Define the image of a suffering genius (as in Beethhoven). Would he fit this image? If so, how does he do so?

Question

If not, why do you think so?

Answer 1

I don't think it's necessary to "define", it's just the old concept that people who seem to possess genius have it because they have suffered.

Of course, that's utter rubbish.  Mendelssohn was rich; Mozart had his musical career handed to him by his doting father, and so forth.  There's no evidence that artists suffer more than anyone else--

Of course, one thing seems true; when suffering, an artist turns to the work as a coping mechanism.  So some of the great masterpieces seem to emerge from the suffering of a genius: Shakespeare writing his four great tragedies after the death of his son Hamnet; Monet painting his wife, strangely transparent, after she'd died.

But I see artists who didn't have to suffer for their art, geniuses who didn't feel pain in order to attain their genius.  Correlation nor causation has been proven.