Over the past few months I’ve been looking up famous people touched with bipolar disorder and I’ve been amazed by the number of well known people that have been or who are afflicted by this disorder. Interestingly enough, it turns out that one of my favorite writers/poets/painters that I was deeply interested in while growing up and of course still am, is believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder. His name is William Blake.
From article by Peter J. Buckley, M.D
(The American Journal of Psychiatry)
“Alongside his ecstatic visions, Blake was prone to fits of severe depression. In 1800, he recounted a descent into “a Deep pit of Melancholy, Melancholy without any real reason for it.” These episodes were often followed by periods of “illumination” and intense creativity. This is highly suggestive of bipolar illness, albeit a mild form that did not disrupt his enormous creative achievement and may have been central to his transcendent artistic vision.”
I was amazed when I found his name on a list of famous people believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder. I never once thought about him in this way. However, it shines a whole new light on his works and the documented extraordinary experiences that ranged from angelic visions to his deep preoccupying insights that touched both extremes of human imagination. Perhaps there is even a subconscious hint of his bipolarity behind the title of his poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” or perhaps even within a few lines of his poem “Auguries of Innocence” below.
Small Excerpt from Auguries of Innocence - William Blake
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
One thing is for certain, William Blake was definitely in touch with something quite profound and amazing. The capacity of his abstract mind was immense. Perhaps encountering great shifts within his own realm of experience gave him the ability to see a world unknown to us and also gave him a hard driven impulse to try to communicate this world through his writings, poetry and art. If in fact he did suffer from bipolar disorder, I think it defends the stance that perhaps there is something extremely important for us to learn from the realms of mind that the mentally ill appear to know so well. Who knows, maybe it would open us up to a whole new way of understanding ourselves and the worlds we privately share.
Small Excerpt from Auguries of Innocence - William Blake
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
