(The following article contains conclusions and opinion of the author,
and not necessarily that of the owner of this blog.)
This is an article
submitted by Helen Gaynor:
Bharathi and Kannadasan:
Two Lives Cut Short by Drug Abuse
 |
| Subramania Bharathi |
The
issue of whether drugs could enhance creativity has always been
subject of debate. Samuel Taylor Coleridge credited opium for enhancing his
creativity. Socrates also saw “madness as a gift of the heavens,” yet many
thought that rational thinking was crucial to producing memorable work. For
Lamb, for instance, “The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here
chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the
faculties.”
Scientific
studies have shown that there is a link between creativity, mental illness and
drug use, with recent findings revealing an increase in psychopathology in
creative artists, specifically writer and poets. One study has shown that
bipolar disorder is between 10 and 40 times more common in artists than in the
general public and some of the many authors who suffered from this disorder
include Hans Christian Andersen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Blake. Drug
use has also been found to be more prevalent in the artistic community. In this
article we discuss the tumultuous relationship with drugs of Tamil poets,
Subramani Bharathi amd Kannadasan.
The Link Between Drug
Use, Creativity, Depression and Bipolarism
Subramania
Bharathi was, for many lovers of literature, the perfect writer, his work
encompassing the full gamut of human emotion, as noted by biographer,
Varadharajan Ramaswamy: “In the poems of Bharathi—Do you want humour? Yes there
is. Do you want sorrow? Sure. Do you want ecstasy? In excess. Fury? In
abundance. Consolation? Volumes and volumes. Philosophy? Paragraph after
paragraph. Why prolong? What is not here?”
Bharathi
had what many consider a privileged upbringing, since his father held the post
of officer at the Raja’s court. The young writer’s talent for Tamil poetry was
recognized in the court, earning him the title of Bharathi. He was strongly
favored by the Raja, who, oddly enough, first introduced Bharathi to opium and
ganja, in an effort to improve the latter’s physique and strength. After his
father’s death, Bharathi struggled to make a living as a teacher and then as
the founder of the journal India (in 1906), which he used as a platform for his
anti-colonial views. Bharathi was subjected to two prison terms for his political
leanings. In jail, he was subject to torture and abuse, leading to anger and depression. His
disillusionment with the political environment during Mahatma Gandhi’s rise led
him to feel demoralized, and he found his solace in opium, which he referred to
as “the rare medicine that will take me to heaven”. In his final years, his
financial situation was dire, his disappointment growing when his plea for help
to the Raja of Ettayapuram, was ignored. In July 1921, Bharathi visited the
Triplicane Parthasarathy temple, where he was attacked by an elephant and
suffered serious wounds and dysentery. However, he refused medication and died
two months later. It is thought that the use of opium exacerbated the poet’s
mental and physical health problems, and he died at the age of 39.
Bharathi
was not the only poet to have fallen prey to drugs; Nagaswaram Vidvan
Rajaratnam Pillai also lost his life to alcoholism, while poet Kannadasan,
struggled against alcoholism, despite being one of India’s most prolific
writers. He penned thousands of lyrics and created scripts for more than 12
films. His religious writings are also highly regarded, as are his 40 books of
poems and plays. For Kannadasan, drinking was part of a daily ritual. He would
consume his first alcoholic beverage at noon, work during the day and start
drinking again at midnight. When he realized he was addicted, he began
injecting pethidine in an effort to “detox” himself, only to become heavily
dependent on this powerful drug. Researcher, O Somasundaram, published a
fascinating article in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, noting that the writer
reveals the classic blend of bipolarism, drug taking and creativity in his
work: “The creative thinking processes and the hypomanic states resemble each
other—fluency, rapidity and flexibility of thought and the combination of ideas
or the categories of thought to form new and original connections on the other.
All these features are seen in Kannadasan's works. The writer also died at a
young age, at just 54, when he was visiting Chicago.
Despite
the link between creativity, “madness” and drug use, addiction can be addressed
by increasing awareness of the treatments available for such medical health issues as depression
and removing the associated stigma. Moreover, writers and
other artists should be aware of the possible link between mental issues and
creativity, to enable prompt diagnosis. Additionally, a paradigm shift is
sorely needed in the world of writing and artistry, so that substance abuse and
alcoholism cease to be glorified as a sign of genius and accepted as an illness
that often accompany these qualities.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/10-famous-authors-famous-addictions/250714/
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