CREATIVITY AND MENTAL HEALTH

Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess

The other day I came across Anthony Burgess’s book on Shakespeare. It’s wonderful, highly idiosyncratic, waspish and very entertaining. Just what you’d expect from a polymath like Burgess.

This quotation caught my eye:

“If everybody owes God a death, the hardworking artist owes fate an occasional physical or mental breakdown: he cannot build so many new worlds without damaging his own fabric.”

Interesting, isn’t it? It certainly rang bells for me. Not, I should hasten to add that I’m comparing myself to Shakespeare or Burgess. Frankly, a lot of the time I even struggle to identify myself as a hardworking artist. However, what I do know is that if I pay no attention to my physical and mental welfare and simply write, things start to happen. Things that I don’t like. So I try to keep an eye on myself and life being what it is…