Ancient literature features many powerful narratives of madness, depression, melancholy, lovesickness, simple boredom, and the effects of such psychological states upon individual sufferers. Peter Toohey turns his attention to representations of these emotional states in the Classical, Hellenistic, and especially the Roman imperial periods in a study that illuminates the cultural and aesthetic significance of this emotionally charged literature. His probing analysis shows that a shifting representation of these afflicted states, and the concomitant sense of isolation from one's social affinities and surroundings, manifests a developing sense of the self and self-consciousness in the ancient world.
This book makes important contributions to a variety of disciplines including classical studies, comparative literature, literary and art history, history of medicine, history of emotions, psychiatry, and psychology.
Peter Toohey is Professor and Department Head of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Ancient literature features many powerful narratives of madness, depression, melancholy, lovesickness, simple boredom, and the effects of such psychological states upon individual sufferers. Peter Toohey turns his attention to representations of these emotional states in the Classical, Hellenistic, and especially the Roman imperial periods in a study that illuminates the cultural and aesthetic significance of this emotionally charged literature. His probing analysis shows that a shifting representation of these afflicted states, and the concomitant sense of isolation from one's social affinities and surroundings, manifests a developing sense of the self and self-consciousness in the ancient world.
This book makes important contributions to a variety of disciplines including classical studies, comparative literature, literary and art history, history of medicine, history of emotions, psychiatry, and psychology.
Peter Toohey is Professor and Department Head of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Melancholy, Love, and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature
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Overview
Ancient literature features many powerful narratives of madness, depression, melancholy, lovesickness, simple boredom, and the effects of such psychological states upon individual sufferers. Peter Toohey turns his attention to representations of these emotional states in the Classical, Hellenistic, and especially the Roman imperial periods in a study that illuminates the cultural and aesthetic significance of this emotionally charged literature. His probing analysis shows that a shifting representation of these afflicted states, and the concomitant sense of isolation from one's social affinities and surroundings, manifests a developing sense of the self and self-consciousness in the ancient world.
This book makes important contributions to a variety of disciplines including classical studies, comparative literature, literary and art history, history of medicine, history of emotions, psychiatry, and psychology.
Peter Toohey is Professor and Department Head of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472025596 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 03/11/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 394 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Peter Toohey is Professor and Department Head of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Read an Excerpt
Melancholy, Love, and Time
Boundaries of the Self in Ancient LiteratureBy Peter Toohey
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Copyright © 2004 University of MichiganAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11302-6
Chapter One
Sorrow without Cause Periodizing Melancholia and Depression
Borage and Hellebore fill two scenes Sovereign plants to purge the veins Of melancholy, and cheer the heart Of those black fumes which make it smart ... -ROBERT BURTON, The Anatomy of Melancholy
If we did not know that it was Orestes and had not noticed that he had a sword in his hand, then we would say that the male seated in the center of the representation in figure 1 was bored. That is the usual first reaction to the painting of Orestes by the Eumenides Painter on this fourth-century B.C.E. red-figure Apulian vase from the Louvre.
It is the faces. Start with Orestes. Look at his heavy, half-closed eyes and at the dissatisfied, tired, even unhappy expression on his face. Notice the slight drooping forward of his head. Look, too, at the pensive and indecisive way that his right index finger seems to scratch at his chin, and notice how his body is slumped slightly in lassitude (and is supported, almost, by his left hand). Compare the other expressions, those on the faces of Apollo and Artemis (to Orestes' left). Apollo's head droops at an angle comparable to that of Orestes; his eyes seem half-closed (with the same tired line beneath the eye as has Orestes). Most striking of all, his mouth is turned down in precisely the same doleful manner as is that of Orestes. Exactly the same points could be made of the expression of Apollo's sister, Artemis, as she strides onto the scene carrying her hunting weapons. Her mouth mirrors those of Apollo and Orestes. Her head droops slightly.
Boredom is out of the question. The rite being enacted in this picture would hardly allow that emotion. The rite is one of religious purification. It is explained to us by Aeschylus in the Eumenides at verses 42-43 and 448-52. There we learn that before the scene depicted on this pot takes place, Orestes has fled Argos. There he had killed his mother, Clytaemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, for their parts in the murder of his father, Agamemnon. Orestes had fled north to Apollo's shrine at Delphi, where the god would attempt to purify him of matricide. This is what we are about to witness, and this is how we should understand the scene. The blood of the piglet (once its throat has been cut, perhaps by the sword Orestes holds drawn) is intended to wash away the pollution of the matricide. Once this has been accomplished, the Furies, who rest traditionally asleep to Orestes' right, will stop their hounding.
