I LOVE this poem that introduces Rober Burton's massive and digressive masterpiece, <u>The Anatomy of Melancholy</u>. It is in two voices, as it were, the even stanzas each responding thematically and symmetrically to the previous odd. Each rough-iambic tetrameter stanza ends with a trochaic couplet. The return of these trochees, and their emphatic rhythm, gives something of a feeling of the inevitable, of a cycle that cannot be escaped. This poem anticipates what we would call "bi-polarity", but what he calls "melancholy" (the black bile), which refered to a more complex phenonemenon than merely "sadness," as we are wont to use it. This was written in the early 1600s. (I have put spaces between stanzas for clarity, and lazily used dashes in place of indentation.)

Anyway it also put me to thinking about other poems that well illustrate, with their forms or their images, such abstract and difficult to describe things as emotions and mental states. Thoughts?

The Author's Abstract of Melancholy
Dialogikos (in two voices)

When I go musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things fore-known
When I build castles in the air,
Void of sorrow and void of fear,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
--All my joys to this are folly,
--Naught so sweet as melancholy.

When I lie waking all alone,
Recounting what I have ill done,
My thoughts on me then tyrannize,
Fear and sorrow me surprise,
Whether I tarry still or go,
Methinks the time moves very slow.
--All my griefs to this are jolly,
--Naught so sad as melancholy.

When to myself I act and smile,
With pleasing thoughts the time beguile,
By a brook side or wood so green,
Unheard, unsought for, or unseen,
A thousand pleasures do me bless,
And crown my soul with happiness.
--All my joys besides are folly,
--None so sweet as melancholy.

When I lie, sit, or walk alone,
I sigh, I grieve, making great moan,
In a dark grove, or irksome den,
With discontents and Furies then,
A thousand miseries at once
Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce,
--All my griefs to this are jolly,
--None so sour as melancholy.

Methinks I hear, methinks I see,
Sweet music, wondrous melody,
Towns, palaces, and cities fine;
Here now, then there; the world is mine,
Rare beauties, gallant ladies shien,
Whate'er is lovely or divine.
--All other joys to this are folly,
--None so sweet as melancholy.

Methinks I hear, methinks I see,
Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy
Presents a thousand ugly shapes,
Headless bears, black men, and apes,
Doleful outcries, and fearful sights,
My sad and dismal soul affrights.
--All my griefs to this are jolly,
--None so damn'd as melancholy.

Methinks I court, methinks I kiss,
Methinks I now embrace my miss.
O blessed days, O swee content,
In Paradise my time is spent.
Such thoughts may still my fancy move,
So may I ever be in love.
--All my joys to this are folly,
--Naught so sweet as melancholy.

When I recount love's many frights,
My sighs and tears, my waking nights,
My jealous fits; O mine hard fate
I now repent, but 'tis too late.
No torment is so bad as love,
So bitter ot my soul can prove.
--All my griefs to this are jolly,
--Naught so harsh as melancholy.

Friends and companions get you gone,
'Tis my desire to be alone;
Ne'er well but when my thoughts and I
Do domineer in privacy.
No gem, no treasure like to this,
'Tis my delight, my crown, my bliss.
--All my joys to this are folly,
--Naught so sweet as melancholy.

'Tis my sole plague to be alone,
I am a beast, a monster grown,
I will no light nor company,
I find it now my misery.
The scene is turn'd, my joys are gone,
Fear, discontent, and sorrows come.
--All my griefs to this are folly,
--Naught so fierce as melancholy.

I'll not change life with any king,
I ravisht am: can the world bring
More joy, than still to laugh and smile,
In pleasant toys time to beguile?
Do not, O do not trouble me,
So sweet content I feel and see.
--All my joys to this are folly,
--None so divine as melancholy.

I'll change my state with any wretch,
Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch;
My pain's past cure, another hell,
I may not in this torment dwell!
Now desperate I hate my life,
Lend me a halter or a knife;
--All my griefs to this are jolly,
--Naught so damn'd as melancholy.

,


[This message has been edited by Tom Jardine (edited January 26, 2005).]

It is a striking poem. I'm melancholy, though, that someone as prodigiously talented as Burton obviously was included the reference to "black men" in such an outrageously bigoted context without even a blink. I realize, of course, he was a product of his place and time 400 years ago. I also realize that if we were to go back and expunge all the great writers who ever made a racist remark--whether consciously malicious or not--our list of remaining permitted authors of any race or creed might be a pretty short one. This in itself would make an interesting thread for discussion--how we go about appreciating the craft and insights of gifted artists while still taking them to task for their horrible misperceptions, and the damage caused by those.

As to poems about melancholic cycles and other states of mind, I think Keats explores some of the same territory. Not just the "Ode to Melancholy," but all the great odes. Alicia, for me "To a Nightingale" and "To Autumn," read back-to-back, give much the same sense of the ups and downs of a depressive cycle that you've pointed out in Burton's poem. Are depressed writers like Keats (and, say, Dickinson) better able than others to convey the ups as well as the downs because they are more sensitive to both frames of mind?

