The representation of madness in Clarke's poem Mnemosyne Lay in Dust

In his narrative poem Mnemosyne Lay in Dust, Austin Clarke writes about a personal experience, which he has made some 50 years before he first published this poem, when he suffered a mental breakdown. Although, it is his own experience, he does not write in first person but uses a protagonist, Maurice Devane, and presents this trauma in third person to the reader. This could be, because this experience, even if it has happened half a century ago, is a very personal one and using a third person narrator possibly makes it easier for him to write about it. The protagonist Maurice Devane experiences the loss of self: he looses his memory, he does not know himself any more.