What are we to do with the art of profoundly compromised men?

I’ve got no answers for you. I do know that Peter Shaffer wrote that “goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.” Charles Dickens destroyed the lives of everyone close to him, his family most of all. Same goes for Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Beethoven. Mozart and his once beloved sister were estranged at the time of his death. Ingmar Bergman slept with nearly every actress he cast in his movies, and he made a lot of movies (most of them exquisite masterpieces). During a rehearsal for G. F. Handel’s opera Ottone, when a well-known Italian soprano refused to sing her opening aria, Handel screamed, “I know well that you are a real she-devil, but I will have you know that I am Beelzebub!” He picked the soprano up by the waist and threatened to throw her out an open second-story window.

What, you thought creative geniuses were pleasant people? You thought you could be friends with them, maybe? Sure, have at it. Enjoy.