Anne of Green Gables Committed Suicide

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s granddaughter has just gone public with the information that the Anne of Green Gables author—and, I would argue, the true founder of Canadian literature—suffered from chronic depression and ultimately committed suicide.

One of these days we will acknowledge openly the obvious but never-acknowledged truth that every significantly creative person the world has ever produced, and most highly intelligent people, suffer either from what is called “depression,” or “manic depression” (aka “bipolar disorder”). Robertson Davies once said he had never met a writer in his life who did not know “the black dog” well.

This being so, it is hard to buy into the currently prevailing notion that depression is a physical illness. It would be odd to find an illness that disproportionately afflicted creative or very intelligent people. Writer’s cramp, possibly?

Much more likely, depression is simply a byproduct of being highly creative and highly intelligent. Bertrand Russell described Periclean Athens as the only place ever known where one could be both intelligent and happy.

That might have been wishful thinking on his part. Socrates was given hemlock, after all.

There are several problems necessarily faced by the brightest among us. Most notable is that the world is necessarily designed for those of normal intelligence. To be much brighter than average is awkward, rather like being much taller than average. John Steinbeck played on this analogy, I think, in Of Mice and Men. One must develop a permanent stoop to converse with others, or to cross thresholds, or even, at some extreme, to go indoors. It becomes, in practical and especially in social terms, a handicap.

The common world-view, too, is naturally designed for the average intelligence. It must be difficult, for bright children or adolescents, when they realize the general consensus makes no sense, and there is nobody around to talk to about this. In fact, everyone else is frightened if you mention this. They may even decide you have gone mad.

That’s a lot for a kid to handle.

And then there are the Pharisees of the world, those who succeed by conning others, who have a vested interest in no one noticing their intellectual nakedness. To them, the highly intelligent and creative are a clear and present danger. And they are, most often, in positions of power.

This same week, my wife heard that the brightest boy in her year at high school, the class valedictorian, had committed suicide. He hanged himself from a tree.

Most distressing, perhaps, is the waste. The best minds of every generation, destroyed, hysterical, naked, searching for an angry fix, or hanging from a tree. Imagine if we could instead apply their minds to a cure for cancer, to world peace, or just to painting a million more Sistine Chapels.

Someday this will become possible.

In the meantime, the least we can do is to talk about it honestly