Cesare Lambroso - L` Homme de Génie - 1889

L'Homme de Génie
Par Cesare Lambroso. Traduit Sur La VIº Édition Italienne Par
Colonna D'Istria.
Et Précédé de Une Preface De M. CH. Richet, Professeur À La Faculté De Médecine De Paris. 1889

In 8th of 22//499 p. (8) foldable pages//half leather binding with gold irons on the spine.
Signs of use, slight acidity and good overall condition.

“L'Homme de genius” is a great work, which connects genius to madness and degeneration, all being signs of "abnormality", hence developing the theses of Moreau de Tours. Artistic and scientific inspiration is, according to him, equivalent to epilepsy. Investigating 36 "geniuses", Lombroso claimed to find evidence of the "madness" of figures such as Baudelaire, Newton, Fénelon and Verlaine. Psychiatrists such as Griesinger and Forel admitted Lombroso's theses on genius and madness, but many others rejected them (Mantegazza, Kraepelin, Dilthey, Paul Möbius, etc).

Finally, in 1902, he wrote an article about the Calabrese criminal Giuseppe Musolino, considering him to be between the "born criminal" and the "criminaloid", the first category being a "degenerate" category, while the second would be marked by a great intelligence. If Lombroso does indeed consider crime as a mark of an "inferior humanity", he does not deny, however, the existence of "evil geniuses", as he considers Vidocq, Cagliostro, Dubosc, Lacenaire, etc. "However, considered in general, these unfortunates, even those to whom genius is granted, have more deception (such as the savages) and more spirit than the true genius. They lack coherence and continuity in mental work — which is powerful, I agree with it, but intermittent. Moreover, crime among poets (including, he says, Villon) is, according to him, more frequent than among scholars, because of their emotionalism.”

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