Poetry and the Brain: Cajal’s Conjectures on the Psychology of Writers

In 1902, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934), the father of modern neuroscience and a 1906 Nobel laureate, contributed a preface to a book of poems by his fellow countryman, Spanish poet and dramatist Marcos Zapata (1844–1914). In that uncustomary—for his neuroscience followers—essay, Cajal unfolds his ideas on the literary genres of drama and comedy in relation to the workings of the human mind and sentiments. The same text was reissued almost half a century later in Spain and in Argentina under the title The Psychology of Artists. We present an English version of Cajal’s essay, which may be of interest to both humanists and biologists, and which further denotes the celebrated neuroanatomist’s attempt at understanding the mystery of the human mind.