Look at these Furies. Three of them are visible in this reproduction. One sleeps in what is almost a deathlike pose. The Fury supporting her, however, is awake and, most unexpectedly, exhibits a facial expression which closely resembles that of Orestes, Apollo, and Artemis. There is the same angle of droop of the head, the same half-closed eyes, and the same downturn of the mouth. The posture of the Fury in the bottom left of the picture is also note worthy. Observe that her right arm seems to support her head. It is positioned in a mode to match that of Orestes. Her face, almost fully turned to us, does not allow an easy registering of her emotional state. The posture of the arm suggests, however, that this Fury is subject to an emotion which matches those of Orestes, Apollo, and Artemis.
What, then, is the emotion depicted on the faces of these individuals? Just as surely as it is not boredom, it is not a serious solemnity designed for a religious occasion. It is far too oppressive and oppressed for this. Depression or, to put it more formally, melancholia seems a better diagnosis. But it is a melancholia or depression of a seemingly unusual type. Nowadays we tend to associate this state with a general slowing down of bodily and mental processes, with what is usually termed a psychomotor retardation. It is treated accordingly with chemical stimulants (Koukopoulos and Koukopoulos 1999). That understanding can hardly be what is called for here.
Orestes' face and much of his posture exhibit a patina of motor retardation. But there are clear signs of mental activity-of agitation. There is the sword in his right hand: that Orestes intends it for some form of violent use is apparent by the apprehensive index finger on his right hand. That the sword points in the general direction of the Furies suggests that it is intended for use against them,7 rather than as a symbol of his act of matricide (Shapiro 1994; Sommerstein 1989; Podlecki 1989), as a symbol of suicidal thoughts (see Euripides Iphigeneia in Tauris 974), or simply as a means for slitting the piglet's throat. It was probably wrong, furthermore, to describe Orestes' general posture as one suggesting lassitude. In the upper torso and stomach regions is a tautness, a tension, that contrasts with the doleful, slow facial set. The tension-even contradiction-between bodily posture and facial expression is evident elsewhere in this remarkable picture.
As I have already indicated, Artemis's face projects melancholy and lassitude. Her face contrasts, however, with the vigor of her body. She is striding toward Orestes-or at least toward Apollo. Not only is her right foot poised to swing firmly forward, but her haste has flattened her raiment against her legs and lower belly. Her garment billows backward in the draft created by her haste. The contrast between her hunting weapons and her facial expression is also startling. As for Apollo, the motion implied by the position of his left foot is far less hasteful, but it does speak of motion, movement, and perhaps an agitation belied by facial features. The Furies, too, capture this duality, this agitated melancholy, in the most alarming of manners. The two seated Furies are at rest. One sleeps. But we know (from Aeschylus and other sources) that these Furies will soon stir to create their mayhem and agitation. Their melancholy is offset by that of which we know they are capable. One final observation on this theme of agitation and fear needs to be made. The gleaming ball that decorates the picture just above and to the left of the piglet (which in its shape seems to mirror that of the navel stone behind Orestes) creates, with its swirling patterns (best viewed in color), the most unsettling of effects. It seems almost to mirror the conflict so animating this picture-between vigor and calm, between agitation and melancholy, between fear and stillness.
The question needs to be put again: what emotion is given form by these individuals, especially Orestes, on this pot? It is best described as an agitated form of melancholy, as an agitated depression. It is a state in which motor retardation, at least in the case of Orestes and the Furies, seems to betray considerable inner agitation and turmoil. The simultaneity of these apparently contrasting emotions requires emphasis here, for the condition should not be likened to bipolar depression, where mania alternates with depression. In the Eumenides Painter's rendition, the mania-or flight of thought, or anxiety-represents the internal state. Externally, the victim, Orestes, appears to suffer from extreme motor retardation.
Assistance with the conceptualization of Orestes' psychological state may well be had by comparing a graphic (and moving) photograph (fig. 2) of one of the patients of one of the great figures of the diagnosis and treatment of mania and depression, Emil Kraepelin. Kraepelin (1921, 106) designates this person as suffering from "manic stupor," a condition not unlike "depression with flight of ideas." In such cases, "the patients are usually quite inaccessible, do not trouble themselves about their surroundings, give no answer, at most speak in a low voice straight in front ... occasionally [there are] isolated delusions of changing content and utterance ... they [may] become lively, give utterance to loud and violent abuse, make a pert, telling remark amidst almost unrestrained laughter, jump out of bed, throw food around the room ..." Kraepelin seems to diagnose in such cases a contemporaneity, rather than an alternation of mania and stupor. So, in the photograph of Kraepelin's patient, corporeal rigidity and a downcast facial expression barely mask an inner agitation that is apparent in the tension in the shoulders and hands, in the hostility of expression, and in the bizarre headdress of twigs and torn-off leaves. The parallels to the combination of oppression and tension in the Eumenides Painter's Orestes is striking.
