an exhibition of fine art photography in an industrial district outside the city center. Visitors emerged from a dusty freight elevator, slipped into a large concrete room and murmured observations between sips of champagne. Vanessa Franklin, the co-founder of the gallery, Boogie Woogie Photography, lit up with a smile. 'If it was sunny, everyone would be at the beach,' she said. Getting to a beach would have been easier. Unless visitors are familiar with her gallery, finding it on the eighth floor in one of the decaying industrial buildings in Hong Kong's Wong Chuk Hang district may be a challenge. But Franklin and other gallery owners have been drawn to the area for its edgy vibe — a labyrinth of old warehouses and a smattering of new high rises reminiscent of East London or Manhattan's meatpacking district. In recent years, Wong Chuk Hang has become a magnet for galleries, some brand-new, some decamping from other parts of the city. They have been lured by the lower rents and larger spaces as compared with Hong Kong's pricey Central district — the heart of the territory's business and financial community, and home to major international galleries, including David Zwirner, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace and White Cube. There is a long history of artists setting up studios in Hong Kong's old factory buildings, ever since manufacturers started vacating the buildings and moving their facilities to mainland China in the 1980s, said Enid Tsui, a journalist and the author of a new book, 'Art in Hong Kong: Portrait of a City in Flux.' 'Affordable studio space is hard to find in Hong Kong, and these grimy, unprepossessing industrial buildings cost less to rent and have plenty of room,' Tsui said. 'Traditionally in Hong Kong, art galleries were in Central — where the money is,' Tsui said. That changed, she explained, when a fresh breed of businesses tapped into the city's fast-growing contemporary art market in the early 2010s. The initial batch of galleries relocating to Wong Chuk Hang were led by experienced dealers with international expertise, Tsui said, citing Rossi & Rossi and Pékin Fine Arts as prime examples. They turned their backs on Central for 'an area that was seen as an industrial wasteland.' Some other galleries followed, she said, because their artists embraced the 'cutting-edge galleries.' By almost any big-city measure, Wong Chuk Hang is hardly remote. It is some 20 minutes by car or subway from Central, but the neighborhood is tucked away in an area that for many residents feels like a separate time zone — hilltops and mountain peaks separate it from the heavily populated areas of Central and northern Hong Kong Island. 'Wong Chuk Hang has always been a place where people pass through and not stop,' said Mark Chung, 34, a Hong Kong-based installation artist, who grew up not far from the district. He is one of many local artists whose work has been presented by the district's top galleries. In recent years, however, Wong Chuk Hang has become more accessible and built up, with a new shopping mall and residential building and, crucially, a new subway line connecting to the rest of the city. Pascal de Sarthe, the owner of galleries in Hong Kong and Scottsdale, Ariz. (where his son lives), moved his gallery, De Sarthe, to Wong Chuk Hang from Central in 2017. 'I never regretted it,' he said. 'There is a sense of community here.' 'Wong Chuk Hang is like the 1960s in New York,' he said. The artists at that time 'really created an American identity,' he added, 'and the same thing is happening here.' Among those creating a local identity is Mak Ying Tung, 35, a Hong Kong conceptual artist who goes by the name Mak2. She became one of the city's most successful artists after her works were presented at the De Sarthe gallery in a show that opened November 2019. Since then, more than 200 pieces from her 'Home Sweet Home' series, artworks on paper and canvas, have been sold by the gallery, and her latest work will be shown at De Sarthe's booth at Art Basel Hong Kong this month. 'From the first time I met Pascal, he treated me like an artist,' Mak said. On that overcast afternoon when Boogie Woogie Photography opened 'The Flowers of Evil,' it was not the only gallery in the district open. In fact, it was among more than a dozen galleries in Wong Chuk Hang (including De Sarthe) that had opened their doors that day for a monthly event called South Side Saturday, which encourages collectors and art lovers to journey to the district to gallery-hop and view new exhibitions in one afternoon. 'South Side Saturday was really created for a sense of community,' said Fabio Rossi, owner of Rossi & Rossi, who opened his first gallery in Wong Chuk Hang in 2011. Previously, Rossi had a gallery in London, which he closed in 2022. Rossi said that getting into Wong Chuk Hang early had allowed him to be part of the growth by sharing with the art community. 'Hong Kong has a very collegial atmosphere,' Rossi said, while London was 'less so because of the sheer number of galleries, which are more dispersed.' The unpolished character of Wong Chuk Hang has also attracted new collectors. 'I barely engage with the big galleries,' said Yuri van der Leest, who works for an executive advisory firm and said that he visited the galleries in Wang Chuk Hang as often as once a week. 'It's so vibrant,' he said, 'and there's so much passion.' He said he had about 160 artworks, with some three-quarters of those by Hong Kong artists, including Mak2. Jennifer Yu, a lawyer who began collecting Asian contemporary art about a decade ago — Mak2's work is in her collection, too — said that galleries in Wong Chuk Hang were 'more open' to new and young collectors, such as herself. 'It's a bit more inclusive' than the city's major galleries, she said. Yu, whose interest in art grew while accompanying her mother to auctions, said that some of the larger galleries could be intimidating for new collectors. 'The younger generation wants to understand art when collecting,' she added, 'and not just treat it as an asset.' Mak, who said that her career really took off after her 2019 solo show at De Sarthe, reflected recently on her commercial and critical successes. 'There was a long period of time when I couldn't make a living as an artist,' she said. 'It's almost like I hit the jackpot.'
