Divine Fury (54 page)

3
. Joyce Goldenstern,
Albert Einstein: Physicist and Genius
(Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1995), 12.

4
. On Einstein’s “carefree manner of a child,” see Howard Gardner,
Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Elliot, Graham, and Gandhi
(New York: Basic Books, 2011), 113. “Mystical, intuitive” is the characterization of Hans C. Ohanian,
Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 3, 215, 332. For the
Time
cover and quotation, see the July 1, 1946 issue. Einstein’s actual role in warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the bomb and furthering the Manhattan Project in pursuit of an atomic weapon was comparatively small. See the discussion in
Chapter 6
below.

5
. Einstein is cited in Alice Calaprice, ed.,
The New Quotable Einstein
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 194.

6
. I owe the phrase “history in ideas” (as opposed to a history
of
ideas) to my friend and colleague David Armitage, who develops the thought, along with the notion of “trans-temporal” history, in his “What’s the Big Idea? Intellectual History and the Longue Durée,”
History of European Ideas
38, no. 4 (2012): 493–507. For further methodological reflection on this approach to the past, see my “The Return of the History of Ideas?” in
Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History
, eds. Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

7
. A notable exception to the general tendency to overlook the importance of religion to the study of genius is Edgar Zilsel’s
Die Geniereligion: Ein kritischer Versuch über das moderne Persönlichkeitsideal
, intro. Johann Dvorak (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), originally published in 1918, as well as the more recent and penetrating work of the French sociologist Nathalie Heinich. See, for instance, her
The Glory of Van Gogh: An Anthropology of Admiration
, trans. Paul Leduc Browne (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). A characteristic example of the scientific dismissal of religion is Hans Jürgen Eysenck,
Genius: The Natural History of Creativity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The impetus for the literary and critical assault on genius was provided by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, whose seminal work assailed the notion of the autonomous creative “author” as source of originality and genius. See Barthes’s 1967 essay “La mort de l’auteur” and Foucault’s 1973 rejoinder, “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” Two more recent and fruitful engagements with the question of genius from a postmodern perspective are Julia Kristeva, “Female Genius: General Introduction,” in
Hannah Arendt
, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), ix–xxi, vol. 1 of
Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words—Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Collette; a Trilogy
, and Klaus Ottman,
The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition
(Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2004).

8
. Will Durant,
Adventures in Genius
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931), xv; Harold Bloom,
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
(New York: Warner Books, 2002), 7.

9
. Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum,
The Problem of Genius
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 6, xvii–xviii. The original German edition was published in 1931, in part as an abbreviation of Lange-Eichbaum’s much larger
Genie, Irrsinn, und Ruhm
(Munich: E. Reinhardt, 1928). On the developing sociological analysis of genius in this period, see, as well, Albert Solomon, “Zur Soziologie des Geniebegriffs,”
Die Gesellschaft: Internationale Revue für Sozialismus und Politik
3, no. 2 (1926):504–513.

10
. Lange-Eichbaum,
Problem of Genius
, 49–51, 152–153, 156–159, 160–162.

11
. Lange-Eichbaum was a key German proponent of the dubious, though popular, scientific belief that genius was a form of madness or degenerative disease. On this theory and its European proponents, see chap. 5 below. Lange-Eichbaum was also responsible for perpetuating the belief that Nietzsche’s insanity (and hence his “genius”) was a result of syphilis. See his
Nietzsche: Krankheit und Wirkung
(Hamburg: Lettenbauer, 1946). Hitler was featured on the cover of
Time
on January 2, 1939. On Hitler and the Nazis’ enmity with Einstein, see Jürgen Neffe,
Einstein: A Biography
, trans. Shelley Frisch (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2007), 284.

12
. “Germany: Genius Hitler,”
Time
, May 2, 1938. Hitler is cited in Ian Kershaw,
Hitler: 1889–1936
(London: Allen Lane, 1998), 151. For Hitler’s autobiography, see Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, trans. Ralph Mannheim (London: Hutchinson, 1969), 266. Goebbels is cited in Jochen Schmidt,
Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik, 1750–1945
, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2004), 2:207.

13
. For the strong “constructivist” position, which minimizes the role of an individual’s talent or gifts in making genius, see Tia De Nora,
Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). For a critique of this position, see Jean-Michael Menger’s
Le travail créateur
(Paris: Gallimard, 2009).

