Thanks to Tomek, my Texting co-host, for turning me on to twentieth century British poet Stevie Smith. Although Ms. Smith’s work was dismissed as “little girl poetry” by the staid British literary establishment of her day, her influence on younger contemporaries like the American poet Sylvia Plath is undeniable, and it’s even possible that John Lennon had in mind the title of Smith’s first collection of poetry, A Good Time Was Had By All, when he wrote the lyrics to the Beatles’ psychedelic classic “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” (which includes the line “a splendid time is guaranteed for all”). Smith’s most well-known bit of versification is probably “Not Waving but Drowning,” but I personally prefer her poetic exorcism of depression “Away, Melancholy,” which I have chosen as the text for this week’s “Defense of Poesy.” It took me seven takes to get the timing and cadence right, but I’m pleased with my performance of the poem—which I had to recite in 60 seconds or less as per the guidelines for YouTube Shorts. Press play above to hear my speed-reading delivery and follow along below:
Away, melancholy, Away with it, let it go. Are not the trees green, The earth as green? Does not the wind blow, Fire leap and the rivers flow? Away melancholy. The ant is busy He carrieth his meat, All things hurry To be eaten or eat. Away, melancholy. Man, too, hurries, Eats, couples, buries, He is an animal also With a hey ho melancholy, Away with it, let it go. Man of all creatures Is superlative (Away melancholy) He of all creatures alone Raiseth a stone (Away melancholy) Into the stone, the god Pours what he knows of good Calling, good, God. Away melancholy, let it go. Speak not to me of tears, Tyranny, pox, wars, Saying, Can God Stone of man's thoughts, be good? Say rather it is enough That the stuffed Stone of man's good, growing, By man's called God. Away, melancholy, let it go. Man aspires To good, To love Sighs; Beaten, corrupted, dying In his own blood lying Yet heaves up an eye above Cries, Love, love. It is his virtue needs explaining, Not his failing. Away, melancholy, Away with it, let it go
One of these days I’ll have to watch Glenda Jackson’s portrayal of Smith in the 1978 film Stevie, and maybe I’ll even read one of the poet’s novels (she wrote three of them apparently), but in the meantime, as I reflect on my experience with “Away, Melancholy,” I can’t help wondering whether there is something inherent in the British character which makes it especially susceptible to the psychological lows associated with the humor caused by an excess of black bile. After all, Robert Burton wrote an entire book on the topic, national icon Winston Churchill was supposedly afflicted by the condition (perhaps due to a feeling of guilt over his war crimes?), and Led Zeppelin even wrote a song about it:
Admittedly, Page and Plant probably hoped to make a musical connection between the “black dog” which plagues the Brits and the “blues” of Black America—thereby implying a kind of universality of the experience of depression—but as I may have noted elsewhere Morrissey and Marr seem to bring it all back home in their emphasis on the specifically British nature of the melancholic state. Revel in the exhibitionistic plaints of Moz, he who, though of Irish blood, claims to have an English heart:
(I will note parenthetically that I always assumed The Smiths took their name from Ionesco’s play The Bald Soprano, but is it possible that they were just overly enthusiastic fans of Stevie Smith’s poetry? Well I wonder.)
Of course, the “black dog,” the “blues,” or whatever one chooses to call it, may be experienced by anyone at all. But it does strike me that the Germanic or Nordic peoples more generally—and not just the Anglo-Saxons—may be particularly prone to bouts of depression. In my YouTube short I employ imagery from the 1893 version of the painting Melankoli by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, who struggled all his life with mental health issues (including, interestingly, BPD or Borderline Personality Disorder). And before choosing the more colorful artwork of Munch for my video, I had considered using German artist Albrecht Dürer’s famous engraving Melencolia I, which features a goddess who appears downcast and gloomy indeed:
And was it not the psychological equivalent of a sable colored canine which bit the Dutchman Van Gogh and infected him to the point that he would hack off his ear?
How about the Swedes? Are the ravings of Strindberg not indicative of a kind of Swedish “black dog”? And what are we to make of the stark cinematic broodings of Ingmar Bergman, the auteur responsible for films such as Torment, Crisis, Music in Darkness, Through a Glass Darkly, and Hour of the Wolf? Behold the face of Death from The Seventh Seal, brainchild of a manic depressive insomniac:
Continuing our tour of Scandinavia, we must think also of the melancholic soliloquies which the Anglo-Saxon Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Hamlet the Dane. The sweet prince does not seem too cheery about the rottenness in the state of Denmark when he utters these lines, for example:
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of the world!
And let us not forget Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, whose “Depression Trilogy” includes the apocalyptic psychological thriller Melancholia, starring Kirsten Dunst as the inconsolable Justine.
I realize the above speculations would probably have been better suited to inclusion in my travelogue Postcards from the Nordics, but it’s too late for that now. I’ll therefore close by saying that if you are ever tormented by the “black dog” yourself, Dr. Will prescribes laughter, for as noted in the Book of Proverbs: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” With that in mind, I submit for your amusement Chris Parnell’s ode to the aforementioned KD on SNL:
And please help me manage my own melancholia by liking, sharing, and commenting on this post. Away with it, let it go!