Well, since my post in a thread in the arts section probably won't get that much attention and it's an interesting subject even if you're not much of a writer yourself, I'll make another post about it here:
I've been pondering whether the classical author John Milton was an Aspergian. Biographies say he spent his childhood almost exclusively reading books from noon until midnight, and he never got along very well with his surroundings. He did eventually get a family, but they never got along with him, some people claim he forced his daughters to write for him while he dictated after he lost vision due to an illness, it seems he wasn't able to understand his family's feelings. He's also said to be able to recall just about anything he had read, as well as having very unorthodox views.
His greatest work was "Paradise lost", a story based on the biblical account of man's fall from paradise and Satan's rebellion. "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" is from this work. Some people feel he might have identified with Satan when writing the book, some of the monologues seem to be about his place in society and how he felt about life - I found this one in particular quite strong:
"Me miserable! which way shall I flie
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n."
Come to think of it, I'm pretty certain he had AS, and obviously was a bit depressed too, otherwise I don't think he would be able to describe Satan's plight that well. For some reason, even though "Paradise lost" was quite a hefty tome to be reading in medieval English, I connected with it quite well and found it great reading, though I'd recommend having read the bible before doing it because of all the references to it.
To learn more about one of history's greatest writers, see the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton
25 May 2007, 12:10 pm
