Review: Meyers, Jeffrey, "The Greek Idea of Disease, Madness, and Art", published in the World and I, January 1999 pp. 318-324.
             Jeffrey Meyers has authored thirty-nine books including celebrated biographies of twentieth century literary masters Orwell, Hemmingway, and Fitzgerald. Meyers is also a Fellow of London's prestigious Royal Society of Literature.
             In this article, Meyers compares man's present-day attitudes towards disease, madness, and creativity to the ideas held by ancient Greeks. Meyers asserts that while the modern perception of illness (both mental and physical) is generally negative, disease related to creative imagination is almost always embraced. Ancient Greeks considered disease a fascinating subject and thought illness to be indicative of an individual's relationship with the gods.
             Meyers presents two ancient Greek philosophies that explain how disease fuels creativity. The Greeks believed that illness and mental disease, as caused by the gods, gave a person "psychic knowledge, spiritual power, and creative genius." Since the Greeks believed art paralleled knowledge, creative genius was only accessible to those who paid the price of physical or mental suffering. The second Greek explanation for creative genius employs the idea that the spirit of Dionysus possessed the humanly body and all expression was a reflection of the Spirit itself. The author writes, "[the poet cannot] compose anything worth calling poetry until he becomes inspired, and as it were, or whilst any reason remains in him." Meyers qualifies his statements with evidence taken from Sophocles' play Philoctetes, Plato's dialogues, and more recent works by Nietzche and Thomas Mann.
             Meyers' article beautifully illustrates the irony in modern and ancient culture's thoughts towards illness and artistic creativity. It is undeniable that society embraces our manic, hop
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