Melancholy

[Bastable]

I have heard that the best literature contains elements of melancholy. But i'm not sure if i actually know what it really means for a novel to be 'melancholic'.

so what i'm asking is, does anyone have any examples of books that would be considered to be melancholic. thanks in advance :)

[JBI]

Read Thomas Hardy - he's definitely melancholic. Generally, it tends to work best in 19th century French fiction, and mediocre poetry.

[stlukesguild]

Why not Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholia?

[kelby_lake]

Melancholy is mild depression. It's not eye-gouging tragedy- more a sort of numbness.

Bonjour Tristesse is a good example of melancholy.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Try some of Keats's poetry.

[mayneverhave]

Why not Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholia?

Building off of this, it was a Renaissance belief that Melancholy was caused by a build-up of black bile or some other such things related to the four humours (with cholera being related to yellow bile). In this belief, Melancholia was related not only to depression or despair but also to poetic and imaginative abilities.

The archetypical melancholic figure is Hamlet, but also Jacques (of As You Like It), and Werther of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. Coincidently these two Shakespearean characters are both also associated with verbal wit and imaginative ability, and Werther is a self-proclaimed artist.

Burton's book was apparently quite popular, and at least very influential for his time.

[rozreads]

Don't you think there's a lot of melancholia everywhere in a great deal of literature? I mean just think of many of the leading characters in novels like East of Eden, The Great Gatby, not to mention the Shakepeare protags...

[kelby_lake]

Oh, Gatsby's tres depressing.

The Good Soldier is pretty melancholic

[islandclimber]

melancholy is everywhere in poetry... Neruda's best Residence on Earth (and his Captain's Verses for that matter) is full of loneliness, despair, desolation, melancholy... I suppose it depends on what you define melancholy as, but almost all great literature has that element of melancholy in it... I just don't think you could call it the defining characteristic for then the work generally drops off into the realm of the mediocre...

[JBI]

Don't you think there's a lot of melancholia everywhere in a great deal of literature? I mean just think of many of the leading characters in novels like East of Eden, The Great Gatby, not to mention the Shakepeare protags...

Yes, but even so, most authors usually give a sense of catharsis and break away from the melancholy - for instance, Tennyson was quite meloncholical, yet In Memorium is loaded with cathartic moments, that break from the melancholy, into an impassioned, living life, that is ready to move on. Likewise, there are melancholic moments in Wordsworth's Elegiac Stanzas, but just at the end, there is a trace of righting, and finally, a peace brought back.

The actual form of the elegy, since its beginning, generally has a requirement that there is some catharsis by the end - it's in all the great elegies, even up until the modern times. It's in the 19th century perhaps, that things end in the dismal state, and don't move on.

Take my hero, Leopardi for instance - that is melancholic verse - he hated the world, for essentially destroying every chance he had at being loved, after he had sacrificed his health and the best years of his life for the sake of studying, and then being hit by the realization that there is no point to living, as it inevitably is just a prolonged death. There is no release there - only perhaps a faint trace of release, given him by the brief pause within nature, the brief release from his worries, which surrounds most of his best poems, from The Infinite to The Evening of the Festival, and even on through The Broom.

It takes quite a bit of Melancholy, for instance, to end Wordsworth's Ode the way Coleridge envisioned it - Wordsworth's argument, is far less melancholic, and I would argue, perhaps the better argument for it.

True Melancholy though, in the Schopenhauer sense, is somewhat harder to find. I think Jacques is more powerful, because he is so ridiculous to us - he is comic, and cynical, and somewhat right about stuff, but we still laugh at him, in the way we laugh at Moliere's miser - because there ideas are so intensified - so removed, so beyond us.

[higley]

Building off of this, it was a Renaissance belief that Melancholy was caused by a build-up of black bile or some other such things related to the four humours (with cholera being related to yellow bile). In this belief, Melancholia was related not only to depression or despair but also to poetic and imaginative abilities.

Melancholic artists? You don't say. ;)

[Dr. Hill]

Madame Bovary.

[stlukesguild]

Melancholic artists? You don't say. ;)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3528/3712177144_8f36d12f23_o.jpg

[higley]

stlukesguild, that is generally how I look when I'm trying to puzzle out a painting--very grouchy, with my fist jammed into my chin.

[stlukesguild]

The scowl is not unfamiliar to myself... although over the years I've learned to spend more time painting and less time contemplating.

[higley]

Generally I would say that some of the best literature does contain melancholy, but some of the worst contains quite a lot of it too. I would say that presentation is everything. I tend to like when the gloom is hidden beneath comedy and irony, kind of gives it that desperate touch that makes it interesting.