Diary of a Schizophrenic (B)

I had a chance recently to look over my book, Diary of a Schizophrenic, and reflect a little on its content. Now that the dust has settled since the launch of the book at the Melbourne Writers Festival, I am really proud of what the book has achieved. It was my hope that the book would raise awareness of schizophrenia, and to help people to see that the condition does not have to be one of overwhelming despair. Things can be accomplished despite the condition, and a life can be led that is full. The book touches on some fairly personal material, but in a way that, I feel, gives a positive spin on what would otherwise be a very difficult time. Its concern with art, literature and philosophy helps to ground the work, and give it (I believe) some real literary merit. It was a leap of faith to send the manuscript to the publisher, as I was at the time still doing my PhD (which I have now completed). I feel this leap has been worth the while.

The book is now being sold (amongst many other places) through the Angus and Robertson website, which is a real thrill for me, for I would go this chain of bookstores when I was young, and dream of being a writer. I wish for the work that it will give some hope, but also be just an interesting and indeed enjoyable read.

Jorge Luis Borges

The poetry of Jorge Luis Borges has always held a deep fascination for me. A favourite concept of mine, the oneiric (or the dream like) aptly sums up Borges poetic output. Borges wrote many works of varied style and form, from prose to essays to reviews, but his poetry best depicts this mode of expression. Borges, who went blind later in his life, used this period of visionary darkness to focus on his poetry to great effect.

A very important turning point of Borges' early life came when he was given access to his grandfathers very large library. He mentions this as a crucial stage in his fledging literary development. My own father, when I was quite young, said to me I could buy any book I liked, and he would pay for it. These events can be crucial.

Borges executed a number of literary hoaxes and forgeries in his time. He wrote original works and claimed they were works he had chanced upon, and passed them off in this fashion. He also wrote reviews for non-existent works.

Borges was never awarded to the Nobel Prize for Literature, which always grated upon him. There is some speculation that it was his conservative political views which held him back. But the power of his literary output should not be denied. He is considered one of the great writers of the modern epoch.

Lord Byron

Byron has been someone who I have always looked towards with a certain and prolonged admiration. His life, indeed his adventurous and non compromising embrace of Life (with a capital L), has been the touchstone for great writers ever since. He was perhaps the first poet to come to real celebrity as we now know it. His various controversies, his adulterous affairs, his love for cousins, his keeping of wild animals (bears, monkeys etc) have entered his name into the annuls of history as an eccentric who knew how to court the public's attention. His death in Greece while fighting for that countries independence sums up the Romantic heart which Byron sought from his time. His epic poem Don Juan (which he had difficulty publishing because of its bawdiness) is considered one of the great epic poems after Milton's Paradise Lost. Without Byron, the Romantic movement would not have had a focal point, and may indeed have been something else altogether. Byron is the typical Romantic hero. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. The phrase started with Byron, and perhaps really ended with him.

William Blake

I first came across Blake as an undergraduate at university. And there started a passion that has rarely subsided since. Blake, loosely associated (I believe) with the Romantic movement of English letters, is at heart a visionary who defied convention to produce something great. Both a poet and a visual artist, Blake follow his own thinking in almost all of his output. His large epic poems are sprawling works of symbolist energy. His most beautiful works, his shorter poems of Innocence and of Experience, are generally regarded as the pinnacle of English poetry. I had the good fortune, while in Cambridge on a study trip, to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum and be allowed to view an original manuscript of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Words do not describe the beauty, and even modern facsimile editions can not capture the dazzling quality of the gold leafing that is speckled throughout. Blake is a wonder and a marvel. I have been fortunate enough to know his work.

Flaubert - Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert's Madam Bovary is the sort of text we still need today. Not so much the text itself, but the way the text found the world. Written in the 1850's, the work sensationalised the Parisian public, and finally was put on trial for obscenity. The story tells of the wife of a public servant, who yearns for something more. She meets a cultured soul, who kindles in her a desire that had been safely hidden. The story is one we are very familiar with today, but have difficulty making great, in much the same way it was made great in the 19th century. We do not put books on trial anymore. We put authors on trial, in a sense, through their words. But books themselves are immune from makes them truly important.

Schizophrenia and Creativity (B)

I have decided to research an academic piece, and finally produce a paper, on the intersection between schizophrenia and creativity. My own creative inclinations, my relative success, and my continuing battle with schizophrenia, have led me to want to try and come to some sort academic conclusions about this strange partnership. I think I want, fundamentally, to know why there have been times in the history of literature, where people have suffered from schizophrenia, and been able to succeed, to a marked degree, in their endeavours. It might simply be that, given a certain proportion of sufferers, some are likely to achieve despite the overwhelming negativity of their condition. But there seems something more to it than that. As I touched on earlier in an entry below, there is a loosening of association that can occur in schizophrenia, a loosening that lends itself naturally to conceptual and linguistic unusualness. And it is this unusualness which can lead to success in things creative. But my own creativity has something more to it than that. It is a certainty, that I can't explain, but which spills from my mind like some form of automatic machine. I guess I follow my intuition, and trust it, but it is something like a store of creative material that simply is released as I write. The writing is effortless, and seems to come out pre-formed as it were. But I will leave you here to tempt you, and leave you hanging for my research paper.

Paul Valery

A favourite poet of mine, a poet who also had some philosophical aspirations, is Paul Valery. French, living in the 19th Century, he had a short (but successful) poetic career, until he turned to a more private pursuit of letters. During this absence from poetry, he kept a series of notebooks, known as the Cahiers. These books contained a systematic exploration of philosophical, literary, scientific and mathematical ideas, which was to secure Valery as on object of study for roughly 100 years. He finally returned to poetry in his later life, and always maintained the poignancy of his early work. His greatest work - La Juene Parque - is a testament to his complete command of the French language and its great poetic fluency.