Karl Jaspers

In my PhD I looked at the philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers. Jaspers was important to my work, as he was medically trained in psychiatry, but held a deep interest in the cross-over between schizophrenia and creativity. His studies into the poet Friederich Holderlin and the playwright August Strindberg have been very important into my own studies into schizophrenia. Holderlin was very concerned with the world of Greek antiquity in his poetry, and through his schizophrenia, he came to believe that this world was a truly existing one. Martin Heidegger famously took an interest in the work of Holderlin, and this interest helped to ground his friendship (to an extent) with Jaspers. Strindberg, who also suffered from a deep schizophrenia, came to prominence through such plays as Miss Julie and The Father. He recorded his schizophrenic thinking in his work Inferno, and the document is important in understanding schizophrenic modes of being. Jaspers was well ahead of his time in examining these two seminal artistic figures. Even to diagnose them both as schizophrenic was ahead of its time - the diagnosis of schizophrenic cases was then, as it is now, a very controversial area of inquiry.

Jaspers gives a solid medical grounding to his work, and this gives his corpus a clarity which is invaluable into understanding creative manifestations of schizophrenia. Jaspers should be a first point of reference to anyone interested in how cultural production can be underpinned by schizophrenic processes.

Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time

There was quite an extended time, when asked who was my favourite author, I would say 'Marcel Proust'. His major work, In Search of Lost Time (also translated as Remembrance of Things Past) is a monumental work. One of the longest novels in world literature, it is an epic in a different sense to War and Peace. We might call it an aesthetic epic. This is one of the key narrative devices that Proust employs - an exploration of the arts and culture. Swann, one of the main protagonists, at one point hears a phrase from a sonata being played by a pianist at a soirée, and becomes obsessed. This concern with art is paramount for Proust. Proust had a passion for the English aesthete John Ruskin, who himself was a considerable dilettante who dedicate his life to the exploration of art. In Proust's In Search of Lost Time, people are continually being compared to classic works of art, as artists play their way around the stage of this sprawling drama. But it is a drama that is in a sense gentle and soothing (to an extent). I feel the book has a soporific quality. This normally would be said to detract from a book, but the kind of sleep it induces is one of those blissfully calm sleeps that one has a Sunday morning while it is raining outside. This brings me to the second quality of the book - and that is the poetic quality. Their are touching and moving descriptions of light playing amongst trees, wind rustling leaves, moonlight on still nights, and all the sorts of things that the poets of the ages have sung about. This combination of aesthetics and poetry makes In Search of Lost Time a powerful document. But a third ingredient elevates this text to greatness. And that is the psychological insight Proust employs to gather around his characters and their various forays into human drama. Character's words, actions and behaviours are imbued with a sharp clarity of description that gives each a wonderful human quality - a quality that all epic texts display.

Overall In Search of Lost Time stands above almost all of the great works written in the last hundred years. It is an achievement that will defy what time can bring down.

Octavio Paz

I count Octavio Paz as one of the most influential writers to my own writing that I have so far encountered. His poetry is technically proficient, inspirational and unusual enough to let him stand as one of the great poets of world literature. But his oeuvre includes so much more. Literary studies, political writing, explorations of aesthetics and art are all inclusive in this great man's contribution to world letters.

His great poem I believe is 'Sunstone'. A sprawling aesthetic vision, it takes the reader to where they most want to go - that is through the clouds and into what is beyond. My favourite prose work of Paz's is Alternating Currents. It combines thought, words and concepts in usual and delightful ways, and explores literature and art in such a bold and assured way that one is only swept along with delight.

It all started for Paz in his grandfather's library where he was able to read extensively as a young boy. The depth of his learning and poetic voice no doubt stem from this time.

Paz showed courage to resign from his post as a Mexican diplomat in protest of the deaths of Mexican students by government hands.

Paz's award of the Nobel Prize is only a small testament to his outstanding achievement. It is the assuredness of his writing, particularly of his poetry, which really strikes one. In fact even his prose has a poetic brilliance which distinguishes this man as a poet foremost (he thought so himself) and otherwise a writer of great intelligence.