“The day of days!,” wrote an elated 29-year-old Charles Darwin in his journal after his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, accepted his marriage proposal, proceeding to famously weigh the pros and cons of marriage and merrily conclude that the enterprise was worth it. But Darwin, apparently, wasn’t always so cheerful. In her recent Creative Mornings talk,* the inimitable Maira Kalman shared a letter Darwin wrote to his friend, the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell, in 1861, a little over a year after the publication of On the Origin of Species. The missive, found in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 9 (public library) and made available online by the Darwin Correspondence Project, is at once jarring in its uncharacteristic despondency and oddly reassuring, reminding us that even the greatest of minds have their dark days — that rather than detracting from one’s genius, those are as much a part of it as the intellectual and creative highs, that emotional intensity is essential to the creative process in all of its extremes.

My dear Lyell

[…]

What a wonderful case the Bedford case.– Does not the N. American view of warmer or more equable period after great Glacial period become much more probable in Europe?–

But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.– I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids & today I hate them worse than everything so farewell & in a sweet frame of mind, I am

Ever yours

C. Darwin

Kalman’s final presentation slide put it all so simply yet so eloquently:

*UPDATE: Kalman’s talk is now up — do yourself a favor and watch it.

Darwin image via The New York Times