The ancient Greek word melancholia literally means black bile. Aristotle posed the question, “why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?” A melancholic “perceives the order of the cosmos by constantly violating it.” At their heights and their depths they are never average. Foldenvi begins his inquiry with mythological melancholics: Ajax, Bellerophon, and Heracles. Bellerophon “speaks of those who suffer the fate of humans, who live a double life: a life of suffering and a life of awareness of such suffering.” The melancholic is a prophet, a seer, a madman, a philosopher living beyond time and space. He is also, of necessity, a misanthrope. “This outcast state is dual: not only are they excluded from the world of others, but they must also step outside of themselves. On that account, their knowledge is not uplifting but disheartening, depressing; they are incapable of living like others- since they see everything, they also cannot forget.”
During the Middle Ages excessively ponderous thoughts came to be thought of as the cause rather than an effect of melancholy. “Melancholia no longer led toward an understanding of the deepest problems of existence, but became a concomitant of vain and fruitless speculation.” According to Constantine the African, a melancholic is “convinced of the fearfulness and horror of things that are not to be feared, thinks about the kinds of things it is unnecessary to reflect on, and perceives things that do not exist.” In ancient Greece the melancholic was above the fray, apart from society. By the Middle Ages he was condemned to be against society because he had turned away from God. “A melancholic wishes, first and foremost, to escape from himself, but he can find no crack in the homogenous, overarching culture, and resignation grows in him, together with a sense of helplessness.” Still, a running theme was the overriding fear of death while fearing life as well. “The sadness that melancholics feel on account of their being destined for death, the extinction of their unrepeatable earthly existence, even though they feel that earthly existence to be unbearable…. Their mournfulness and despair relate not to one or another, possibly adjustable or rectifiable, form or manifestation of human contact or institution, but to existence in general, and therefore they are not pinning their hopes on any remedy. ”
In the modern world melancholy has been accepted. Society no longer looks down upon melancholia as deviant. Indeed, society views it as a temporary condition, a state of mind or affairs, which for some is all-encompassing, yet still a mood. “Sadness was bribery…. [Melancholics] did not see that sadness was the world’s reward to them for giving up their muddling of the world…. Forgoing absolute autonomy and conforming to the given world, he could regard his own existence as sensible or senseless only on the basis of existing standards.” Yet, “depression is describable by its symptoms, while melancholia is at best only interpretable.” The conundrum, of course, is that “nothing disturbs a melancholic more than if we try to console him, or even just define his condition, with words.” Foldenyi suggests as basic symptoms “the touchstones of modern melancholia: metaphysical solitude, a compulsion for self-justification, suffering in self-enjoyment, a death wish merging into a fear of death, and a condition bordering on genius.” There was a focal point on death, both a fear of it and an impatience for it. “It is not a matter of being bored with this thing or that but of unending boredom with existence itself.” The external was ephemeral, subjective, and illusory, while the internal was burdensome. “The world itself was the main barrier to a true life, so they created a new world within the boundaries of the soul.” However, if the turn inward was painful, it was also the only thing that was true. “Being aware of the uniqueness and irreproducibility of an individual being, they found it ludicrous to refer to human communities. Without batting an eye, they accepted that they could count only on themselves, and therefore they seemed reckless- assuming that one perceives recklessness not just in the physical sense (for example, leaping across a crevasse) but also in an intellectual sense (for example, thinking fully through a hitherto-inconceivable thought for the first time.)”
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