In Defence of Melancholy
English professor Eric G. Wilson takes this a stage further in his book Against Happiness (2008) in which he defends melancholy as a condition. Few people accept a melancholic mood as a potentially beneficial state of mind and the entire self-help industry seems to be geared towards its banishment. Yet Wilson contends that sadness “sparks grand thought, sublime inspiration and vital creativity”, prompting people to “turn away from superficiality and to look deeper into the meaning of things”.
“Melancholia is the profane ground out of which springs the sacred,” is his rather florid take on it (he is an English professor after all), adding that such lows keep the “mind questing, questioning and alive”.
Those that strive ...
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