I am beginning to understand the word "melancholy," a sense of overwhelming sadness, if not despair. Now I suppose the standard solution recommended by experts and others is a therapist or drugs. I prefer books.
One of the more intriguing and highly recommended is The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connelly. It’s rated by the Greatest Books website as #1429. War and Peace is #12, the Bible (#21). I did not check to see which one was #1428.
“Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) was one of mid-twentieth-century Britain's most influential literary critics, essayists, and cultural commentators, best remembered as the brilliant and exacting co-founder and editor of the literary magazine Horizon. Throughout his career, Connolly maintained a formidable reputation for his refined aestheticism, piercing wit, and uncompromising standards of literary style, establishing himself as a central tastemaker in English letters. Despite his vast erudition and critical acclaim, he was plagued by a lifelong sense of unfulfilled creative potential—famously diagnosing his own perfectionism and professional dispersion in The Unquiet Grave—which cemented his enduring status as a brilliant, self-lacerating connoisseur of literature whose intellectual legacy endures through his unique blend of personal confession and classical scholarship.” [AI generated]
That plague of “unfulfilled creative potential" is so accurate. The feeling that if one had only worked harder at whatever skill one might have had, be it music, language, knowledge, or whatever, and gotten much better than mediocre at each is a constant nag and sense of failure that induces the melancholy. Given Connolly’s reputation, one wonders whether his melancholy is deserved. For the rest of us it certainly is.
Where I think Connolly goes wrong is in his insistence that those Christians who have lost their faith retain a sense of guilt from original sin, a rather silly form of nonsense. Sin is by definition a religious concept. "Those of us who were brought up as Christians and who have lost our faith have retained the Christian sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action." It would seem from this passage that Connolly hasn’t fallen as far as he thought. Connolly finds a positive value in sadness: despite the pain, Connolly eventually recognizes melancholia not just as a malady but as a necessary instrument for confronting reality:
"Now that I seem to have attained a temporary calm, I understand how valuable unhappiness can be; melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel that enables us to sail into the wind of reality; we run aground sooner than the flat-bottomed pleasure-lovers, but we venture out in weather that would sink them, and we choose our direction."
A nice metaphor but totally wrong. Melancholy is paralyzing. It’s caused by reality rather than being “an instrument” for confronting it. Much better is his remark “TOUT EST DÉGOÛT ET MISÈRE." (His emphasis.) The phrase appears in Part I (Ecce Gubernator) during a reflection on the suffocating fog of anxiety and the paralyzing weight of existential despair:
"And like a fog it overlays all I do, and my days are muffled with anguish. TOUT EST DÉGOÛT ET MISÈRE. When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide." That makes far more sense but certainly seems to contradict how melancholy provides the stability that “enables us to sail into the wind of reality.”
What makes the book a classic are his pithy observations on the world, youth, old age, writing, and all his aphorisms, even if the principles expounded by the aphorisms are wrong.
While it’s a fascinating and enjoyable journey into someone’s mind, I was left unsatisfied and would echo Evelyn Waugh’s comment to Nancy Mitford, “viewing Palinurus as the ultimate upper-class epicurean wallowing in luxurious despair while a world war raged outside his window.”
Regretfully, the book provides no help whatsoever in alleviating melancholy nor offer a permanent "cure"; instead, it treats melancholia as the constant state of a lucid mind. I suppose that when therapy and drugs are involved, they diminish the clarity of the mind, which in turn alleviates the problem. His solution: when past pleasures and nostalgia are successfully converted into art, the guilt attached to them is washed away. In my observation, this approach may actually increase the guilt associated with failure.
Ultimately, his "help" involves instructing the reader on how to confront despair directly, embrace the tragic nature of existence, and discover moments of serene grace amidst the wreckage. Yeah, right.
