UOnce upon a time, melancholy was in fashion. Romantic poets and English aristocrats, with a hint of snobbery, had their portraits painted in melancholy poses, with a disconsolate gaze lost in the void. In the Middle Ages it was believed that melancholy people were born under the sign of Saturnthen considered the farthest planet from earth, associated with cold, darkness and also creativity and imagination.
Melancholy is not depression
And today? Quite the contrary. We classify the melancholy as depressed, we offer them bottles of anti-sadness pills and mood stabilizers. Request: we must necessarily be happy when the world goes in a completely different direction? Alain de Botton, irreverent and often counter-current writer, in Variety of Melancholy (Guanda) has taken on the task of re-evaluating an emotion “which is not anger, is not bitterness, is not pessimism, nor cynicism”, going so far as to declare: “The position of the melancholy is ultimately the only sensible one“.
When in 2008, in London, he founded School of life, a collective of psychologists and philosophers that deals with well-being, he was thinking above all to emotional intelligence, an antidote to artificial intelligence, but then he found that blues deserve attention. There are many: religious, loving, sentimental, adolescent, personal, geographical, artistic, and she has decided to explain why they should be understood, lived without shame. Difficult speech, in times of obligatory happiness to flaunt on social media, selfies with grimaces and retouched photos to hide wrinkles and moods …
“On a large scale” – warns de Botton – “an entire culture can fall victim to a form of denied pain, disguised as good humor, engaging in the celebration of vigor and success and leaving aside what in our lives is vulnerability. “.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, circa 1817, oil painting on canvas by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made in 1818 and kept at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg
An anxiety that gives value to creativity
Someone notices this, even in the apparently frivolous world of fashion. The stylist Gilberto Calzolari, champion of upcycling (the nylon quilt used to cover the motorcycles transforms into a poncho-cape, the paratrooper’s backpack into a tight skirt) gives an interesting speech about his fashion, “a melancholy romanticism towards what will no longer be, but also a feeling of energy “.
He sees the value of melancholy. Many, on the other hand, discovered it during the lockdown, accompanied by a sense of bewilderment, so they struggled to accept it. Not everyone took it like Ramin Bahrami, Iranian pianist, great Bach interpreter: “Melancholy is remembering the beauty we have experienced, the happy moments. And this does not cause sadness, on the contrary … The Melancholy album has to do with the historical moment we are experiencing. For a long time I had felt a melancholy state that was harboring within mehe went on, it seemed to me that I lived in isolation even before the lockdown, in a world where frenzy, conflicts and tensions were king ».
A feeling also for celebrities
Even some pop stars immerse themselves in melancholy without problems. In My Dear Melancholy (2018), and Weeknd he tells about his exes (in particular Selena Gomez and Bella Hadid), his introspective journey, the sense of loss, the disappointments. Then he became too famous and too rich, a sign that certain anxieties are really liked. In fact we are surrounded by melancholyfrom the malmostoso commissioner Rocco Schiavone to the lawyer Tommaso Melancholic (also in the name) created by Diego De Silva, the next protagonist of a fiction that Rai cares very much about, to arrive at Batman by Robert Pattinson, with Bruce Wayne sadly living his superhero mission, his status as a billionaire orphan, his inability to be understood in the twilight and corrupt Gotham City. Almost too much for a comic.
Kenneth Branagh’s wonderful, autobiographical Belfast is an ode to melancholy (Oscar for Best Original Screenplay). In a limpid black and white, he recalls his childhood, the riots of the 60s, the diaspora of the Irish from Ulster with the eyes of little Buddy, and dedicates the film “to those who left, to those who remained and to those that are lost. “
Benedetta Porcaroli: melancholy is for me
Artists are probably better equipped. Benedetta Porcaroli, talented actress that shines in our tiny star system (his latest film is The Shadow of the Day), admits: “Melancholy is my favorite feeling, I think they choose me for this ». She says she was an introverted child, with a melancholy trait: she doesn’t fight him, even if she would like to star in a brilliant comedy. And, as ten years ago, when, thanks to Susan Cain’s essay, the introverts were re-evaluated, the hour of the melancholy might arrive.
We could be reconciled with some of the many melancholies listed by Alain de Botton. There is that of Sunday evening, connected to the reflection on the finished day off and on the Monday work that perhaps we do not love, and there is that of the journey, «When in the most anonymous places, airports, stations, we are given the opportunity to meet sides of our character that we have repudiated. We are not forced to pretend ».
A rainy day, a movie, a song can give rise to this feeling. But melancholy is not depression
Melancholy is that joy of feeling sad
And there is the one that holds the couple together. The room of affectionate memories Elisa Forte tells it, at the theater in Rome with Modern Love – # 3 ° episode, Melancholy Light by Francesco Proietti: «It takes you looking at the sea, in moments of solitude. You are facing a problem, and then you remember that there is an important person in your life who you miss and you can’t wait to talk to them. It unites couples who have been together for a long time, and in that sensation they find themselves again. It is a wind, a positive, beautiful melancholy. When you don’t try it anymore (and happens to the protagonists of the show) something breaks, and in fact they decide to break up, while remaining friends. Not that breaking up is that simple… ».
For Elisa Forte, melancholy is a room where she enters in search of fond memories, like that of her grandmother: «I used to do things with her, cultivate flowers, walk by the sea. She lived for a long time, 92 years, and the thought of our moments together warms my heart “. But perhaps the best definition is by Victor Hugo: «Melancholy is the joy of feeling sad», A difficult feeling to grasp that arises from fantasies about a love that has never been lived or a dream that has remained in the drawer. We should not be afraid of it. Indeed, suggests Alain de Botton, “we could organize melancholy parties, social occasions with a paradoxical name: no more ostentatious happiness, only particularly vulnerable and sincere people sitting to confess how difficult it is to be human”.
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