Dear Bruce,

that is an interesting observation... I'm not entirely sure that "racism" can be applied the way we use it to an Englishman in 1611. That is, as a systemic, internalized, and institutionalized belief in racial superiority/inferiority, etc.

And actually, Burton is quite forward-thinking. He doesn't seem to hold any belief in racial inferiority that I can discern. (And has very "progressive" attitudes towards women, by the way, seeing them very much as human beings, with complex needs for their own happiness, including intellectual stimulation .) His book is about unhappiness and the human condition. Thus, he is appalled at slavery, and the Spanish treatment of American Indians and Africans as beasts of burden. Indeed, as he does not refer to black Africans as black men in his prose, but as African negroes, I am not entirely convinced that "black men" here in the poem even IS racial--perhaps it is black figures of men, black shapes, what have you. He does not seem to find Africans threatening or frightening in the book. And the list here is of hallucinations and bugbears, not real things he might encounter. (OK, apes are real things, but not anything he would encounter in England. Whereas there were people of African descent, however few and far between, in England.)

I have been thinking about the line, though, particularly about the headless bears. A headless bear appears in another, very different, poem about madness. I wonder if there could be any connection?

The Mad Gardner's Song

Lewis Carroll

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
"At length I realise," he said,
"The bitterness of Life!"

He thought he saw a Bufffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister's Husband's Niece.
"Unless you leave this house," he said,
"I'll send for the Police!"

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that it cannot speak!"

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
"If this should stay to dine," he said,
"There won't be much for us!"

He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
"Were I to swallow this," he said,
"I should be very ill!"

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
"Poor thing," he said, "poor silly thing!
It's waiting to be fed!"

He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said:
"The nights are very damp!"

He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
"And all its mystery," he said,
"Is clear as day to me!"

He thought he saw an Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
"A fact so dread," he faintly said,
"Extinguishes all hope!"

This is great! Hurray for absurdity.

Apropos the "Mad Gardener's Song," I once did an imitation (I don't think you can "parody" nonsense verse) which I post here, apologetically, to serve as a foil for the real thing that Alicia just posted. Writing this made me appreciate how hard it is to turn such an easy form into something absurdly inspired the way LC did.


THE MAD GARDENER'S SEQUEL
with apologies to Lewis Carroll

He thought he saw a particle
Inside a molecule:
He looked again, and found it was
A quark upon a stool.
"To doubt my physics," he proclaimed,
"You'd have to be a fool."

He thought he saw a candidate
Proclaim the honest truth:
He looked again, and found it was
A little girl named Ruth.
"I am delirious," he said,
"From losing my front tooth."

He thought he saw an angry frog
Consume a passing fly:
He looked again, and found it was
A piece of apple pie.
He said, "That damn amphibian
Eats better food than I."

He thought he saw the sky fall down
And splash inside a lake:
He looked again, and found it was
A melting winter flake.
"I thought I'd save the world," he said.
"Please pardon my mistake."

He thought he saw an army ant
On leave from its platoon:
He looked again, and found it was
A raisin on his spoon.
"I criticized the cook," he said,
"But now I'll change my tune."

He thought he saw a noisy crow
Consume a pachyderm:
He looked again, and found it was
An ordinary worm.
"It's wise," he said, "to disbelieve
What you cannot confirm."

He thought the river had run dry
From splashing on the shore:
He looked again, and found it was
A puddle on the floor.
"This means," he said, "I cannot trust
"My eyesight any more."

He thought his wife was kissing him
As he slept in the car:
He looked again, and found it was
His own unlit cigar.
"My dear," he said, "you seemed so near,
But now you seem so far."

He thought he saw the fallacy
Of every vaunted proof:
He looked again, and found it was
His own colossal goof.
"Forgive," he said, "the impudence
That led me to this spoof."

"Black" need not be a racial epithet in Burton: up to the eighteenth century if someone is desribed as black or yellow, it often refers to hair colour. Not likely here, i agree, but equally black was associated with a melancholic temperament (see Nerval's El Deschidado, with his "soleil noir"): a cause of melancholy was believed to be an excess of black bile, and a "black", lowering countenance went with it.
The Anatomy is one of my favourite books; it may have got Johnson up two hours early, but in our modern, idler age, it has often kept me in bed reading it. I first came across The Anatomy in my teens, when one of the characters in a Victorian novel remarks: "Hand me the Burton's anatomy and leave me to my abominable devices.". However, I can't recall the novel: does anyone know?

Wonderful!

Burton AND Carroll.
Only on Eratosphere!

Now--I realize this is a dreary commonplace,
but someone above mentioned that parodying
nonsense verse was pointless (was it Roger?),
and yet . . . that "Double Rule of Three
has me intrigued. Can some Martin Gardner-like
scholar out there suggest some elucidation,
probably of a mathematical/logical character?
Carroll teases and teases us toward sense--sometimes
scary sense. Whoever writes The Great Book
on him has my undying appreciation.

Just thought I'd ask.

We have at least one mathematician on board. Svein? Double rule of three?