The Melancholy

What you can expect from this Blog is an exploration of the artistic and cultural significances of various works of art, ranging from poetry to video games, theatre performances to albums. Such as the poetic sensibilities of Bioshock’s (2007) audio diaries, the visualisation of scenery in The Cure’s Disintegration (1989), the musicality of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847), and physicality of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958). I will not be doing this as your crusty old English teacher might, however. I wish to explore these various things through a combination of critical interpretation and journalistic intrigue.

All of this, with the aim of celebrating the use of what we might describe as melancholy emotions. Ruminations on melancholy things if you will. But that does not mean this Blog shall only focus on things dark and depressing, it shall also be concerned with ideas of beauty and enjoyment. I wish to provide examples of why it is we enjoy art so much and what aspects of its various manifestations we find so endearing. So why have I chosen to use the word Melancholy to describe such things?

Melancholy has had a plethora of meanings throughout history. The medieval definition of Melancholy has its meaning rooted in science and philosophy, where it was used to describe a humour found within the body called Black Bile that philosophers believed to be the origin of depressive emotions. For example, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), is a medical text that seeks to explain and define the bodily causes of what we now call mental illness and expresses an understanding of the word as a means to describe such emotions in a factual sense.

Burton, Robert (1577-1640) / Public domain <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Anatomy_of_Melancholy_by_Robert_Burton_frontispiece_1638_edition.jpg>

But it was only in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century that the word gained a more personable meaning through its association with Romanticism. Melancholy began to be associated with idea of the individual, of an emotion that was self-introspective, and a feeling of the mind rooted in its relation to the heart. Gaining a definition that was not as clinical as Burton’s and was more concerned with the experiences of such emotions rather than just identifying them. Take for example the perspective of the speaker in Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’

'I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.'

Wordsworth uses a pensive melancholic perspective to begin his poem and that feeling influences the lamentations of the poem itself. Melancholy is therefore used to define an emotion in this period. A definition shared by Longfellow in his poem 'The Day is Done'.

'A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only,

As the mist resembles the rain.'

As well as Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) in which the narrator, Merricat, enjoys imagining a life on the moon filled with solitude, Sylvia Plath's Confessional poetry cathartically exploring the individual experiences of women, in 'Lady Lazarus' (1965) and 'Daddy' (1965); all the way through to contemporary examples, such as Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) where characters turn to art itself to express their own experiences of sadness and joy and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017) that explicitly deals with the idea of the melancholy perspective as the narrator speaks directly to the audience: 'If you think Senua's reality is twisted you must accept that yours might be too'.

Haydon, Benjamin / Public domain <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wordsworth_on_Helvellyn_by_Benjamin_Robert_Haydon.jpg>

And I believe that because of these associations and use in art from the Romantic era onwards the word Melancholy has another meaning for a contemporary society. Because we have a great wealth of examples within art that include emotions like pensiveness, despondency, and sadness we turn to the word Melancholy to describe when we find such things beautiful, entertaining, wonderful, or endearing. These beautiful poems written with the perspective of the Melancholy bring with them a form of interpretation: where beautiful things, the art which contains despondent emotions, can be described as Melancholy.

It is important to note that this definition of Melancholy shouldn’t be used as a glorification of painful experiences, because that would be more akin to Burton’s use of the word, rather, it is a definition that seeks to describe the emotional interpretation of art and nature, the non-human elements of experience. Like the word ‘Beautiful’, or the word ‘Sad’, Melancholy is a descriptor for a particular feeling found within the individual experience, where Melancholy means both beautiful and sad. This is the meaning and use of the word that I believe to be the most useful for the human endeavour of expressing our interpretations of the world around us. A word I believe to be necessary for that effort.

Munch, Edvard / Public domain <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edvard_Munch_-_Melancholy_(1894).jpg>

But to describe something as beautiful because of its sadness carries with it the invitation to ridicule and, more often than not, to be ignored as a serious emotional reaction to the world around us. When someone might express their feelings of pleasure towards something that is filled with dark, sad, despondent, or otherwise ‘negative’ elements such an expression is met with confusion or ridicule. Perhaps this is due to the inherent juxtaposition of this current definition of Melancholy, or the refusal of the term to be categorically defined for a distinct amount of time.

What I shall be doing in the course of this Blog is to attempt to provide examples of things we might deem Melancholy and express and explore the importance and indeed the beauty of their existence. I want to collate examples of Melancholy things found within all forms and manners of art to explore and celebrate those examples and perhaps even reinvigorate a more serious consideration for this particular interpretation of human emotion and allow us to use such a word to express and describe our experiences. These may take the form of reviews of new publications or releases, or as reconsiderations of popular works from the recent and distant past.

I hope that such an endeavour would be interesting or useful to anyone who shares a love of Melancholy things or simply enjoys my ramblings.

References

Antoniades Tameem (cd.) Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, (Ninja theory PlayStation 4, 2017).

Jackosn, Shirely We Have Always Lived in the Castle (London: Penguin Classics, 2009).

Longfellow, H.W. ‘The Day is Done’, Poems of Longfellow Selected by George Saintsbury and Illustrated by Alan Wright (London: Caxton Publishing Co, 1907) p. 68.

Logan, John Penny Dreadful (Showtime, 2016).

Plath, Sylvia 'Lady Lazarus', Ariel (London: Faber and Faber, 2010).

'Daddy', Ariel (London: Faber and Faber. 2010).

Wordsworth, William ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’, Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (London: Faber, 2016) p. 29.