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Posted Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:56 pm...
Melancholy Pleasures
Author: Kirk Johnson
In his book The English Garden: Meditation and Memorial, David R. Coffin mentions a poem entitled The Pleasures of Melancholy, by Thomas Warton Jr. I did a websearch and found this poem on a webpage. The following excerpt is a good introduction to the pleasures of melancholy.
Ye youths of Albion's beauty-blooming isle,
Whose brows have worn the wreath of luckless love,
Is there a pleasure like the pensive mood,
Whose magic wont to soothe your soften'd souls?
O tell how rapturous the joy, to melt
To Melody's assuasive voice; to bend
Th' uncertain step along the midnight mead,
And pour your sorrows to the pitying moon,
By many a slow trill from the bird of woe
Oft interrupted; in embow'ring woods
By darksom brook to muse, and there forget
The solemn dulness of the tedious world,
While Fancy grasps the visionary fair:
These are delights unknown to minds profane,
And which alone the pensive soul can taste.
The taper'd choir, at the late hour of pray'r,
Oft let me tread, while to th' according voice
The many-sounding organ peals on high,
The clear slow-dittied chaunt, or varied hymn,<BR. ecstasies,
And lapp'd in Paradise.
Thomas wrote this poem in 1745 at the tender age of seventeen and it reminds me of what I was like as a teenaged art student. I thought that I couldnt be creative unless I was ready to cut off an ear, so I cultivated depression. For me, playing with depression was about as real as Marie Antoinette playing at being a milkmaid, but it did give me some insight into the dangers that the pleasures of melancholy can pose for people who are more inclined towards depression than I am. I came to the conclusion that the Romantic Movements influence on the arts was unhealthy because it encouraged artists to develop mental and emotional problems. I still feel that way, but I am beginning to wonder if it might be healthy to walk through a gloomy forest when you are feeling a bit depressed. Maybe it is good to indulge the feelings that Thomas expressed when he wrote the following:
Let others love soft Summer's ev'ning smiles,
As list'ning to the distant water-fall,
They mark the blushes of the streaky west;
I choose the pale December's foggy glooms.
Then, when the sullen shades of ev'ning close,
Where thro' the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam
The dying embers scatter, far remote
From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof
Resound with festive echo, let me sit,
Blest with the lowly crickct's drowsy dirge.
Then let my thought contemplative explore
This fleeting state of things, the vain delights,
The fruitless toils, that still our search elude,
As thro' the wilderness of life we rove.<BR.
Is it possible for a garden to be too sunny and extroverted? Most of us live in our gardens; they arent just places that we visit when the mood srtikes, so I wonder if we need gardens which can accommodate and reflect all of our moods.
I live out in the forest on 15 acres. My house and cultivated garden are in a clearing of two or three acres, but the rest of the property is forest, marsh, and meadow. While visitors tend to focus on the cultivated garden, I experience the forest as part of the garden. My usual daily walk takes me through the forest along a road which leads down to the meadow in a small valley. The property was logged off over 50 years ago and the second growth forest is starting to have the atmosphere of a cathedral. After crossing the sunny meadow, I reenter the forest and walk alongside a small stream until I near the highway. A small footbridge crosses the stream and leads to steps which I have carved out of the steep hillside. At the top of the steps is a path which leads me through my bamboo garden and into the cultivated garden.
I dont really need to create a place for melancholy pleasures because my daily walks lead me through a variety of environments, so one of them is bound to be in synch with my feelings, but how can a small suburban garden fit a full range of moods?
If your garden has an area where the shade is too deep for flowering plants, it may just needs a bench for you to sit on while you think deep thoughts.
I know someone who has an antique gravestone in their garden; this might make some people think about their own mortality, but it makes me think about vandalism. I suppose that the futility of trying to create a beautiful garden in a world where graveyards are vandalized might be classified as a melancholy pleasure. Warton may have seen things that way when he wrote the following:
Yet feels the hoary Hermit truer joys,
As from the cliff, that o'er his cavern hangs,
He views the piles of fall'n Persepolis
In deep arrangement hide the darksome plain.
Unbounded waste! the mould'ring obelisk
Here, like a blasted oak, ascends the clouds;
Here Parian domes their vaulted halls disclose
Horrid with thorn, where lurks th' unpitying thief,
Whence flits the twilight-loving, bat at eve,
And the deaf adder wreathes her spotted train,
The dwellings once of elegance and art.
Here temples rise, amid whose hallow'd bounds
Spires the black pine, while thro' the naked street,
Once haunt of tradeful merchants, springs the grass:
Here columns heap'd on prostrate columns, torn
From their firm base, increase the mould'ring mass.
Far as the sight can pierce, appear the spoils
Of sunk magnificence! a blended scene
Of moles, fanes, arches, domes, and palaces,
Where, with his brother Horror, Ruin sits.
Many eighteenth century owners of landscape gardens tried to introduce these joys into their gardens by erecting artificial ruins, but an artificial ruin is a folly. I can recall visiting a scout camp as a child; we were led on a hike to a graveyard which seemed to be filled with nineteenth century outlaws. I was filled with suitable feelings of horror, but when I discovered that it was just headstones without graves, hiking to the graveyard seemed like a waste of time.
I suppose that my garden might induce genuine feelings of melancholy in some people because when one of my cats dies, I plant a tree on their grave. A pet graveyard with gravestones would be much better than an artificial ruin, but it is a bit too morbid for my taste.
If you wanted to introduce melancholy into your garden, how would you go about it?
