Melancholy, Art, and the Creative Process
Most of my friends know that John Keats is one of my favorite western poets, writing such beautiful works as “Endymion” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Most extraordinary to me is probably his resolve and good cheer in an atmosphere of such gloom: imagine a man whose entire family was plagued with tuberculosis, who would die at the age of 25 from that very same disease.
Then imagine the kind of poetry that you yourself would write in the face of such depressing circumstances. I don’t know about you, but I would be nearly paralyzed with my grief and anxiety. What meaning could there possibly be in life when your father, then your mother, then your own brother just die off, one by one?
Yet clearly, Keats found something in all of that worth living through, indeed, worth writing about. The truth is that his sorrow became self-ablative, easing his pain as he quenched his wretched heart with a more measured melancholy. He did not allow that pain to arrest the creativity burning deep in his spirit; instead, it made each moment more vivid, as if every image before one’s eyes was outlined with an extra inkstroke. Witness the beginning of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme…
It’s marked by such stillness, such beauty. It is unthinkable to imagine someone who suffered like he must have to write something like this, yet still, it feels so completely natural. Such appreciation of the solitary moment, the discovery of the infinite in the infinitessimal, these are things that could only be valued by someone for whom every single moment meant something.
Many young men die in the prime of their lives, but they never knew that they would. Their minds until the moment of death are ones of natural potentiality; life itself is perceptually infinite for them until the very end. Each tomorrow means more tomorrows, all good vibes and optimism. A vast multitude of moments spread themselves before these young men, which are then cut short before the end even registers in their minds.
Compare this to Keats, whose moments were more-or-less finite. Where might he find potentiality, the infinite? Where other men could stare up at the stars looking for the undiscovered country, Keats could only look inward to the recesses of his very human heart. There, digging amongst the rubble of the human condition, he found creativity, infinite potentiality borne of man himself, coming from the source closest to him, melancholy:
But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. -second stanza, “Ode on Melancholy”
Melancholy is given so much richness in its personification, as if he could become inebriated upon it. Within these emotions lies a beautiful distinctiveness, an individuality. From this passage, the appreciation of beauty seems intrinsically connected to the appreciation of melancholy, even anger.
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On a more pragmatic level, happiness isn’t that interesting from a literary standpoint anyway. Would you rather read about someone being happy, or be happy yourself? On the other hand, we love to write about our sorrow and our grief. Furthermore, we love to read what others have written about their sorrow and their grief. There is some fraternal bond in melancholy altogether separate from the ego-centric nature of joy.
When we are happy, the sadness of others is often a nuisance. “Why are you ruining my good day?” “Stop bringing me down.” But when we are sad, how much we hope for someone to understand, for someone to be there with us. How we yearn for someone with whom we can cry and forget ourselves. Even if we deny the fact, even if our common decency and sensibilities say to keep the tears to ourselves, how easily they pour upon the shoulders of a loved one once they finally appear. Ultimately, when we cry, we don’t want to cry alone.
Finally, to interject a Buddhist voice, all things are marked by impermanence and will eventually fade. Yet isn’t it this very impermanence, this fragility of the universal experience, that makes it so beautiful? The softness of the human caress shows great weakness, and it can’t last, but in that moment, it is the most tender, beautiful thing we know. As we stare upon a perfectly formed flower, there is a beauty in knowing that at only one moment is it a perfect blossom. Before, it was simply a bud; after, it shrivels away into nothingness. To be there at the moment of perfection, that is beautiful, and insofar as the artist must tease away these bits of beauty, he must navigate the before and after of life itself. He dwells in melancholy such that when beauty appears before his eyes, it appears in such contrast to the mundanity that he has no choice but to fetch it.
Saturday, January 20th, 2007 : Philosophy : No Comments
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