Melancholy, a deep, pensive, and long-lasting sadness. Given to gloom and depression.
" Melancholy . . . goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality. . . . This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed." (Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy).
Is it genetic, or is it habit? If we change the way we stand, the way we sit, the way we hold our mouths and eyes, can we change our humor?
Better an image, perhaps. The puck of melancholy, masked, mysterious in the dark velvet gloom.
I've always been Melancholy. I rather like it I think.
ReplyDeleteAll that stuff Mr. Cohen and Mr. Dylan sing.
---Sweet bird, that shun the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy! ---
I gave a new friend my 1843 copy of Paradise Lost just yesterday. I think I miss it but I knew it was right.
I like the Sublime too. I think it is the Libra in me -- the blur between pleasure/pain - love/hate -- yin/yang. Ya know the balance thing.
Don't make fun of me.
Sublime melancholia, eh? Just the prescription for what passes as madness. Funny thing is, I think the time's come round again when people will where that instead of the smiley mask we've seen for the past too many years, everyone showing off their orthodontic work as if every day is prom. Wait. Listen to the tone of voice. It will descend from those high pitched squeals. Listen. You will hear it. You will see it. Don't you think?
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