My Influences

the other day I was looking up a certain author by the name of Haruki Murakami

the book I am interested in

and when I saw the little preview, they mentioned some of his literary inspirations. In other words, the authors that inspired his work

and so I thought... huh, I have those too. I never talked about it before, so why don't I?

these are the wonderful people that inspired the way I write today

• Charles Baudelaire (French, 1821-1867)

thanks to Charles I fell deeply in love with writing poetry

my style of verse poetry is inspired by his work Les Fleurs Du Mal (1857)

I've read his life story... It was a bit tragic

• Authur Rimbaud (French, 1854-1891)

his book Le Illuminations (1886) inspired me to write prose poetry

I've read other works of his, all of them equally amazing

I will admit I don't know much about his biography, though I will research it now that I've gotten curious

• Friedrich Nietzsche (German, 1844-1900)

he is the author of my favourite book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)

I read many other of his works, but none left such a big impression as much as that book

Nietzsche is... interesting. I've come to understand him not only through reading about his life, but listening to the voice behind his words. And that voice... well, it is complex. I disagree with him a lot, despite how much I enjoy his writings

I still have a couple books of him to read. I also have a Heidegger one and several other works I was looking forward to reading, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The only problem being... I left those books in Norway

✦ ✦ ✦

and those are all my influences. An honourable mention is Osamu Dazai. I only ever read one work of his, No Longer Human, but it was very impactful and most definitely left a mark on my pen

after mentioning my interest in Arthur Rimbaud, I went ahead and started reading about his life story. At the end of the reading session, I felt tears building up 

he went through so much, he really did. All of these men did. Now that I think of it... all of my influences have something in common

they were all:

• European
• born in the 1800s

I never realised...

it has been quite the trip to go through each of these writers. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for teaching me so much. Not only about the art of words, but of life itself

thank you too, dear reader, for taking the time to read this entry

and now, I shall be off

to do what? Write some more, of course

-Sha