A Field Guide to Melncholy, 1st Edition
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First published in 2008 by Oldcastle Books
P O Box 394, Harpenden, Herts,AL5 1XJ
www.oldcastlebooks.com
© Jacky Bowring 2008
The right of Jacky Bowring to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims
for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
ISBN 978-1-84243-292-1
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton,Aylesbury, Bucks
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by J.H.Haynes,Yeovil, Somerset
For Jasper and Ella
Rosalind: They say you are a melancholy fellow.
Jaques: I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
Shakespeare, AsYou Like It
Contents
Introduction 13
1. The Conundrums of Melancholy: Madness,
Genius and Beauty 23
Melancholy and Madness:‘A disorder of the intellect’;
Melancholy and Genius:‘A disease of heroes’; Melancholy
and Beauty:‘Spirited sadness’
2. The Hunt for Melancholy 55
The Face of Melancholy;The Place of Melancholy;The
Time of Melancholy
3. Acedia,Anomie, et al.: Melancholy’s Allies 91
Acedia;Anomie/Anomy; Et in Arcadia Ego; Lacrimae
rerum; Love Melancholy; Nostalgia; Pathos; Religious
Melancholy;Tristitia; Ubi sunt?
4. From Apea to Weltschmerz: A Lexicon of
Melancholy 115
Chinese; English; Finnish; French; German; Japanese;
Portuguese; Russian; Spanish;Turkish
10 CONTENTS
5. A ‘Blue’ Guide: Melancholy in Cinema, Art,
Literature, Music, Architecture and
Landscape 141
A Film Festival of Melancholy;A Melancholy Art
Exhibition;A Library of Melancholy Literature;A
Melancholy Playlist;The Architecture and Landscape of
Sadness
6. By Way of Conclusion: Melancholy and the
Imagination 209
7. A Note on Laurence Aberhart 213
Further Reading and Bibliography 215
Index 233
Introduction
Laurence Aberhart, Files,Wanganui, 1 July 1986
Introduction
Melancholy is a twilight state; suffering melts into it and
becomes a sombre joy. Melancholy is the pleasure
of being sad.
Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea1
Melancholy is ambivalent and contradictory. Although it
seems at once a very familiar term, it is extraordinarily
elusive and enigmatic. It is something found not only in
humans – whether pathological, psychological, or a mere
passing mood – but in landscapes, seasons, and sounds.
They too can be melancholy. Batman, Pierrot, and Ham-
let are all melancholic characters, with traits like darkness,
unrequited longing, and genius or heroism. Twilight,
autumn and minor chords are also melancholy, evoking
poignancy and the passing of time.
How is melancholy defined? A Field Guide to Melan-
choly traces out some of the historic traditions of melan-
choly, most of which remain today, revealing it to be an
incredibly complex term. Samuel Johnson’s definition, in
his eighteenth century Dictionary of the English Language,
reveals melancholy’s multi-faceted nature was already well
established by then:‘A disease, supposed to proceed from
a redundance of black bile; a kind of madness, in which
the mind is always fixed on one object; a gloomy, pensive,
discontented temper.’2 All of these aspects – disease,
madness and temperament – continue to coalesce in the
14 A FIELD GUIDE TO MELANCHOLY
concept of melancholy, and rather than seeking a defini-
tive definition or chronology, or a discipline-specific
account, this book embraces contradiction and paradox:
the very kernel of melancholy itself.
As an explicit promotion of the ideal of melancholy, the
Field Guide extols the benefits of the pursuit of sadness, and
questions the obsession with happiness in contemporary
society. Rather than seeking an ‘architecture of happiness’,
or resorting to Prozac-with-everything, it is proposed that
melancholy is not a negative emotion, which for much of
history it wasn’t – it was a desirable condition, sought for
its ‘sweetness’ and intensity. It remains an important point
of balance – a counter to the ‘loss of sadness’. Not grief,
not mourning, not sorrow, yet all of those things.
