[Joseonggwan's Global Humanities Journey] Why Do Genius Artists Fall in Love with Young Women?

There are a few common questions I often receive while giving my ‘Genius Lectures.’ One of them is this:

“Why do geniuses often fall in love with women much older than themselves?”

It’s not that I deliberately chose only partners with a large age gap. It just happened by chance as I searched for geniuses nurtured by the city and representing the city.

Among the figures I selected as lecture subjects for the ‘Genius Table’ are Gustav Klimt, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, ?mile Zola, Amedeo Modigliani, Shostakovich, Richard Wagner, Charlie Chaplin, and Arthur Miller?all of whom loved women significantly older than themselves.

Take Gustav Klimt (1862?1918) from Vienna, the capital of Austria. Although he lived a lifelong bachelor, everyone thinks of his lover Emilie Fl?ge (1874?1952) when they hear Klimt’s name. The Viennese upper class all knew about their relationship. Klimt enjoyed a free-spirited life of pleasure, but the only constant relationship was with Fl?ge. When Klimt died, Emilie Fl?ge was the executor of his will. The two had a twelve-year age difference.

Gustav Klimt and Emilie Fl?ge in 1910.

Prague is Kafka’s city?the City of K. If you come to Prague and fail to feel Franz Kafka (1883?1924), it’s like seeing only half of Prague. Journalist and translator Milena Jesensk? (1896?1944), who exchanged countless letters and shared love with Kafka, was thirteen years younger than him.

Kafka suffered from tuberculosis for a long time and eventually died from it. The woman who stayed by the genius’s side until the end as he coughed up blood was Dora Diamant (1900?1952). They had a seventeen-year age difference.

Perhaps due to a lack of life experience, I still cannot understand it. Kafka was a critically ill patient coughing up blood. Diamant knew well that he wouldn’t live long. Yet, she loved the dying Kafka until the very end. Kafka closed his eyes holding Diamant’s gaze in his.

Playwright Arthur Miller (1915?2005) divorced Marilyn Monroe and married his third wife, Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath (1923?2002). The two, eight years apart, maintained their marriage for forty years. Shortly after Morath’s passing, 89-year-old Miller announced his marriage to 34-year-old minimalist painter Agnes Barley. Arthur Miller’s last play was ‘Drawing.’ It was written while living with Agnes Barley.

Who was the greatest filmmaker of the 20th century? Without a doubt, Charlie Chaplin (1889?1977). Chaplin married four times. All of his wives were teenagers from the first marriage onward. In 1943, Chaplin’s fourth and final wife was aspiring actress Oona O’Neill, who was eighteen years old. Chaplin was fifty-four. They had a thirty-six-year age difference.

The Chaplin couple and their children in 1961.

Early in their marriage, yellow journalism attacked Oona O’Neill, accusing her of “marrying an old man for money.” In response, Oona issued an official statement:

“Chaplin matures me, and I make him young.”

After that day, all criticism against her disappeared. The couple had a harmonious relationship and raised six children. Chaplin remained active until 1977.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906?1975) married three times. He lost his first wife, a scientist, to death, and his second marriage, hastily entered out of loneliness, ended in failure. The composer suffered from illness after turning fifty?paralysis and heart disease. Each day was precarious; he was like a walking hospital. In 1962, the composer married Irina Supinskaya (1934?), his third wife. He was fifty-six, and she was twenty-eight. Irina was a literary editor at a music publishing house. They met through work at the publishing house. When he got to know her, the composer wrote to a friend:

“Her only flaw is that she is twenty-seven. In every other way, she is enchanting?intelligent, lively, honest, and lovable.”

Irina and Dmitri Shostakovich shortly after their marriage in 1962.

Irina was Shostakovich’s muse. The young and beautiful wife breathed life into the genius musician, who was withering from paralysis and heart disease, and rekindled his creative passion. In 1972, the composer was diagnosed with lung cancer. With a strong will to live, he underwent all the radiation treatments recommended by doctors. Whenever his condition briefly improved, he composed music. Irina held his hand through every moment. He survived three more years while receiving lung cancer treatment.

One morning in August 1975, Shostakovich listened to Irina reading Chekhov’s short stories. Late that afternoon, he suddenly experienced respiratory distress and passed away at 6:30 pm with his wife watching. When the great composer died, acquaintances unanimously said:

“Dmitri’s life was extended by at least a few years because of Irina.”

Alongside Picasso, Marc Chagall (1887?1985) represents 20th-century art history. Known as the magician of color, Chagall lost his first love and wife Bella in 1944. She was a Jewish woman who shared his life’s hardships from Russia to Paris to New York.

After becoming a widower, Chagall returned from New York to France in 1947, after World War II ended. He settled in the C?te d’Azur in southern France, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. He lived with Belgian woman Haggard for a time, but after she left, Chagall was alone again.

Chagall picked up his brush again, but nothing was the same as before. His daughter worried about him. The artist was losing vitality and passion. The daughter hoped her father would keep painting until his last moment. She knew that her father painted when he was in love. She decided to introduce a girlfriend to her father and searched for a partner who would suit him in every way.

Ukrainian-born Jewish woman Vava Brodsky (1905?1993). In 1952, Chagall married Vava. Chagall was 65, and Vava was 47. After marrying Vava, Chagall experienced a second heyday. The French government built the Chagall Museum in Nice in 1973. He had the honor of seeing his museum open during his lifetime. Chagall was able to paint and live healthily until age 98 because his second love Vava stayed by his side.

Baba Brodsky and Marc Chagall in 1967.

What is death? It is the extinction of energy within the body to a single point. When one grows old, must one accept stagnation and decline as fate? Without a fountain of energy, physical and mental aging accelerates. Where does energy come from? Love and curiosity create energy.

What keeps a person young is curiosity. A person with curiosity alive may age physically but not mentally. Geniuses are people packed with intellectual curiosity?curiosity about reason and new things. Even in old age, those with strong curiosity have a different look in their eyes. Ordinary people say they live on affection even when love fades, but genius artists cannot endure love that has cooled. They cannot bear boredom. They cannot do anything without love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749?1832) lived alone for a while after losing his wife. Then he fell in love with the teenage daughter of a noblewoman. In 1823, at the Bohemian spa town Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary), the seventy-four-year-old literary master proposed to a seventeen-year-old maiden. Although the proposal was rejected, this thrilling love inspired the poem ‘Elegy of Marienbad.’

Victor Hugo (1802?1885), the French literary master who left ‘Les Mis?rables,’ was also a writer who could not live a day without love. Hugo left many sayings about love.

“Love brings infinite beauty to our hearts.” “Love is the flame of life, the immortal fire.”

Joseonggwan, writer and genius researcher

Operator of ‘Genius Table,’ former editor-in-chief of Weekly Chosun