The Anatomy of Melancholy

Subsection 7. A collection of other events that cause melancholy: the death of friends, losses, and so on.

In this labyrinth of incidental causes, the farther I wander, the more intricate I find the passage: “many windings”; and new causes, like so many side paths, offer themselves for discussion. To explore them all would be a Herculean task, fitter for Theseus. I shall follow my intended thread and point out only a few of the chief ones.

Among these, the loss and death of friends may claim first place. “Many grow sad,” as Vives aptly observes, “after pleasures, banquets and holidays.” Many become melancholy after a feast, holiday, merry gathering or enjoyable pastime if they happen to be alone, left to themselves without occupation or amusement, or without their usual companions. Some, merely at the departure of friends whom they will soon see again, weep and howl and gaze after them, as a cow lows after her calf or a child cries when returning to school after the holidays.

“As your arrival had cheered me, so your departure distressed me,” as Cicero wrote to Atticus: your coming was less welcome to me than your departure was painful.

Montanus, consultation 132, mentions a countrywoman who, on leaving her friends and birthplace, became grievously melancholy for many years; and Alexander of Tralles mentions another whose condition arose from her husband’s absence.

This is a common feeling among our good wives. If a husband stays away a day longer than arranged, or misses his appointed hour, they immediately fall to sighing and weeping: he has either been robbed or is dead; some misfortune or other must surely have befallen him. They cannot eat, drink, sleep or have peace of mind until they see him again.

If friends’ parting—mere absence—can have such violent effects, what will death do, when they must be separated for ever, never to meet again in this world? For the time being this is so grievous a torment that it takes away their appetite and desire to live, extinguishes every pleasure, and causes deep sighs and groans, tears and cries:

(O a mother’s sweet offspring, O my own blood, Alas, still warm … O tender flower.)

Howling, roaring and many bitter pangs—“the halls resound with lamentation, groaning and the wailing of women.” Through constant dwelling on it, grief sometimes goes so far that they think they continually see their dead friends before their eyes, “watching images,” as the Conciliator confesses that he saw his mother’s ghost continually appearing before him.

“What the unhappy long for intensely, they readily believe.” Again, again, again, that good father, that good son, that good wife, that dear friend occupies their thoughts: “the whole mind is fixed on this one thought,” all year long, as Pliny laments to Romanus: I seem to see Verginius, hear Verginius, talk with Verginius, and so on.

Without you, alas for wretched me, the lilies seem black, The roses pale; the hyacinth has no lovely blush, And neither myrtle nor laurel breathes any fragrance.