One final point will assume more significance as we proceed. The scene represented on this red-figure vase painting is a famous one within a very famous mythological sequence. For this reason its depiction is quite that which would be expected. The scene is important in another, less expected way. The purification represents the point at which we (and the painter) might expect Orestes to be cured of his melancholia and insanity. These have been caused by the guilt attached to his crime of matricide. The purification, like psychopharmacological therapy, will remove these.
Orestes is mad. That is the verdict of most ancient writers. They no doubt reflect the same tradition that underlies the agitated melancholy inspiring the depiction of this red-figure vase from the Louvre. Orestes' madness is given several names. Varro (first century B.C.E.) wrote a tract about him that termed the condition insania, a violent form of madness (Aulus Gellius 13.4.1). Some commentators suggest that Orestes was the victim of melancholia. This is the verdict of Cicero writing in the Tusculans (3.5) in approximately the same period, and by implication, it is that of Persius working a century later. Whether the verdict is that Orestes is insane or melancholic, however, the symptoms most stressed by these writers focus on Orestes' violence, on his delusory and angry fits, and on his extreme agitation. This is a psychological state mirrored by the violence, anger, and agitation of the Furies themselves. It is as if the Furies corporealize the inner agitation of Orestes. In these figures, depression is not at issue.
It is fascinating that the ambivalence, the unexpectedness, and the sophistication of the representation of the madness of Orestes on the Eumenides Painter's vase does not have its reflection within the contemporary Greek literary tradition. I suppose that it is simpler to represent Orestes' complex madness visually than it is in words. This thinning deserves illustration, for contemporary verbal representations of Orestes' madness involve a simplification of his mental state. This is nowhere more visible than in Euripides' remarkable and melodramatic play the Orestes, which was composed about fifty years before the Louvre pot. It dramatizes many of the events associated with this purification. These take place before Orestes has taken flight to Delphi, where the purification will take place.
A comparison of the Eumenides Painter's depiction of Orestes and Euripides' literary portrait of Orestes is instructive. It demonstrates the literary and discursive tradition's indifference toward (or we could say, its difficulties with) this emotion. In the remainder of this chapter, I intend to trace the long course that it took for this literary tradition to "catch up" with the insights exemplified by the Eumenides Painter's Orestes. Not until this happens does this condition seem comfortably to assume its place within what we might call the popular imagination.
Euripides' play begins with Orestes mad and being nursed by his sister, Electra. They are still in Argos, the scene of the matricide. The Argives, hostile to the crime, look set to condemn the brother and sister to death. Menelaus, Orestes' uncle who is returning from Troy to Sparta with Helen, is of no help. So mad Orestes and Electra, urged on by Orestes' grim friend Pylades, plan to kill Helen and to seize Menelaus's daughter Hermione as a hostage. Helen is mysteriously whisked away. They look set to slaughter Hermione unless Menelaus steps in to save their lives from the Argives. Then appears the god Apollo to impose a settlement: Orestes will be brought to trial at Athens and, after being freed, will marry Hermione and become regent of Argos. The purification is not mentioned.
Euripides' Orestes provides a sobering illustration of the inability or unwillingness of the literary tradition to represent melancholia in a truly complex manner. In Euripides' melodrama, although the sequence of the emotion of madness is vividly detailed, the illness has little of the ambivalence of the Eumenides Painter's depiction. Orestes' illness is "bipolar" in Euripides' play, in the sense that, according to Electra, it seems to oscillate between the poles of mad insanity and clearheadedness. So, speaking of the illness, she tells Orestes-and us too (vv. 253-54):
Alas, brother, your gaze is disordered And suddenly you become wild, when just now you were sane.
A more detailed description of Orestes' madness is provided in verses 34-45, where we learn more about his periods of comparative sanity.
