Was Tolkien Depressed?

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I agree with those of you who think that Tolkien's works do not show depression - pessimism, yes, even fatalism sometimes, but a realistic view of life and death throughout. We in today's society are the unrealistic ones in trying to deny or at least ignore the inevitability of death.

However, I also agree with Mister Underhill's idea that Tolkien himself was a manic-depressive personality. Those very words occurred to me upon reading the following in Carpenter's biography:

...capable of violent shifts of emotion... His natural optimism was balanced by deep uncertainty. Perhaps as a result, he was never moderate: love, intellectual enthusiasm, distaste, anger, self-doubt, guilt, laughter, each was in his mind exclusively and in full force when he experienced it; and at that moment no other emotion was permitted to modify it. He was thus a man of extreme contrasts. When in a black mood he would feel that there was no hope, either for himself or the world... But five minutes later in the company of a friend he would forget this black gloom and be in the best of humour.

He took an almost tragic view of himself as a weak man - which was another cause of his deep troughs of pessimism.

These quotes support what Child ot7A already said about Tolkien.

I can't help but wonder - is depression, whether weaker or stronger, an inevitable companion of intellect? Does genius preclude a well-balanced, tranquil and contented personality? Or are those extreme depths perhaps even necessary for genius to develop or express itself?