I just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, the next selection in my Great Books Club. I read it several years ago and enjoyed reading it for a second time. Wilde died in extreme poverty after serving two years in a British prison for homosexual offenses. Today, in addition to Dorian Gray, Wilde’s works including The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan are considered masterpieces.
Rereading Wilde’s work got me thinking about other authors, musicians, and artists who died virtually unknown and penniless, never having any idea that their books would become classics, their music would live on for hundreds of years, and their art would later sell for millions.
A sampling of such talent follows.
Franz Kafka viewed himself as a total failure and asked his friend to burn his unpublished manuscripts. His friend refused to do so and later published The Trial and The Metamorphosis, which came to define modern literature.
Edgar Allen Poe found it very difficult to survive as a writer, mostly due to lack of international copyright laws. He was paid $9 for his poem The Raven. Poe suffered from alcohol addiction and was found unconscious in a Baltimore gutter and pronounced dead by unknown causes.
Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in reclusive isolation, publishing fewer than a dozen poems while she was alive. After her death, her family discovered booklets containing almost 1,800 poems that cemented her legacy as one of America’s greatest poets.
Bach’s vast category of composition was largely forgotten after his death. It took a mid-century revival to elevate him to master composer status.
The jazz pioneer Billie Holiday was hounded by legal prosecutions and addiction. She died in a hospital room with only 70 cents in her bank account.
Stephen Foster, today called the father of American music (composer of Oh! Susanna and Swanee River to name a few), died destitute in a New York hospital with just 38 cents to his name due to lack of copyright and royalty protections.
Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. He suffered from severe mental health struggles and poverty. He committed suicide at age 37, believing he was a total failure. Today his works are among the most famous and expensive in the world.
Paul Gauguin abandoned life in Paris to paint in Tahiti. He li,ved in deep poverty and died of heart failure unaware that his works would later sell for millions.
Monet’s early works were deemed to be formless, unfinished, and ugly. As a result, Monet and his family lived in abject poverty for most of their lives. Monet eventually went partially blind but continued to paint in an abstract expressionist fashion.
Remembering that all these gifted people died in obscurity and poverty causes one to wonder about the talent out and about in today’s world that we may be unaware of or whose genius may not yet be recognized. Many of the talented people mentioned above were ahead of their times in many ways.
In today’s world, it is said that fewer than one percent of the talented “breakthrough” all the social media noise.
Albert Einstein once wrote, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Something to think about.
One Response
What you have highlighted, is that many talented people suffer from mental illness, untreated, can lead to extreme poverty. Even Albert Einstein, though he did not die in poverty likely had Aspergers syndrome