Literary influences in music

I'm going to try something a little bit different today, in that I'm not going to actually be writing a review. I'm not sure if this will work or not, but of late I've been having a lot of thoughts about a few music-related topics. I'm going to try writing out the occasional little piece dealing with these subjects. If anyone has any sort of opinion about this I encourage you to leave a comment, but then again it's very possible that noone will read this for some time. In which case, I will write more if I like how it turned out. :)

Of late I have been thinking a lot about what sort of an effect the lyrics of an album can have on the overall album. While naturally there are those who listen to music in languages they don't speak/can't find translations for (myself included) I'm not going to be counting those.
I think what really prompted my thoughts about this was earlier this week when I went to pick up a book that I had ordered in. The book is called Alamut, and to most English-speakers it is probably completely unknown. Why am I talking about a barely known Slovenian novel from 1938 in a piece about music? Well, it was a major influence upon vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Aaron Turner on his band Isis' most recent album (see the previous review) The book itself has a fairly complicated literary basis, and as I started reading it I got to thinking about its relation to the album, In the Absence of Truth (the name itself taken from Alamut, by way of the supreme message of the group in the book, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted") The album itself is brilliant, and while many of the lyrics are hard to understand, what is immediately audible is profound, and if you read a transcription of the lyrics it brings everything in the music to a whole new level. Alamut isn't the only influence for this album, and it's certainly not the only literary source. Other influences upon Turner include Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, a short story by Jorge Borges, and the extremely stylistic novel House of Leaves. While this may seem like a lot of gushing over a single lyricist and a single band, it's hard not to immediately notice the difference when listening to simpler lyrics. I have begun to notice that somehow, the complexity and influence from lyricists with more complex inspirations often translate into far more complex and original music as well. Now, this is obviously not universal, and there are numerous examples of brilliant lyricists with simple music, but paritcularly in the realm of modern heavier music the connection is inescapable. To stay with the Isis example, compare the music and lyrics from In the Absence of Truth to Linkin Park's most recent release. Or Isis' last album, Panopticon, inspired by the concept of a prison conceived by 17th century English philospher Jeremy Bentham, and which is a loose basis for the modern day concept of a police state, to Linkin Park's last album, Meteora. I appreciate this is using extreme examples, but I have yet to discover a band with highly original music that has simple and unimaginative lyrics.
Is this just a coincidence? Have I created something from smoke and mirrors, something completely in my own mind? In the end, that will have to be up to each individual. In the meantime, I will count my blessings that bands like Isis exist, and be grateful that their influences can encourage me to discover new ways of thinking.