| If there is one thing worse than being married to a genius, it is a genius being wedded to his own mind. How many of them, one wonders, must have looked in the mirror at some time in their lives and pondered why they should have been chosen to be the recipients of this unsolicited, disturbing gift? Why they, out of the all mankind, should have heard the voice and like the prophet Samuel answered that insistent call? |
| Tracing the birth and careers of geniuses throughout history, reading about children who could talk before they walk, compose like Mozart and play before they could even reach the keys of a clavichord, theorise brilliantly like Sir Isaac Newton, it seems nothing short of a miracle that the organic pulpy tissue called the human brain should be able within its moist folds and creases, to comprehend the infinity of the universe, and beyond. The wonder is not that so many geniuses become egocentric agnostics or atheists; the true miracle is that so may more retain a deep and unshakable belief in that core of divinity within them, and worship in their own separate ways a God, by whatever name. |
Published in THE NATION 10 Dec. 1992, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
|
