I ONCE FOUND myself teaching the last day of a creative writing class on St. Valentine’s Day and suggested we have a wind-down group discussion about particular issues and problems not raised during the week. One of the students asked the tongue-in-cheek question: ‘What is literary genius and how can I achieve it?’

The best moments in teaching often come unrehearsed and this proved one of them for me because part of the poem in Act II of Twelfth Night, one of the few I know by heart, came to mind. Ever since I studied the play at ‘A’ level I’ve regarded those few lines as real genius. Since I’m a proponent of experiential learning I replied, ‘One way to find the answer is to try to express the following sentiments better than he did…’ I then wrote the poem on the white board:

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

The class read it, digested it, smiled a little at the sentiment and then, I thought, picked up their pens with slightly too much confidence. ‘Fifteen minutes enough?’ I said. There were many furrowed brows and eventually a kind of collective sigh of good-natured defeat as one by one they gave up.

The ensuing discussion was fascinating, not least because it came from a place of very rapidly re-discovered respect for the Bard. The key points that emerged about what a piece of literary genius might be were that it a) expresses universal truth(s) b) is economical with words c) uses language that is in some way memorable, and probably beautiful,  and d) has an intrinsic sense of compassion for humankind.

Which is a tall order in fifteen minutes. But I have an uncomfortable  feeling that that, or something like it, might have been all the time it took for Shakespeare to write the verse. The film from which my image comes is simply wonderful and the perfect displacement activity for anyone who wants to be a literary genius and is planning to start being one… tomorrow.