Since then, wasted by his wild illness, This wretched Orestes, collapsed on his bed, 35 Lies still, yet his mother's blood drives him on With its Furies. I hesitate to call the goddesses Kindly Ones. They drive him out of his wits with fear. This is the sixth day since, of murder, Our dead mother's body has been purified by fire. 40 In this time he's taken no food to his mouth. Nor has he washed. Beneath his blanket, Hidden away, whenever his body is freed of the illness, He recovers his wits and weeps. Then from bed He leaps up quickly, like a colt freed from the yoke. 45
There is no evidence here of manic behavior alternating with profound depression and psychomotor retardation. Rather, a periodic delusory vision startles Orestes from his wits with fear (vv. 36-38), and in a manic fashion, he leaps up in reaction and rushes about like "a colt freed from the yoke" (v. 45). Fear produces the violent reaction. The passing of this terrifying vision seems to leave Orestes in a completely exhausted state (vv. 35, 43), so much so that he loses his desire for food (v. 41) and for maintaining personal hygiene (v. 42). This exhausted state in between the fits ought not necessarily to be linked with a polar depression. Exhaustion may resemble depression, but it is not at all the same thing. Even Orestes' weeping (v. 44) may be more innocent than it sounds (i.e., no symptom of an enervating sorrow): it might as well result from humiliation and frustration. This sequence and display of emotions has led at least one critic (Pigeaud 1981, 413) to diagnose Orestes' condition as epileptic. Certainly the violence of his fits might be confused with this, and certainly his exhaustion after the attack may resemble that of an epileptic. Whether his condition is epilepsy, madness, or melancholy matters little. What is important is that this condition is not bipolar.
The play offers many other descriptions of Orestes' sickness (termed a nosos at vv. 34, 43, 211, 232, and elsewhere). These seem to relate to three discrete phases of his illness-the fit itself, the period immediately after the fit, and a later period when Orestes has somewhat recovered. Orestes' condition is brought about by the gods (v. 31) and is best characterized as a mad fit or frenzy: at verses 227-28 it is a nosos manias, a "mad illness"; at verse 37 (and passim) it is a mania, a "frenzy." It can be a lyssa, a "mad rage" (vv. 224, 793, 325-26; at v. 845 it is a theomanês lyssa, a "mad rage brought on by the gods") or even the type of crazed frenzy that can be brought on by a gadfly bite (v. 791). These various descriptions best characterize the fit itself (vv. 44-45, 135, 227-28, 253-54), which can cause Orestes to rave, pant, and gasp (vv. 227-29) and to become prone to acts of violence (v. 268 ff.). These fits, as we have seen, are brought on by a delusion that is god-sent. Orestes imagines that he is actually seeing the Furies (others cannot see them) and that his sister Electra is a Fury. His delusion leads to ludicrous and melodramatic acts of violence (v. 268 ff.)
What happens after the fits? Euripides' play is quite detailed on this matter too. Orestes' hair is damp or matted (vv. 223-25, 387), he has foam in his eyes and on his lips (v. 220), and he tends to remain dirty and unwashed (vv. 42, 226). He is amnesiac (vv. 215 f., 277 f.). At times like this his exhaustion is such that he barely seems to breathe (v. 84), his vision becomes blurred (v. 224), and he loses his appetite (vv. 34, 41, 189) and wastes away (v. 34). His desire for movement is severely limited (vv. 42-43), and he seems close to death (vv. 200, 336) or even corpselike (vv. 82-83, 200). Sleep provides the only relief (vv. 211-15).
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
\rrhp\ \lrrh: Contents\ \1h\ Contents \xt\ List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1. Blurring the Boundaries of the Self Chapter 1. Sorrow without Cause: Periodizing Melancholia Chapter 2. Medea's Lovesickness: Eros and Melancholia Chapter 3. Seasickness: Boredom, Nausia, and the Self Chapter 4. Acedia: Madness and the Epidemiology of Individuality Part 2. Remapping the Boundaries of the Self Chapter 5. The Myth of Suicide: Volitional Independence and Problematized Control in the First Century c.e. Chapter 6. Time's Passing: Catastrophes, Trimalchio, and Melancholy Chapter 7. Passing Time: Hunting, Poetry, and Leisure Part 3. The Alienated Personality Chapter 8. The Mirror Stage: Hostius Quadra and the Alienated Self Appendix: Giorgio de Chirico, Time, Odysseus, Melancholy, and Intestinal Disorder with Kathleen Toohey Notes Bibliography Index \to come\Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Classical literature History and criticism, Psychology in literature, Alienation (Social psychology) in literature, Mythology, Classical, in literature, Depression, Mental, in literature, Melancholy in literature, Love in literature, Time in literature, Self in literature