Genie und Wahnsinn

The connection between Dickinson’s moods and her poems has long been a subject of interest but has never before been quantified. In the new research, John F. McDermott, professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine in Honolulu, examined whether there was a seasonal pattern to when Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote her poems.

The analysis suggest that Dickinson’s „creative genius was ignited“ in 1862, in the middle of an eight-year period when she wrote most of her work, McDermott said. Generally, during this period, Dickinson was much more prolific during the spring and summer and much less productive in the winter, he found.

„One can speculate she had winter blues or depression, but at the same time, in the spring and summer, she had a flash of creative energy,“ McDermott said in a telephone interview. „There was an overriding of that winter lapse. She wrote all day long — she wrote a poem a day. If she saw the chestnut tree in bloom, she would say the sky was in bloom. She had more intensity and enthusiasm about life. She had a change in mood, a cognitive change.“ / Washington Post 14.5.01