In the ‘Autobiographical Note’ at the end of The Cosmological Eye, Miller writes: ‘My greatest influences were Dostoievski, Nietzsche and Elie Fauré. Proust and Spengler were tremendously fecundating. Of American writers the only real influences were Whitman and Emerson.’ Although this study strays slightly from Miller's self-made list of his influences to some extent, the impetus behind the selection is not meant to reflect exactly what Miller may have thought of himself but rather to present a momentous and stimulating collection of Miller's ancestral authors. All those discussed here, at the same time, are included on Miller's list, apart from Lawrence, as previously explained. This study also seeks to raise the issue of the difficulty in making a meaningful and concrete selection of authors of influence, which establishes the more important point of the very absurdity of trying to assess the manner of influence of any given writer in a complete and concrete sense. Importance must instead be placed on intertextuality, such that the focus of this kind of study rests in its ability to reveal and articulate references and citations without attempting to draw conclusions of textual autonomy but instead to open fissures for further exploration into the nature and effects of intertextual relations.