Delirium, even if it might sound as an out-of-control state, I always relate it with a certain sublime state of thinking, where a certain group of dissociated ideas are placed together harmonically, in a certain order, apparently chaotic from outside but incredibly ordered from inside.
From the literature, below you will see a plot given by Google about the frequency of the word "delirium" during the last 550 years, exactly from year 1550 to 2018. It is interesting to see two regions with maximum values, around year 1778 and 1880. I cannot say exactly what was the reason for these two maximums, but probably important contributions in the narrative or in novels happened in those periods.
- An acutely disturbed state of mind characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence, occurring in intoxication, fever, and other disorders.
- Wild excitement or ecstasy.
Delirium has the following synonyms: derangement, dementia, dementedness, temporary madness/insanity, incoherence, raving, irrationality, hysteria, wildness, feverishness, frenzy, hallucination, rare calenture,
Perhaps this was the state that Jackson Pollock (American painter, 1912-1956) felt every time he was creating his marvelous paintings. Pollock, who started to show his paintings and becoming a legend in the abstract expressionism movement, at the time when Pablo Picasso (Spanish artist, 1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (French artist, 1869-1954) were the most famous painters, Picasso with the cubism and surrealism movement, and Matisse with the modernism and post-impressionism movement. See below a picture of Pollock in action and one of his paintings:
This topic about delirium gives the chance for more discussion, but I think is better to stop now, for the moment, before the delirium comes and I cannot finish this post.
See you around!
Jesús