THE INTERPLAY OF LONELINESS AND CREATIVITY IN LITERARY CREATION

In this paper the author focuses on the interplay between loneliness and creativity in literary creation. The study aims to identify and analyze the ways how contemporary Latvian writers experience and interpret the significance of loneliness in their creative work. The empirical section of the paper, which consists of the analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 7 Latvian writers, indicates that both active and passive interaction of the phenomena of loneliness and creativity co-exist in the writers’ experiences of literary creativity. Solitude as a form of social isolation is identified as the most relevant element of loneliness present in literary creation due to the specific nature of the writer’s work. In general, loneliness and its elements have been present in the experiences of all writers, influencing the process of literary creation, the themes raised in the works, and interacting with the writers’ integration into the literary environment.