Romantic suicide
An interesting 100 word article by Alexandra Pitman in this month’s British Journal of Psychiatry. Here it is in full:
The concept of ‘romantic suicide’ emerged in the 1770s following the suicide of the teenage English poet Thomas Chatterton, memorialised in Goethe’s 1774 novel in the character of young Werther. Eighteenth-century authors embellished these men as romantic outcasts, triumphing over death through fearless individualism to achieve immortality in heaven. Such myths still persist today, exemplified in journalists’ responses to the suicides of artists such as Kitaj, Kirchner, Rothko and Van Gogh. Glorifying their deaths by wreathing them in martyrdom is a dangerous practice. Awareness of the damage wreaked by propagation of these myths is the starting point for challenging them.
More recent examples include Kurt Cobain and David Foster Wallace. In Wallace’s case his death wasn’t perhaps romanticised; more that it was said to express the post-modernism he explored in his writing. I agree with Pitman. The suicides of these artists were the results of awful, soul-destroying mental illnesses. I can say this most confidently with Wallace, whose death especially affected me because I was engaged with his work when it happened. Jonathan Franzen wrote about his struggles with depression in some detail. Nothing romantic about it. Or post-modern.
