1.

2 Misbeliefs about genius

First, let us examine critically those ideas about genius that are taken for common sense, but in
fact they are false. There is a popular idea about genius that it is a unique potential, unique
makings, individual talents, that are realized with luck. Dictionaries often express this idea by the
following formula: genius is the utmost form of creative potential realization. Genius, indeed,
has this sense. But is it inherent and specific to genius? On the one hand, we could probably say
that great artists reached the utmost form of their individual or even panhuman creative potential
realization. However, if we admit that genius is defined by creative achievements, manifestations
and realization, how shall we think of their lives? Apart from all the acknowledged works, these
artists and authors did other activities, which were not genius at all; they spoke many words and
performed many deeds. These deeds can be regarded critically, and nobody has ever appreciated
them as genius or as the utmost form of human potential realization. The same concerns the way
in which we think of genius works of art. Do we reach the apogee of our creative potential
realization when we are looking at a picture by a genius? It is hardly true. Besides, many times
we pass by genius and pay no attention when we meet it, going on our routine work. It is worth
supposing that if we had an opportunity to talk with genius authors, they would tell us that they
were only going to reach the utmost form of their creative potential realization, because our
creative potential not only realizes but also arises on meeting genius. When we meet genius, we
activate our own potential, we renovate ourselves, and we reach fundamentals. It is obvious that
we should take the idea of genius as a form of realization of creativity and other potentials,
because this definition is at least not precise.
Another common misbelief about genius is that the senses of genius and talent are often
confused. This definition often sounds like this: genius is an extremity of talent. There is a
common misunderstanding that genius and talent have a kind of quantitative difference. In fact,
talent is a characteristic of individual ability, talent is given to a human being and to humanity,
and it is a gift to use, to keep and to hand over. A talented person is a slave of his talent. Often
those people who are talented in one field are not so talented and able in other fields and they
need care. Talent and genius are characteristics of different dimensions. There may be geniuses
given with no special talents. Ordinary people can be geniuses. For example, Africans move in a
genius way, they move in such a way initially. And there is no individual talent in it. It is a
mistake to put genius and talent in a row, it is a hypothesis, but we have forgotten that it is a
hypothesis.
The third sense of common misbeliefs about genius is connected with the inevitable mystery of
genius. In some dictionaries, we can find the following definition: it is a vague term to define
the ideas about the utmost forms of creativity. In other words, genius is a characteristic of what
has already happened, it is not a freestanding phenomenon, which has its own stability and sense.
In these definitions and ideas genius is defined not as a reality, but as a kind of understanding on
a scale of creativity. If we take a life as something virtual and imaginary, as a form of its
products only, then we can agree that genius is a rough name for something inconceivable,
mysterious and even unreal. However, we invite to doubt objectively. In other words, we think
that life is primary, and its products are relative to life, they are secondary. Whatever we may say
about the manifestations of life, they are relatively valuable, relatively clear, relatively ours and
relatively exist. Therefore, genius is a quite precise term and a quite real and identifiable
phenomenon.
What is living fulfilled genius? It is very different, but first of all genius is a miracle. It is a prior
wholeness, a blank sheet, strangeness, a flawless simplicity. How does a genius view the world?
For a genius many things around and inside the world are a miracle, even in their daily life, in
routine. We can find it examining the life stories of acknowledged geniuses. The initiative to
renovate life is specific for genius people. Life changes near a genius, a work of a genius, an idea
of a genius. Genius is like a ray of light, like the rising sun, it awakens, it delights and it
bewitches. And it hastens to the fundamentals.
An inherent feature of true genius is nearness to fundamentals.

Unfortunately, in modern psychology fundamentals and expectations are often roughly

combined. We consider this fundamentally wrong. Genius, miracles and initiative hasten us to
fundamentals. Expectations draw us to targets and means. Not genius, but mediocrity hastens us
to expectations. In fact, it is not so bad.
Another expectation of genius is its inherence to life, its liveliness. We cannot examine genius as
though it is inherent to creatures or essences, genius manifests itself through them, but it is
inherent to life.
We can say that plants and animals, nature and works of art are genius, but they are genius in
another way, not like a man. They are not able to create speech; they do not live in a language, in
a word. With their genius they grow, they breed and develop, but they do not create senses. What
is a human being in the true sense, a human creativity? It is life, renovating from nothing,
creating something from nothing. All of us can feel and see it. If a person lives in a genius way,
he initiates activities, phenomena, ideas, deeds, and conditions, they might seem rootless, but
they are free, true and fundamental. Thinkers often speak about love as an example. True love is
not determined. It is not needed, it is not profitable, it is not forced, it is often not because, but
in spite of, it comes from nothing. Sometimes we love such creatures which others can look at
only with disgust, and sometimes they cannot look at them at all.
One more important feature of genius is its certitude. Genius is doubtless. It doesnt mean that it
is guaranteed, it means that genius and doubts cannot be combined. Genius is radical. Either it is
or it is not. Doubts suppose probability, expectation, and some possibility. Genius is always felt,
practiced, experienced like the absence of doubts.
Let us sum up the critical analysis of the ideas about genius:
- Genius is prior, the beginning of wholeness (as a tree grows from a small seed, a life
grows from a small idea or a small choice). Even small genius is fully genius.
- There is genius, but one might not experience it. In other words, there is genius in
general, but there may be no genius in a situation, one may not fulfill or experience it. We
all are free, and one can neglect his life and his genius. Nature neglects life in the same
way. A plant produces many seeds, fish lay millions of eggs, but very few of them
survive. Hundreds of thousands of embryos become feed for others. Many adult people
immersed in daily life neglect their childrens genius, as years ago their parents neglected
their own genius. Genius exists, but it may not happen. Genius is not guaranteed.
-

Genius is contradictory and counterintuitive. At the same time, it is simple, unique and
mysterious. On the one hand, genius is widespread in our life, on the other hand, it may
seem to us that there is no genius at all; genius can be exhausted. Genius is unique and
total, multidimensional and simple. One can open it, but cannot have it opened, genius
always stays inconceivable. Genius renovates all parts of life; there is the genius of an
author, and the genius of a spectator in it.

Goethe gave a wonderful definition: He said that genius is an exact fantasy. These
categories seem to be incompatible. Can we combine exactness and fantasy? Exactness is
something definite, but a fantasy has no boundaries. But genius really exists; it is in full
measure exact and fantastic.