Why Were All The Great Writers Sniffing Lines?

There is an age-old question that every artist ponders when they begin a new piece and look towards their heroes for inspiration and encouragement: Does tragedy fuel art?

Most of the major writers and artists we spent hours learning about in English and History had deep struggles. Addiction to alcohol or drugs seemed to be a common running theme. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were heavy drinkers, Charles Dickens had a strong fondness for morphine, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was said to have used opium to inspire her writing, and Hunter S. Thompson spent his days in a liquor, weed, and basically any kind of drug-filled haze. It makes you wonder if they sniffed a line and took a shot between each paragraph.

Many also suffered from different mental illnesses, such as Sylvia Plath and Van Gogh, and struggled throughout their lives. Despite these hardships, these are the artists and writers we remember whose works have impacted not just us but the world as a whole. There is a reason we have to read The Great Gatsby in the 9th grade over and over until we can tell our teachers what the green light exactly means.

You can’t help but wonder if all these addictions and tragedies fuel good art. My answer is an astounding no. Trauma doesn’t make art that suddenly gives it meaning. After all, plenty of people have gone through traumatic experiences, whether they are artists or not.

Why were all the great writers sniffing lines then? Or all the worshipped artists acting as if they were high on glue? There is no simple answer to that. They all had different circumstances, living in different decades, with different influences that shaped their lives. How they all managed to create such beautiful works was not because of their tragedies or their victories; it was because of how they used their life experiences and their unique perspectives to make art.

It’s their unique perspectives and how they channel them that makes their works so good, not if they struggled with addiction or mental illness. Van Gogh was a terrific artist when he was struggling and even more so when he was better. Starry Night was created when he was receiving treatment. Charles Dickens’s novels were a moral argument against corruption and privilege that had a happy ending. Tolkien, who based Lord of The Rings on his own experiences in the war, remained hopeful and light amongst the tragedies in his series. And for every artist who is supposedly inspired by personal tragedy, there are plenty who aren’t. The concept that pain and suffering inspire art is a dangerous one; it puts real pain on a pedestal and ignores the talent of the creator and other creators.

So, while every creative from time to time wonders why the authors that their high school teachers loved to lecture them about had lives like a Shakespearean tragedy and if that’s what made them so great, just remember: tragedy doesn’t fuel art. It’s lived experiences and having the talent and unique perspective to make that art.

Strike Out, 

Rameen Naviwala 

Boca Raton

Rameen Naviwala is a content writer for Strike Magazine Boca. A water sign that enjoys rom-coms and reading melodramatic novels, she spends most of her time with headphones on and scribbling down whatever thought comes to mind. You can reach her at rameen.naviwala@outlook.com.