Melancholy is profoundly interdisciplinary, and ranges
across fields as diverse as medicine, literature, art, design,
psychology and philosophy. It is over two millennia
old as a concept, and its development pre-dates the
emergence of disciplines.While similarly enduring con-
cepts have also been tackled by a breadth of disciplines
such as philosophy, art and literature, melancholy alone
extends across the spectrum of arts and sciences, with sig-
nificant discourses in fields like psychiatry, as much as in
art. Concepts with such an extensive period of develop-
ment (the idea of ‘beauty’ for example) tend to go
through a process of metamorphosis and end up meaning
something distinctly different.3 Melancholy has been sur-
prisingly stable. Despite the depth and breadth of inves-
tigation, the questions, ideas and contradictions which
form the ‘constellation’4 of melancholy today are not dra-
matically different from those at any time in its history.
There is a sense that, as psychoanalytical theorist Julia
INTRODUCTION 15
Kristeva puts it, melancholy is ‘essential and trans-
historical’.5
Melancholy is a central characteristic of the human
condition, and Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth century
abbess and mystic, believed it to have been formed at the
moment that Adam sinned in taking the apple – when
melancholy ‘curdled in his blood’.6 Modern day Sloven-
ian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, also positions melancholy,
and its concern with loss and longing, at the very heart of
the human condition, stating ‘melancholy (disappoint-
ment with all positive, empirical objects, none of which
can satisfy our desire) is in fact the beginning of philoso-
phy.’7
The complexity of the idea of melancholy means that
it has oscillated between attempts to define it scientifically,
and its embodiment within a more poetic ideal. As a very
coarse generalisation, the scientific/psychological under-
pinnings of melancholy dominated the early period, from
the late centuries BC when ideas on medicine were being
formulated, while in later, mainly post-medieval times, the
literary ideal became more significant. In recent decades,
the rise of psychiatry has re-emphasised the scientific
dimensions of melancholy. It was never a case of either/or,
however, and both ideals, along with a multitude of other
colourings, have persisted through history.
The essential nature of melancholy as a bodily as well
as a purely mental state is grounded in the foundation of
ideas on physiology; that it somehow relates to the body
itself. These ideas are rooted in the ancient notion of
‘humours’. In Greek and Roman times humoralism was
the foundation for an understanding of physiology, with
the four humours ruling the body’s characteristics.
16 A FIELD GUIDE TO MELANCHOLY
Phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile were believed
to be the four governing elements, and each was ascribed
to particular seasons, elements and temperaments. This
can be expressed via a tetrad, or four-cornered
diagram.
The four-part divisions of temperament were echoed
in a number of ways, as in the work of Alkindus, the ninth
century Arab philosopher, who aligned the times of the
day with particular dispositions. The tetrad could there-
fore be further embellished, with the first quarter of the
day sanguine, second choleric, third melancholic and
The Four Humours, adapted from Henry E Sigerist (1961) A History
of Medicine, 2 vols New York: Oxford University Press, 2:232.8
INTRODUCTION 17
finally phlegmatic. Astrological allegiances reinforce the
idea of four quadrants, so that Jupiter is sanguine, Mars
choleric, Saturn is melancholy, and the moon or Venus is
phlegmatic. The organs, too, are associated with the points
of the humoric tetrad, with the liver sanguine, the gall
bladder choleric, the spleen melancholic, and the brain/
lungs phlegmatic.
Melancholy, then, is associated with twilight, autumn,
earth, the spleen, coldness and dryness, and the planet Sat-
urn. All of these elements weave in and out of the his-
tory of melancholy, appearing in mythology, astrology,
medicine, literature and art.The complementary humours
and temperaments were sometimes hypothesised as bal-
ances, so that the opposite of one might be introduced as
a remedy for an excess of another. For melancholy, the
introduction of sanguine elements – blood, air and
warmth – could counter the darkness. This could also
work at an astrological level, as in the appearance of the
magic square of Jupiter on the wall behind Albrecht
Dürer’s iconic engraving Melencolia I, (1514) – the sign of
Jupiter to introduce a sanguine balance to the saturnine
melancholy angel.
In this early phase of the development of humoral
thinking a key tension arose, as on one hand it was devised
as a means of establishing degrees of wellness, but on the
other it was a system of types of disposition. As Kliban-
sky, Panofsky and Saxl put it, there were two quite dif-
ferent meanings to the terms sanguine, choleric,
phlegmatic and melancholy, as either ‘pathological states
or constitutional aptitudes’.9 Melancholy became far
more connected with the idea of illness than the other
temperaments, and was considered a ‘special problem’.
