Good-bye, melancholia

Personally, I can't think of anything less melancholic than egg muffins for breakfast! I made these with feta cheese, scallions, and tomatoes. Put whatever you like in a muffin tray, beat 8 eggs, two Tbs of milk and pepper and pour on top and bake in 400F for 20-25 minutes.

Today I want to write about melancholia. Or my penchant for it. I like to think of myself as up for fun, but the truth is that I have a soft spot for melancholia. To me, melancholia beckons like a comfortable old armchair and I let myself sink down into it far too often, even though I know what a hard time I will have trying to get up from it.

Melancholia knows me inside and out. And I know it, too. It has a sound (Albinoni’s Adagio), it has a smell (wet cement), and it has an image (any of the Isle of the Dead paintings by Arnold Böcklin). It stands behind every joke or every leisurely-spent Saturday afternoon, with its bittersweet smile of familiarity, asking me to remember how painless it is to be suspended in its easy grip.

Unlike depression, melancholia (or melancholy) is not a mental disorder, and it is not entirely negative in nature either, which of course is part of its appeal. Hippocrates believed it was caused by an excess of “black bile” (which is also the Greek meaning of the word melancholia) in the person afflicted by it. To me this sounds like a valid explanation, because I recognize it. It is as if there’s something inside you (the “black bile”?), that responds to something outside (music or painting for instance) and sort of blends into it. Unlike depression, melancholia invites us to self-reflect, to close ourselves off a bit to the rest of the world, and focus on the Self. Perhaps it’s a way to take a mental rest?

My husband often accuses me of being “sad” or of liking things that are “sad” by constantly turning to them. But while melancholia indeed has a hood of sadness attached to it, and is, like I wrote, self-reflective by nature, the way it heightens the senses and elevates the imagination, also means it is an incentive for creativity. In an earlier blog entry, The poetry of unrequited love, I touched upon this when I wrote about a lyrical poem as a result of a normal activity being blocked, or rather, the poet trying to unblock that activity. For instance, writing poetry as a way to overcome loss of love. When the sun is shining and your heart is content, then you have little reason to shut yourself into a room and write. But when the rain falls and your lover is gone, then the inclination to write suddenly presents itself.

At times therefore, I believe I inadvertently invite melancholy in order to be able to write something of value. If I am happy and content and my lover is not gone and the rain is not falling, then I need melancholia like some stimuli in order to write that, which I either want or need to write.

I have to pause here, because I see that if I could only have a more “professional” relationship to melancholia, my life would be so much easier. If I could use it, for example, as a whiff of perfume and nothing more, to propel myself into writing, to open the gateway to the senses, and then return from it just as quickly, I would be satisfied. Unfortunately, I often let melancholia stay much too long. A good pair of mental pliers is needed to pull myself away from its grip.

Or maybe, just maybe, a good, strong antidote exists? Old episodes of Seinfeld? Chaplin movies? Watching children play at the playground?

Perhaps.

Time has come for me to say good-bye melancholia, we’re done for now. Come back some other time.

Isle of the Dead (or Die Toteninsel) by Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) - the picture-perfect image of melancholia.