The
first contact with books happened aged 4, when Robert Smith's father would
read him The Narnia Chronicles (C.S.Lewis) before sleeping. But the taste
for reading books would come much later at school.
The biggest discoveries at that time were Kafka and then Camus, Sartre. The Nausea by Sartre is a book that was named very often in interviews over the years. It seems Robert and Lol read a lot during that era and some stories were turned into songs (Charlotte Sometimes, The Outsider, At Night). Fuchsia from the Gormenghast's trilogy was refered to on The Drowning Man as well.
The Pornography album doesn't have direct inspirations from books. Even if a line from A Short Term Effect was taken from some weird story ("A charcoal face bites my hands"). Robert would also read psychiatrists, anything to do with mental illness. Lost Paradise by John Milton was an important book for its mood too.
Patrick White's The Cockatoos inspired the idea for the "Love Cats". But the original book idea was modified ("we put the love cats in a sack and threw them in the lake") for the song ! When Dylan Thomas turned into Robert's favorite poet during this era and for the following years. Actually when the recording of Birdmad Girl began, the song didn't have finished lyrics so some lines from Love In The Asylum were sung to have a vocal track on the tape. The poem refers to a "girl mad as birds".
Another song from the Top album, Bananafishbones, find its origin in a novel by J.D Salinger entitled A Perfect Day For Bananafish. In 1986, somebody in France gave Robert some Baudelaire and Rimbaud books (French's poetry of the damned). Everybody in the country thought he had read them before. But that wasn't the case, strangely. Les Yeux des Pauvres, a short story by Baudelaire, was adapted for How Beautiful You Are.
Other favorites from that time were Lautreamont's Chants of Maldoror, Burroughs' Naked Lynch, Nabokov's Lolita, Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes... Those didn't inspire Cure lyrics apparently.
The biggest discoveries at that time were Kafka and then Camus, Sartre. The Nausea by Sartre is a book that was named very often in interviews over the years. It seems Robert and Lol read a lot during that era and some stories were turned into songs (Charlotte Sometimes, The Outsider, At Night). Fuchsia from the Gormenghast's trilogy was refered to on The Drowning Man as well.
The Pornography album doesn't have direct inspirations from books. Even if a line from A Short Term Effect was taken from some weird story ("A charcoal face bites my hands"). Robert would also read psychiatrists, anything to do with mental illness. Lost Paradise by John Milton was an important book for its mood too.
Patrick White's The Cockatoos inspired the idea for the "Love Cats". But the original book idea was modified ("we put the love cats in a sack and threw them in the lake") for the song ! When Dylan Thomas turned into Robert's favorite poet during this era and for the following years. Actually when the recording of Birdmad Girl began, the song didn't have finished lyrics so some lines from Love In The Asylum were sung to have a vocal track on the tape. The poem refers to a "girl mad as birds".
Another song from the Top album, Bananafishbones, find its origin in a novel by J.D Salinger entitled A Perfect Day For Bananafish. In 1986, somebody in France gave Robert some Baudelaire and Rimbaud books (French's poetry of the damned). Everybody in the country thought he had read them before. But that wasn't the case, strangely. Les Yeux des Pauvres, a short story by Baudelaire, was adapted for How Beautiful You Are.
Other favorites from that time were Lautreamont's Chants of Maldoror, Burroughs' Naked Lynch, Nabokov's Lolita, Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes... Those didn't inspire Cure lyrics apparently.
Jean Cocteau's
Les Enfants Terribles is supposed to have reduced him to tears. Later
he would use the name Elise from one character of the book for the Cure
track A Letter To Elise, even if the lyrics aren't related to the book.
One can't help thinking about the famous Beethoven's piece with that same
title too.
Other links include Pictures Of You and an essay called The Dark Power of Ritual Pictures (Myra Poleo). Even if it wasn't, of course, the main inspiration for the song. A Foolish Arrangement refered to Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On the Wild Mood Swing album, Treasure owes a lot to another poem, Remember, by Christina Rosetti. And it seems the song Adonais, from the same session, comes from Shelley's tribute poem to Keats.
In the 90's, it was common practice for Robert Smith to cover the walls where they were recording (or at home) with quotes from authors. To get inspired by words... Even if at the end of that decade, very few ideas came from books then. The exception was Where The Birds Always Sing sharing themes with Ian Banks' The Crow Road and the "I can't find myself" line from Lost coming from Thomas Nagel's View From Nowhere.
On a more general note, Alice In Wonderland is an essential work that maybe sums up half of the Cure's material despite no direct reference. The non-senses making sense, the dreams...
Other links include Pictures Of You and an essay called The Dark Power of Ritual Pictures (Myra Poleo). Even if it wasn't, of course, the main inspiration for the song. A Foolish Arrangement refered to Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On the Wild Mood Swing album, Treasure owes a lot to another poem, Remember, by Christina Rosetti. And it seems the song Adonais, from the same session, comes from Shelley's tribute poem to Keats.
In the 90's, it was common practice for Robert Smith to cover the walls where they were recording (or at home) with quotes from authors. To get inspired by words... Even if at the end of that decade, very few ideas came from books then. The exception was Where The Birds Always Sing sharing themes with Ian Banks' The Crow Road and the "I can't find myself" line from Lost coming from Thomas Nagel's View From Nowhere.
On a more general note, Alice In Wonderland is an essential work that maybe sums up half of the Cure's material despite no direct reference. The non-senses making sense, the dreams...
