Melancholia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Melancholy" redirects here. For the anime series, see The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Melancholia (Greek μελαγχολία) is a mood of non-specific depression. It is characterized by low levels of enthusiasm and low levels of eagerness for activity. It was previously described as a distinct disease as early as the fifth and fourth centuries BC in the Hippocratic writings. It was characterized by "aversion to food, despondency, sleeplessness, irritability, restlessness," as well as the statement that "Grief and fear, when lingering, provoke melancholia." It is now generally believed that strong melancholia was the same phenomenon as what is now called clinical depression.

Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer.

The name melancholia comes from the old medical theory of the four humours: disease being caused by an imbalance in one or other of the four basic bodily fluids, or humours. Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humour in a particular person. Melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile; hence the name, which means 'black bile' (Greek μελας, melas, "black", + χολη, kholé, "bile"); a person whose constitution tended to have a preponderance of black bile had a melancholic disposition. See also: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric

During the early 17th century, a curious cultural and literary cult of melancholia arose in England. It was believed that religious uncertainties caused by the English Reformation and a greater attention being paid to issues of sin, damnation, and salvation, led to this effect.

In music, the post-Elizabethan cult of melancholia is associated with John Dowland, whose motto was Semper Dowland, semper dolens. ("Always Dowland, always mourning.") The melancholy man, known to contemporaries as a "malcontent," is epitomized by Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet, the "Melancholy Dane." Another literary expression of this cultural mood comes from the death-obsessed later works of John Donne. Other major melancholic authors include Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor, whose Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and Holy Living and Holy Dying, respectively, contain extensive meditations on death.

But the most extended treatment of the cult of melancholia comes from Robert Burton, whose The Anatomy of Melancholy treats the subject from both a literary and a medical perspective. Burton wrote in the 16th century that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia. ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] In November 2006, Dr. Michael J. Crawford ^[4] and his colleagues again found that music therapy helped the outcomes of Schizophrenic patients. ^[5]

A famous allegorical engraving by Albrecht Dürer is entitled Melencolia I; amongst other allegorical symbols, it includes a magic square, and a truncated cube. The image in turn inspired a passage in The City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson (B.V.), and, a few years later, a sonnet by Edward Dowden.

A similar phenomenon, though not under the same name, occurred during Romanticism, with such works as The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe.

In the 20th century, much of the counterculture of modernism was fueled by comparable alienation and a sense of purposelessness called "anomie."

[edit] Notes

^ cf. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton, subsection 3, on and after line 3480, "Music a Remedy":

But to leave all declamatory speeches in praise [3481]of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against [3482] despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, in [3483]Philostratus, when Apollonius was inquisitive to know what he could do with his pipe, told him, "That he would make a melancholy man merry, and him that was merry much merrier than before, a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout." Ismenias the Theban, [3484]Chiron the centaur, is said to have cured this and many other diseases by music alone: as now they do those, saith [3485]Bodine, that are troubled with St. Vitus's Bedlam dance. [1]
^ "Humanities are the Hormones: A Tarantella Comes to Newfoundland. What should we do about it?" by Dr. John Crellin, MUNMED, newsletter of the Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1996.
^ Aung, Steven K.H., Lee, Mathew H.M., "Music, Sounds, Medicine, and Meditation: An Integrative Approach to the Healing Arts", Alternative & Complementary Therapies, Oct 2004, Vol. 10, No. 5: 266-270. [2]
^ Dr. Michael J. Crawford page at Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychological Medicine.
^ Crawford, Mike J., Talwar, Nakul, et al. (November 2006). "Music therapy for in-patients with schizophrenia: Exploratory randomised controlled trial". The British Journal of Psychiatry (2006) 189: 405-409.