From Garrison Keillor's lovely Writer's Almanac site for today, Wednesday, 10 March 2004, this note:
Zelda Fitzgerald died on this day in 1948. In 1930 she suffered a mental breakdown, and mental illness kept her in and out of hospitals for the rest of her life. She died in a fire at the Highland Hospital outside Asheville, North Carolina. She was trapped on the top floor with six other patients; the doors were locked, the windows were chained, and the wooden fire escapes burned. The day before she died she wrote to her daughter, Scottie: "Today there is promise of spring in the air and an aura of sunshine over the mountains."
Zelda Fitzgerald once said, "I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs."
The emphasized words are mine, they strike such a chord. in my other journal i've been musing on this month of March, which is in itself alternately like breathing the promise of spring in the air and being locked in an insane asylum. well, okay, maybe not, but at times it begins to feel that way. it's a sad little in memorium for Zelda, isn't it. do writers suffer more from mental illness than the majority of people? do they write because they suffer? do they suffer because they write? does writing make you crazy? are we all a little crazy? there's a saying, isn't there, crazy as a March hare. what is a March hare, anyhow? i think i'm becoming one.
3 comments:
This was a nice poignant entry. As for your queries on Writers, I don't know but many of the greats were let's just say: Troubled. Hemingway, Plath, Dickinson,Woolf. Just to name a few. I feel that most writers are deep thinkers, feelers. They are affected and consumed by things more than the average person. They transfuse their sufferings out onto that blank page. It is probably the only release they can find for themselves. Of course that is just my opinion. :-)
~RC~
It's just me. I took the Weblog test from your other journal and I got 50%. I have so got to reclaim my life. :-)
~RC~
Writers, being artists, tend to be temperamental and emotional creatures. Being deep thinkers, they ponder things that often wash off everybody's backs. Since I'm a writer of sorts, I identify with this and am convinced I'm just as neurotic!
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