Response to wife beating and the written page

The essay as I see it revolves around two major questions: how are we supposed to respond to the personal dimension of a creator, and what effect does this dimension has on the artist’s piece.

As we learn from the chapter, Melville was allegedly an abusive man, violent towards his family and a major force of destruction in his household. The knowledge that his eldest son took his own life indicates that there was something undeniably wrong in that family’s portrait. The fact that in his lifetime Melville was mostly unsuccessful, frustrated and caught up in an uneasy mental state that intensified the aggressive seed that was probably already there, resulted in an abusive man who victimized his family. Equipped with this kind of knowledge, I have to ask myself if my admiring approach toward Melville up to now has to change drastically, or perhaps I can choose to detach this information from his greatness as an author, or even further - should I consider his deformity and monstrosity as an additional factor that influenced his writings?

Many amazing artists were accused of antisocial behavior, which caused agony to their surroundings.  Jackson Pollack, for instance, was a drunk and a wife beater, according to his biography, but still, his works project so much power and emotions that it takes your breath away. His troubled soul is engraved on his canvas, in the same sense that Melville’s illness is reflected in his writings. It’s a well known and repeated theory that greatness is an outcome of anomaly and deviation that is sometimes embodied in an abusive behavior towards self and others. I’m in no way trying to create any kind of Gordian knot between violence and great art, but I back the theory that greatness is an outcome of oddities that can sadly effect an artist’s surroundings. If it manifests as direct violence, then it is condemned and disgusting, but it does not lessen the outcome.