Byron was depressed
Some thoughts on the struggle of creativity

Lord Byron made me fall in love with poetry. I picked up a book in high school because I liked his picture on the cover. Then I turned the page, and read this:
And thou art dead, as young and fair,
As aught of mortal birth.
It was the first poem I loved. Byron became part of my personal canon, the great artists I wanted to be when I grew up. (A young Victor Hugo famously said: “I want to be Chateaubriand or nothing!”)
But life never takes the path you imagine. My goals remain the same, but I’ve had moments of hopelessness, feeling my opportunities had past. It was in such a moment I read the letters of Lord Byron. I was surprised to discover: Byron was depressed.
I think of him as a creative genius, a poet who spoke as casually in verse as others do in speech. But he thought of himself as a failed playwright.
I began to see his depression throughout his poetry. Like this:
Alas! it is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
Or this:
It is that weariness which springs,
From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure Beauty brings;
Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.
I soon began to realize many of my favourite artists were depressed, at one point or another. Even Shakespeare, I suspect, wrote his soliloquies from personal experience. These words feel like internal observations:
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
But Shakespeare worked through his hopelessness, and became the greatest dramatist in English literature. (Arguably, the world).
Personally, I’m in a good place now. I found my voice and direction. But I know challenges will come, I might find myself hopeless again. I will find comfort in knowing Byron was depressed. And I will remind myself of these words from another favourite poet:
That which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
