“He couldn’t have been like that,” Margaret Thatcher reportedly objected, after seeing the scatologically obsessed character of Mozart in a stage production of Amadeus. But filthy librettos and letters freely document that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was exactly like that, Katie Spalding notes in Edison’s Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History’s Greatest Geniuses. Thatcher simply refused to let those facts impinge on her idea of the artistic hero.
What was a genius? It feels like a distant and mystifying concept here in Elon Musk’s 21st century, when we’re stuck with mere celebrities, or rich people, or people who have become celebrities by being rich. Who but some miserable reply guys can still hold on, like Thatcher did, to the idea that someone’s gifts might transcend mere humanity?
