The Madness of Mental Illness, Explored Through Books

The Madness of Mental Illness, Explored Through Books: There’s a line I love from the short story Eleonora by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s about madness. And who better than the macabre mind who brought us such gibbering, eye-shivering tales of horror as The Telltale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum to weigh in on the subject of insanity? The quote goes like this: 

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.” 

I take that to mean, coarsely translated – “maybe the reason so many brilliant people go a bit off their heads is because insanity is only one step past genius.”