Author: Kirk Johnson
In his book The English Garden: Meditation and Memorial, David R. Coffin mentions a poem entitled The Pleasures of Melancholy, by Thomas Warton Jr. I did a websearch and found this poem on a webpage. The following excerpt is a good introduction to the pleasures of melancholy.
Ye youths of Albion's beauty-blooming isle,
Whose brows have worn the wreath of luckless love,
Is there a pleasure like the pensive mood,
Whose magic wont to soothe your soften'd souls?
O tell how rapturous the joy, to melt
To Melody's assuasive voice; to bend
Th' uncertain step along the midnight mead,
And pour your sorrows to the pitying moon,
By many a slow trill from the bird of woe
Oft interrupted; in embow'ring woods
By darksom brook to muse, and there forget
The solemn dulness of the tedious world,
While Fancy grasps the visionary fair:
These are delights unknown to minds profane,
And which alone the pensive soul can taste.
The taper'd choir, at the late hour of pray'r,
Oft let me tread, while to th' according voice
The many-sounding organ peals on high,
The clear slow-dittied chaunt, or varied hymn,<BR. ecstasies,
And lapp'd in Paradise.
Thomas wrote this poem in 1745 at the tender age of seventeen and it reminds me of what I was like as a teenaged art student. I thought that I couldnt be creative unless I was ready to cut off an ear, so I cultivated depression. For me, playing with depression was about as real as Marie Antoinette playing at being a milkmaid, but it did give me some insight into the dangers that the pleasures of melancholy can pose for people who are more inclined towards depression than I am. I came to the conclusion that the Romantic Movements influence on the arts was unhealthy because it encouraged artists to develop mental and emotional problems. I still feel that way, but I am beginning to wonder if it might be healthy to walk through a gloomy forest when you are feeling a bit depressed. Maybe it is good to indulge the feelings that Thomas expressed when he wrote the following:
Let others love soft Summer's ev'ning smiles,
As list'ning to the distant water-fall,
They mark the blushes of the streaky west;
I choose the pale December's foggy glooms.
Then, when the sullen shades of ev'ning close,
Where thro' the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam
The dying embers scatter, far remote
From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof
Resound with festive echo, let me sit,
Blest with the lowly crickct's drowsy dirge.
Then let my thought contemplative explore
This fleeting state of things, the vain delights,
The fruitless toils, that still our search elude,
As thro' the wilderness of life we rove.<BR.
Is it possible for a garden to be too sunny and extroverted? Most of us live in our gardens; they arent just places that we visit when the mood srtikes, so I wonder if we need gardens which can accommodate and reflect all of our moods.
I live out in the forest on 15 acres. My house and cultivated garden are in a clearing of two or three acres, but the rest of the property is forest, marsh, and meadow. While visitors tend to focus on the cultivated garden, I experience the forest as part of the garden. My usual daily walk takes me through the forest along a road which leads down to the meadow in a small valley. The property was logged off over 50 years ago and the second growth forest is starting to have the atmosphere of a cathedral. After crossing the sunny meadow, I reenter the forest and walk alongside a small stream until I near the highway. A small footbridge crosses the stream and leads to steps which I have carved out of the steep hillside. At the top of the steps is a path which leads me through my bamboo garden and into the cultivated garden.
I dont really need to create a place for melancholy pleasures because my daily walks lead me through a variety of environments, so one of them is bound to be in synch with my feelings, but how can a small suburban garden fit a full range of moods?
If your garden has an area where the shade is too deep for flowering plants, it may just needs a bench for you to sit on while you think deep thoughts.
I know someone who has an antique gravestone in their garden; this might make some people think about their own mortality, but it makes me think about vandalism. I suppose that the futility of trying to create a beautiful garden in a world where graveyards are vandalized might be classified as a melancholy pleasure. Warton may have seen things that way when he wrote the following:
Yet feels the hoary Hermit truer joys,
As from the cliff, that o'er his cavern hangs,
He views the piles of fall'n Persepolis
In deep arrangement hide the darksome plain.
Unbounded waste! the mould'ring obelisk
Here, like a blasted oak, ascends the clouds;
Here Parian domes their vaulted halls disclose
Horrid with thorn, where lurks th' unpitying thief,
Whence flits the twilight-loving, bat at eve,
And the deaf adder wreathes her spotted train,
The dwellings once of elegance and art.
Here temples rise, amid whose hallow'd bounds
Spires the black pine, while thro' the naked street,
Once haunt of tradeful merchants, springs the grass:
Here columns heap'd on prostrate columns, torn
From their firm base, increase the mould'ring mass.
Far as the sight can pierce, appear the spoils
Of sunk magnificence! a blended scene
Of moles, fanes, arches, domes, and palaces,
Where, with his brother Horror, Ruin sits.
Many eighteenth century owners of landscape gardens tried to introduce these joys into their gardens by erecting artificial ruins, but an artificial ruin is a folly. I can recall visiting a scout camp as a child; we were led on a hike to a graveyard which seemed to be filled with nineteenth century outlaws. I was filled with suitable feelings of horror, but when I discovered that it was just headstones without graves, hiking to the graveyard seemed like a waste of time.
I suppose that my garden might induce genuine feelings of melancholy in some people because when one of my cats dies, I plant a tree on their grave. A pet graveyard with gravestones would be much better than an artificial ruin, but it is a bit too morbid for my taste.
If you wanted to introduce melancholy into your garden, how would you go about it?
If you cant explain it simply, you dont understand it well enough.-- Albert Einstein
Blessings Bright and Dark,
