The Pen As Your Sword: Writing Through The Lens of Depression

Lecture Center 3A

Throughout the history of art, humans have come to personify and illustrate the concept of our inspirations: “muses,” as we’ve come to call them. We’ve described them in a number of ways—mystical, beautiful, sometimes cruel, and most often of all, fleeting. This personification can become complicated and problematic when it expands into the preconceptions and associations that many have with mental illness, especially those suffering from it. The interaction at play between tragedy and thewriter has been acknowledged since the dawn of theatre, and over hundreds of years it has shifted intothe vast two-headed beast that is the perceived intertwinement between one’s afflictions and his or her muse—specifically, the poisonous idea that if one takes the steps to treat and cure mental illness and affliction, it will interfere with or even permanently stifle his or her ability to create. Hence, the idea ofthe “mad muse” continues well into the modern era.

Does madness help the muse; does it nurture? Or does illness take it away? Madness and muse, thisthesis will argue, are not a part of an unhealthy, inseparable romance, nor are they opposing forces that will inevitably knock one another down. Madness can be a blockage. However, fighting through it can give way to some of the most amazing works we currently have in our canon. This introspective delve is meant to illuminate the properties of depression and what the significance is of mentally ill writings. This is a journey through memoirs, literary analysis, and a more scientific diagnosis of what it means to be a “mad artist.”