In his 1922 essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" T.S. Eliot wrote: "...the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates...."

I first encountered this phrase about 25 years ago. Since then I have come to more fully appreciate its applicability to the lives of many artists.

Most recently, a few days ago, it came back to me when, at loose ends, I pulled Stefan Zweig's biography of Balzac off our bookshelf and leafed through it.

How well Eliot's separation principle applies to Balzac. A writer of almost supernatural acuity was in his non-authorial life prone to fatal miscalculations, a first-class stumblebum!