Melancholy: a motif in European art and literature?
Lille, Espol, 2-10-2013
Exhibitions, plays …
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In Paris, Grand Palais 2005
Aspects of Melancholy in Contemporary Art in 2008
The Melancholy Metropolis, 2013, Arnhem
Melancholy?
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Cognitive and affective aspects
Part of our human condition
State of Mind
Atmosphere: solitude, darkness
Cf. Caspar David Friedrich, Lars von
Trier
Different definitions
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Depression
Mal du siècle/ Weltschmerz/Sehnsucht
Tristesse, Douleur, Sufferings, Sorrows
Maladie de l’âme, Malady
Le ‘spleen’
L’ennui
Hüzün
Saudade, Fado …
Hüzün
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ORHAN PAMUK: ISTANBUL
According to Orhan Pamuk, the
melancholy of Istanbul is huzun,
a Turkish word whose Arabic root
(it appears five times in the Koran) denotes a feeling of
deep spiritual loss but also a hopeful way of looking at life,
“a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is
negating.”
For the Sufis, huzun is the spiritual anguish one feels at not
being close enough to God; for Saint John of the Cross, this
anguish causes the sufferer to plummet so far down that his
soul will, as a result, soar to its divine desire. Huzun is
therefore a sought-after state, and it is the absence, not the presence, of huzun that causes
the sufferer distress. “It is the failure to experience huzun,” Pamuk says, “that leads him to
feel it.” According to Pamuk, moreover, huzun is not a singular preoccupation but a
communal emotion, not the melancholy of an individual but the black mood shared by
millions. “What I am trying to explain,” he writes in this delightful, profound, marvelously
original book, “is the huzun of an entire city: of Istanbul.”
Pamuk and Melancholy
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Museum of Innocence
The Innocence of Objects
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The culmination of decades of omnivorous collecting, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence
in Istanbul uses his novel of lost love, The Museum of Innocence, as a departure point to
explore the city of his youth. In The Innocence of Objects, Pamuk’s catalog of this remarkable
museum, he writes about things that matter deeply to him: the psychology of the collector,
the proper role of the museum, the photography of old Istanbul (illustrated with Pamuk’s
superb collection of haunting photographs and movie stills), and of course the customs and
traditions of his beloved city. The book’s imagery is equally evocative, ranging from the
ephemera of everyday life to the superb photographs of Turkish photographer Ara Güler.
Combining compelling art and writing, The Innocence of Objects is an original work of art and
literature.
Melancholy and French literature
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Shared memory and French literature
‘Nerval’s walks’
‘Gautier’s Melancholic Strolls’
‘Flaubert ou la maladie partagée’
– Cf. Sarag Moussa, « Orhan Pamuk lecteur des écrivains voyageurs français à
Constantinople au XIXe siècle »
19th
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G.Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Bovarysm
‘le romancier tisse un réseau d’images pour cerner
ce vide’; a feeling of ‘emptiness’
Cherishing lost illusions: suicide
Cf. G. de Maupasant: ‘souffrance de vivre …
seconde vue … force et misère … je souffre; ‘sufferings’
Cfr. Oblomov; in Russian literature; Oblomovism
Sentimentalism
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Cfr. J.J. Rousseau,
Les confessions, Les rêveries d’un promeneur
solitaire, Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse
B. Constant, Adolphe: Mal du siècle
‘J’ai voulu peindre dans Adolphe une des
principales maladies morales de notre siècle,
cette fatigue, cette incertitude, cette absence de force,
cette analyse perpétuelle, qui place une arrière-pensée à côté
de tous les sentiments et qui les corrompt dès leur naissance’
-’Accorder le paysage à son humeur
personelle’ =landscape of our own sensations
-Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers;
-Weltschmerz
Homer vs. Ossian
‘Was mich am meisten neckt sind
die fatalen bürgerlichen Verhältnisse
-’Das bestärkte mich in meinem Vorsatz,
mich künftig allein an die Natur zu halten. Sie allein ist
undendlich reich und sie allein bildet den grossen Künstler’.
Fin de siècle
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Knopff
The ‘water-cities’
Bruges-la-Morte by G. Rodenbach
G. Minne
F. Knopff
19th/20th century writers and the city
• -Individualism, modernity, citylife
• Cf. Baudelaire: Les fleurs du mal; ‘Spleen’
Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l’esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que l’horizon embrassant tout le cercle
Il vous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits.
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-cf. W. Benjamin
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-cf. S. Hertmans: Entre villes
– Focus on Paris
Modernism
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Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu
J. Joyce: Ulysses
Bely: Petersburg
Musil: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
Fernando Pessoa and Tabucchi
Postmodernism
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M. Duras; ‘la douleur’
Cf. J. Kristeva, Soleil Noir
S. Beckett
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Essay on Proust,on time, memory, suffering,
art as apotheosis of solitude
The voice in the silence and
darkness expressing the eagerness to stop …
One hundred years after his birth,
Paris presents the complete œuvre of Samuel
Beckett, one of the European writers who best
expressed the malady of the 20th century
Contemporary writers
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‘On voudrait cerner le sujet de la mélancolie et on est
cerné par lui’;
– Cfr. Magazine littéraire, aug. 2002
Reading is an exercise in melancholy:
– Reflection
– Imagination
Scandinavian literature
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Jens Christian Grondahl
– Cf. I. Bergman
Scandinavian literature
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Cf. ‘Wallander’, ‘The Killing’
Cf. Mary Cosgrove
The success of Scandinavian crime novels by the likes of Stieg Larsson and Henning
Mankell has prompted a flood of books in the same mold.