14
. On the genius as the “highest human type,” see, for instance, Herbert Dieckmann, “Diderot’s Conception of Genius,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
2, no. 2 (1941): 151–182.

15
. On the “withdrawal of God,” see Marcel Gauchet,
The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion
, trans. Oscar Burge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), as well as, from a different perspective, Charles Taylor,
A Secular Age
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007). Gauchet does not address the dismissal of spiritual mediators and companions, but that development is consistent with his account.

16
. On re-enchantment, see Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, “Introduction” to Landy and Saler, eds.,
The Re-Enchantment of the World
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 2. See also Saler’s “Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographic Review,”
American Historical Review
111, no. 3 (2006): 692–717.

17
. Surprisingly little work has been done on the intellectual history of equality, though a notable exception is the scholarship of Siep Stuurman. See his
De Uitvinding van de Mensheid
(Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2010), the rationale of which is provided in English in his “How to Write the History of Equality,”
Leidschrift
19, no. 3 (2004): 23–38. On the denial of equality to targeted groups, see Uday S. Mehta, “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion,” in
Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World
, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 59–86. Jefferson is cited and discussed in John Carson,
The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 11. The phrase “shadow language of equality” is Carson’s (xiii). On European artists as natural aristocrats, see Nathalie Heinich,
L’élite artiste: Excellence et singularité en régime démocratique
(Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2005). My own analysis of genius as an exception to the notion of equality concurs broadly with Carson’s and Heinich’s fine studies. I am indebted to both authors for their conversation and insight.

18
. Edgar Zilsel’s
Die Enstehung des Geniebegriffes: Ein Betrag zur Ideengeschichte der Antike und des Fruhkapitalismus
, intro. Heinz Maus (Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms, 1972 [1926]), traces the concept of genius from antiquity to the Renaissance by following both the genealogy of the word and early approximations of the type. Unlike Zilsel’s earlier, critical analysis of the “genius religion” of Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century, cited in note 5 above, his historical work on genius shows almost no interest in religion as an explanatory factor in its development. On the distinction between words and things, see Quentin Skinner, “The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon,” in Skinner,
Visions of Politics
, vol. 1,
Regarding Method
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 158–175. The recent interest in the history of celebrity, charisma, and heroism provides a fresh take on the old question of “great” men. See, for example, Edward Berenson and Eva Giloi, eds.,
Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books, 2010); Antoine Lilti,
Figures publiques: Aux origines de la célébrité (1750–1850)
(Paris: Fayard, forthcoming).

19
. See the insightful reflections of Marjorie Garber, “Our Genius Problem,”
The Atlantic
, December 2002,
www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/12/garber.htm
.

CHAPTER 1

1
. W. K. Simpson, ed.,
The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiography and Poetry
, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Benjamin A. Elman,
A Cultural History of Civil Examination in Late Imperial China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 64; Jacqueline Ki-Zerbo and Joseph Ki-Zerbo, “The Living Tradition,” in
Methodology and African Pre-History
, ed. Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 62–73.

2
. For a recent articulation of the case for Western dominance of outstanding human achievement, see Charles Murray,
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 245–383.

3
. The story of Kakheperresenb’s complaint and the example of the
Katha sarit sagara
are discussed by John Barth in his delightful essay, “Do I Repeat Myself? The Problem of the Already Said,”
The Atlantic
, July 5, 2011, Fiction 2011 Special Issue.

4
. The phrase “There is nothing new under the sun” is from Ecclesiastes 1:9. The phrase and concept “a time of origins” is that of Mircea Eliade and is central to all of his work, but see, in particular,
The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History
, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), first published in French in 1949. The conception of an “absolute past” governing the temporal orientation of religious societies until roughly the eighteenth century is that of Marcel Gauchet in his
The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion
, trans. Oscar Burge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 23–33.

5
. “Solus Deus creat,” Aquinas affirms, adding that “Nullum corpus potest creare,” that no other body—angelic or human—can bring something into existence out of nothing. See Aquinas,
Summa Theologica
, I, Q. 45, Art. 2, ad. 2 and 3; Q. 46, Art. 1, ad. 5. Saint Augustine similarly points out, in reference to man, that “creatura non potest creare” (the created thing cannot create) (
De Trinitate
, III, 9).

6
. The potential danger and transgression of usurping creation is a point made with great erudition and insight in John Hope Mason’s
The Value of Creativity: The Origins and Emergence of a Modern Belief
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), on whose accounts of Prometheus and Enoch I draw here.