The writer also must be a master of his art, so that fundamental rules of composition and outrages on common sense he does not violate.
Especially when the author has discovered new features of his unconscious life, or has been led to present original and profound ideas as a result of such discoveries; particularly when he moves the reader with intensity and evokes a passionate response, does the writer begin to merit the name of genius. When we say that a genius is a man who discovers a new truth or depicts beauty, we really mean that he is a man who, having experienced a repression, has been led to make certain conclusions from that event, that society has not wished to admit; he is a great artist when he gives an effective description of that repression; he is a great thinker when he sees certain ways by which that repression may be avoided, and he is a humanitarian when he informs the world how to attain a form of happiness that had been denied him.
We thus do away with the very pernicious doctrine that genius is a form of degeneracy or insanity. Geniuses are often sufferers from neurosis, or describe characters suffering from them; they are not degenerates, as Lombroso and Nordau would have us believe. A neurotic person and a degenerate one are not necessarily the same. The term "degenerate" is not the proper name for men like Ibsen or Tolstoi, no matter how repugnant their ideas might be to people. Nor does it follow that because some poets like Villon, Verlaine and Wilde had spent time in jail for crimes, their poems are to be stamped as degenerate products. While it is apparent that some of the author's insanity appears in works by Swift, Rousseau, Maupassant, Nietzsche and Strindberg, their masterpieces are noble works of art.
The faculty of literary genius is not possessed by a few; many people possess some of its qualities. Intelligent or sincere lovers have often written love letters that never got into print which were stamped with the qualities of genius. Highly gifted people in private life often utter thoughts which if collected and published would constitute works that show genius. There have been many people who have uttered sentiments as wise as those found in Boswell's Life of Johnson, or Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe, but the ideas were not reduced to writing, either by the speaker or a friend. Goethe once said that every genius has in his lifetime been acquainted with men who were obscure and unproductive, but who possessed greater intellects, more originality than those geniuses themselves.
There is no dividing line between the genius and the talented or even average person, any more than there is a marked boundary between the normal and the abnormal.
The genius, however, always has something of the pioneer in him; even after his work is no longer new, he retains the title of genius, though there are people who can write better works than he.
The world has agreed on some geniuses. Most people are ready to admit that a few men of letters like Shakespeare, Molière, Cervantes, Goethe and Balzac were geniuses of the first order. But when we are concerned with literary men who have done good work, it is not easy to say whether they were geniuses, though we are ready enough to admit that they had the qualities that make up genius.
The genius must be able to do more than write of the repressions which he has actually experienced; he must be a master of technique and means of expression. He must be able to describe with force and imagination, those repressions he has witnessed others suffer. The more use he makes of his unconscious, the nearer he gets to truth, and it has often been the lot of genius to depict those very emotions which society wants to be kept in the unconscious; and the more he draws on his unconscious, the less use he has for actual experience.
Yet the ability to present works of human interest that appeal to the public does not alone constitute genius; otherwise many of the thrillers of the movies would be works of genius. Nor does the writing of sad tales or giving ideal pictures make genius. There must be an important idea, or the presentation of the emotion in a particularly compelling manner. Then there is something cumulative about genius; we expect from it a repetition of literary feats that is beyond the power of most writers; we are not contented with an isolated literary effort. Still, there are poets who are regarded as geniuses though they have produced but one or a few pieces of importance.
The literary genius then has a keen insight into the psychology of the repression of the emotions and can beautifully express this repression and make valuable intellectual deductions therefrom. He can vary this work for many years, and move people who think.