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Depression is a very common illness.  It has affected many famous and well accomplished people throughout history.  This page contains many works by many great artists, poets, etc. who have suffered and/or are suffering from at least on form of depression.

 

Famous People

Who have experienced Major Depression

Who have experienced Bipolar Disorder/Manic Depression

 

Poetry 

Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath

Our Lady of Solitude, Leonard Cohen

I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman  

 

Music

Beethoven's 5th Symphony

Handel's Messiah

Schumann's 2nd Symphony

 

Art

Portrait of Beethoven

Starry Night, Van Gogh

Danae, Rembrandt

The Scream, Edvard Munch

The Creation of Man, Michael Angelo

These individuals have publicly stated that they have experienced Major Depression in their lives.


These individuals have publicly stated that they have experienced Manic Depression in their lives.

 

Poetry:

 

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it-----

 

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

 

A paperweight,

My featureless, fine

Jew linen.

 

Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify?-------

 

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

 

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

 

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

 

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

 

What a million filaments.

The Peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

 

Them unwrap me hand in foot ------

The big strip tease.

Gentleman , ladies

 

These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

 

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

 

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

 

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

 

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

 

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

 

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical

 

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

 

'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

 

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart---

It really goes.

 

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

 

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

 

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

 

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

 

Ash, ash---

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

 

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

 

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

 

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

 

 

 

Our Lady of Solitude by Leonard Cohen

 

All summer long she touched me

She gathered in my soul

From many a thorn, from many thickets

Her fingers, like a weaver's

Quick and cool

And the light came from her body

And the night went through her grace

All summer long she touched me

And I knew her, I knew her

Face to face

 

And her dress was blue and silver

And her words were few and small

She is the vessel of the whole wide world

Mistress, oh mistress, of us all

 

Dearly dead; Queen of Solitude

I thank you with my heart

for keeping me so close to thee

while so many, oh so many, stood apart

 

And the light came from her body

And the night went through her grace

All summer long she touched me

I knew her, I knew her

Face to face

 

 

I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman

   

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the   soul.

 

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?  And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

 Art:

Portrait of BeethovenBeethoven (portrait)

 

Starry Night, Van GoghStarry Night, Van Gogh

 

Danae, RembrandtDanae, Rembrandt

 

The Scream, Edvard Munch The Scream, Edvard Munch

 

The Creation of Man, Michael Angelo The Creation of Man, Michael Angelo

 

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