Paths through the Creativity of Bion

We do not know at the moment whether Bion, in his adolescence or young adulthood, ever produced any artistic or literary works. What we do know is that he had quite uncommon aesthetic sensitivity, coupled with an immense love for the beauty of nature. «All beautiful things moved him to tears, wheter it was poetry, prose, music, painting, sculpture, or the Norfolk landscape, its sea birds and his skylarks» ¹. But the most striking aspect of this sensitivity of his was a deep love of poetry, a love that originated in his schooldays, at Bishop's Stortford College. «It says much for his school» —Francesca; — raquo Bion perceptively notes — «that he was not forced into hating the poets before he had had time to love them» ¹.

Milton, Virgil, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, seem to be the poets that impressed him most at school. And ever since, his love of poetry continued throughout his life. After his death we learned that he had intended to publish an anthology of poetry for the use of psychoanalyst. «Not, he said, for anyone who is merely called a psychoanalyst; not the label of certification, but the ‘real thing’» ¹. He got as far as writing the introduction to this anthology, and we can hope that the original text of this introduction is soon published, but in the meantime this is what Bion wrote in it about his relationship with the poets: «I resort to the poets because they seem to me to say something in a way which is beyond my powers, and yet to be in a way which I myself would choose if I had the capacity» ¹.