Syd's lyrical influences

[Annoying Twit]

Did Syd ever discuss his lyrical influences? It's easy to jump to the conclusion that he was influenced by the English tradition of surreal and nonsense lyrics and songs, with many of the "usual suspects" listed in this post: http://forum.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/vie ... 81#p127681

Best nonsense songs without music:

1. Lewis Carroll
2. Mervyn Peake
3. Thomas Pynchon
4. Edward Lear
5. Edward Gorey

(Note that this post wasn't about Syd)

Adding a few others like William Blake seems plausible. But did Syd ever discuss his influences? If not is there, erm, "serious scholarship" discussing apparent influences.

[Hudini]

Well he did put a James Joyce's poem to music.

[Syd'sSexy]

Kenneth Grahame was a definite influence and Piper at the Gates of Dawn was named for one of the chapters in his book Wind of the Willows.

Chapter 24 is based on the Chinese tome I Ching.

I had also read somewhere that the song Octopus was written around from phrases taken from several different authors.

[J Ed]

Hillaire Belloc
the original lyrics to Mathilda Mother were from a Belloc poem, as heard on the Piper reissue
check this Roger waters quote, Ive seen it a couple times before:

Roger Waters: All that stuff about Syd starting the space-rock thing is just so much fucking nonsense. He was completely into Hilaire Belloc, and all his stuff was kind of whimsical, all fairly heavy rooted in English literature. I think Syd had one song that had anything to do with space, 'Astronomy Domine', that's all. That's the sum total of all Syd's writing about space and yet there's this whole fucking mystique about how he was the father of it all. It's just a load of old bollocks, it all happened afterwards. There's an instrumental track which we came up with together on the first album, 'Interstellar Overdrive', thats just the title, you see, it's actually an abstract piece with an interstellar attachment in terms of its name.