I'm reading a book right now called Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics, and it is going into great detail about two remarkable people, Goethe and Neils Bohr.
Goethe is widley believed to be one of the most brilliant people the world has ever seen - and the last great polymath.
Neils Bohr was not only a genius (although his talents were focused on physics, while Goethe's spanned all of science, as well as art), but he was a beloved father figure in his field.
So what do we do with heroes? Do we emulate them? Do we simply admire them?
One of my heroes is John Lennon - I admire his bravery in following his vision through all of the turmil that surrounded him sometimes. I love his artistry, and his dedication to it - post-Beatles Lennon was both still a talented and meaningful songwriter, but also an inspired activist, interested in other forms of art, like his wife Yoko Ono's interest in avant-garde. I am also pleased to discover his sense of humor, which was most pronounced (to the public at least) while he was a Beatle, but you could see it beyond that as well.
Having said all of that, I'm not sure if I would want to be John Lennon. Aside from being murdered when he turned 40 (I hope to last a little longer), Lennon was also a very tortured soul. You could hear it in Plastic Ono Band distinctly, but it was there, although not apparant, back early in the Beatles (he wrote "Nowhere Man" about himself).
So artists are tortured, that's a familiar motif, isn't it? Lennon would say he needed that pain in order to create art, and there is no doubt that many artists would agree. So do I want to be an artist like Lennon, at the cost of being miserable?
Was Neils Bohr, or Goethe miserable? Well, I know that Bohr wasn't, and I don't know much about Goethe. Sadly, I can never be as clever as them. Yet I can still work hard. And there is no doubt that these two worked very very hard.
Beethoven had this to say about a prince who was paying him to compose "What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven." Beethoven was a notorious hard worker - his sheet music was famously market with edits and scribbles, as he orchestrated the best note possible.
I think it is good to have many heroes, many whom are all different. It is probably the benefit of history for us to not only admire past people, but also to learn from them what worked best for them.
I should make a list of heroes I admire, what I admire about them, and what I can learn from them.
