I'm reading an essay on Hayden Carruth (a great American poet who died in 2008) by Ted Solotaroff and came upon this striking example of artists as les grands nerveux: Solotaroff says "...In Carruth's case as in some notable others--those of Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Delmore Schwartz, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Ann Sexton, Randall Jarrell--he cracked up and was institutionalized." That's quite a list! He goes on to say "Much has been written about the seeming contagion of madness among many of the best poets of the post war generation."