melancholia

Fascinating subject, tomasso. I will book mark for now.

First a funny note. My niece, in first grade, took a liking to the word melancholy. She chose to spell it on her spelling tests. She offered it as an adverb when the teacher asked. I have no idea where she learned it or why she thinks it's an adverb. After a week or so of this, I asked her where she learned the word (from a book) and if she knew what it meant (no). When I told her, she seemed surprised. She asked me to define it further the next day after thinking on it over night. She's 7.

I think all emotions are valid and probably necessary to experience. I know that emotions cause different reactions in the brain and that since we still come with them (most of us), they must serve a purpose.

The problem is an excess of black bile, of course. The cure, we find, is bloodletting.

Lovely opportunity!

Keats' poem Ode to Melancholy states (in a nice way, I think) that those who don't encounter the depths of melancholy don't have the connection to enjoy exquisite experiences.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Hi tomasso,

I agree that American culture is too fixated on the happiness thing, with a few repercussions. One is how we deal with death -- I think Americans are especially goofy about that. Another is in how we deal with poverty and those who are less fortunate. Though I'm having a hard time articulating that part right now -- it has something to do with how people are uncomfortable being exposed to unhappiness rather than accepting it as part of life, something everyone goes through to some degree.

OK, maybe not for a 7 year old...

er, no, not this one!

Perhaps this?

Melancholy Poem Set in 1951, Pittsburgh-with Formal Elements
Hudson Review, The, Winter 2005 by Lummis, Suzanne

The city's weighted with grayish heads
on sheets emitting a measly light.
All lovers lose their lovers
here in the middle of the night.
He slips through the fire exit,
takes the easy route.
Or he'll toss a cigarette that shrinks
down, down, then out
then rise like smoke from bed.
He'll feel vaguely sorry.
Or she goes out how she came in,
leaves a lip print hard as lead
on a glass of Gilbey's Gin

Sex and cigarettes and GIN!!!!

<scandalous!>

<kidding>

I liked it!

'Lovers' to her is just people who love each other - specifically couples. Not sex.

From an Australian perspective, Americans to us seem obsessed with positivity. We generally react badly (distrustfully) when people act in way that seems excessively positive.

We think of ourselves as having much better "bullshit meters" than others.

(as an example....Steve Irwin was shunned in his own country for a long time but enthusiastically embraced in the US.)

I come at last to that heroical love which is proper to men and women, is a
frequent cause of melancholy, and deserves much rather to be called burning
lust, than by such an honourable title. There is an honest love, I confess,
which is natural. . .

'Tis a happy state this indeed, when the fountain is blessed (saith
Solomon, Prov. v. 17.) "and he rejoiceth with the wife of his youth, and
she is to him as the loving hind and pleasant roe, and he delights in her
continually." But this love of ours is immoderate, inordinate, and not to
be comprehended in any bounds. It will not contain itself within the union
of marriage, or apply to one object, but is a wandering, extravagant, a
domineering, a boundless, an irrefragable, a destructive passion: sometimes
this burning lust rageth after marriage, and then it is properly called
jealousy; sometimes before, and then it is called heroical melancholy; it
extends sometimes to co-rivals, &c., begets rapes, incests, murders. . .


exerpted from Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy PART 3, SECTION 2, MEMBER 1, SUBSECTION 2: HOW LOVE TYRANNIZETH OVER MEN. LOVE, OR HEROICAL MELANCHOLY, HIS DEFINITION, PART AFFECTED. (c. 1621)

It's been so long; I had forgotten how funny the mad scholar could be!

Ooh, another thread about one of my 'hobby horses'.

Yes, Tomasso, yes yes yes.

In Hungary, at least age 30 and up, people are a lot more comfortable with acknowledging and accepting the downside of life, also of others around them (friends, colleagues) than in Holland - and in Holland, I believe, again a lot more than in the US, from what I've understood.

If someone asks you, "how are you?", and you're feeling sorta down, you can just say, "mwah, feeling kinda down", without feeling guilty. The more to the West (and "up" in society, also) you go, the more it seems to be taken as a kind of affront to say anything but "I'm fine! How are you?" No matter what - your husband may be having an affair and your pet goldfish be ailing, you're still supposed to shoot your smile and say, "Fine!"

Freaks me out - I mean, if you dont wanna know, dont ask OK?

Then again in Hungary, traditionally at least (the younger ones do really seem to be different), they are perhaps, to my Dutch mind, a bit all too ready to embrace fate and suffering..

I was once complaining to my friend "Susannah" that, you know, I wasnt feeling too good, life just didnt seem to be going how I expected, and she nodded, smiled sagely and caringly and said, well nimh, you know - Life is suffering.

That was supposed to make me feel better :wink:

Let me ask, what is so wrong with trying to live the dream of false positivity?

There you go, supporting the Church again Chumly. :wink:

I love the concept of melancholy. (I've also loved the sound of the word since I was a child and before I knew what it meant).

But I don't look at it as a negative at all. It's a great state to be in for thought. memories, reflection...it's like the first cool breeze of autumn or hearing your favorite sad song from when you were twelve years old, or revisiting the house you grew up in years after you'd last been there.

But I do find I prefer to entertain it privately- where I can really indulge in it. If you pull it out in public too often-you're considered a drama queen or a depressive- and in my mind it has no relation at all to either of those emotions or states.

Because when you feel down one day, you wonder what's wrong with you.

Yes Aidan, I also tend to "indulge" privately, taking long walks on cloudy days wearing my long black overcoat. Then it starts raining...

It might seem silly, but it does help me. Depression / Bipolar Syndrome
runs in our family and sometimes I feel very susceptible, but when I
"indulge" in melancholy for several hours, it's like, OK now, you had
your "fun." Now it's time to get back to living. Weird, huh?
Somehow it helps me get back on my feet again.

I'm glad to hear fellow A2Kers more willing to embrace melancholia than
I thought they would!

Good humors!Does trying to live a false dream mean, when you are inevitably unsuccessful to some degree, you must by default feel a certain wrongness?