Mourning and Melancholia at the End of Nature

Remainders ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Ronda
Keyword(s):  
Long Poem ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ecological Relations ◽  
Mourning And Melancholia ◽  
Mourning Process

This chapter begins with a consideration of the development of the discourse of the “end of nature” and its implications for understanding ecological relations. Pointing to the elegiac dimensions of this discourse, the chapter turns to Juliana Spahr’s long poem “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache” as an example of a literary exploration of the consequences of this conceptual absence. The chapter draws on the Romantic philosophy of Schiller as well as more recent psychoanalytic accounts of elegy and mourning to argue that the operations of elegy become the subject of investigation in Spahr’s work. “Gentle Now” serves as a representative eco-elegy that dwells in melancholia rather than moving toward the completion of the mourning process. The chapter closes with a consideration of a more recent poem by Spahr, co-written with Joshua Clover, that investigates the affective and political limits of melancholy as a response to present conditions.

scholarly journals Grief as a Cognitive Metaphore in “Manchester by the Sea”

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-53
Author(s):  
Nina А Tsyrkun
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Emotional Attachment ◽  
Film Composition ◽  
Positive Vector ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mourning And Melancholia ◽  
Musical Accompaniment ◽  
Negative Form ◽  
Mourning Process

The article is devoted to analysis of Kenneth Lonergans Manchester by the Sea (1916) through the category of so-called cinema of grief dealing with the problems of enduring trauma of loss of the dear ones. The gist of the topic is institutionalization of the concealed ego of the protagonist through the death of the Other. Thus the treatment concerns sorrows of the trauma which undergoes either positive dinamic of its overcoming, or a negative form of embedding into the loss. The author assumes, that in Lonergans film the second case is visually articulated, anyhow logically drawing to the positive vector disclosing the concealed identity of the protagonist. The arc of the hero is traced on three levels, that is the film composition, psychological discordance of the protagonist and the soundtrack as a certain subtext of the picture. The study is based on the sources discussing the problem in question: Ziegmund Freuds Mourning and Melancholia, in which Freud argued that mourning comes to a decisive end when the subject severs its emotional attachment to the lost one, and on the works by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Trk about mourning disorder (introjection versus incorporation). The composition of the film is structured around flashbacks explaining the reasons for a pervasive cloud of shame, sadness, and guilt that follows the protagonist in the mourning process. In his architecture of grieving the filmmaker actually describes the protagonists melancholia in Freudian terms as a painful depression without any concern towards the outside world. He is characterized by a loss of the ability to love, reticence in any activity and decreased self-criticism and craving for punishment. Anyhow the musical accompaniment not only illustrates the depressed protagonist state of mind but also - with Handels Messiah at the climax point predetermines the finale with his crucial changing.

scholarly journals Midlife - Maturity and Creativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-149
Author(s):  
Valeria Egidi Morpurgo
Keyword(s):  
Severe Trauma ◽  
Ageing Process ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
Generational Transmission ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Process Loss ◽  
Specific Difficulty ◽  
Mass Murders ◽  
Development Of Tolerance ◽  
Mourning Process

Abstract Midlife is an age of crisis according to many authors, as it sets the subject up against the inevitability of the ageing process, loss, and the limitedness of life. Most authors view midlife as an age of crisis where everything can be staked back into the game. But some other authors have highlighted how midlife is characterised by a new burst of creativity, by new object investments and by a redressing of the balance between narcissism (which decreases) and object investments for which a larger share of the libido becomes available. The Author thinks that it seems worthwhile to make a distinction between midlife, as indicative of a phase of life, and maturity, construed as a psychic position which is relatively independent of age. Therefore, she explores the creativity area of the trans-generational transmission, quoting some psychoanalysts and poets, and introducing a clinical example of the mourning process for losses inherent in the passing of time and the development of tolerance capacities to deal with a change in the balance between the libido and narcissism. Then the Author affords a specific difficulty in transmitting a trans-generational mandate, when the treatment concerns cases of severe trauma, like victims of collective trauma and mass murders. What can be transmitted in these cases if the psychological concatenation between the generations is interrupted and breaks down? How can it be linked up again? The story and re-elaboration by Henri Parens is brought as an example to be studied and commented.

“Sir Francis Drake in the Spanish Literature of the Armada”

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-249
Author(s):  
Cristina Vallaro
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Literature ◽  
New World ◽  
Lope De Vega ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
The Subject

Abstract The subject of this paper is Sir Francis Drake, Elizabeth I’s most famous privateer, and his role in Spanish texts composed throughout the Armada campaign of 1588. A well-known seaman in both the New World and Europe, Drake had a significant impact on Anglo-Spanish relations, acquiring a reputation as a violent and ambitious man determined to serve his country to the death. The fight against him was conducted not only at sea, but also in literature where he was decried as Spain’s worst enemy. In poems by Juan de Castellanos, Góngora, Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Drake is portrayed as the worst enemy Spain had ever faced. Lope de Vega’s La Dragontea, a long poem about Drake’s last voyage, shows how his fearless and arrogant nature, and his disdain for danger, were not enough to enable him to avoid death and to prevent Spaniards from ridiculing him and his fate.

Emerson and the Bardic Tradition

PMLA ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 662-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
NELSON F. ADKINS
Keyword(s):  
Long Poem ◽  
Original Plan ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Ideal

Emerson saw in the art of poetry a process veiled in mystery, and no one fully acquainted with his writings is unaware of the manifold ways in which Emerson approached that mystery in an attempt to explain it. As early as 1838, he began what he hoped would be a long poem on the poet and his art. Occasionally returning to the composition over a period of some years, in the end he left only fragments of his original plan. The essay entitled “The Poet”, published in 1844, integrated more fully many of the conclusions to which Emerson had come on the subject. But still he was apparently unsatisfied. Further early experiments in suggesting the function of the poet are revealed in four poems in the 1847 collection of verses. In “The Problem”, “Saadi”, and “Bacchus” Emerson viewed in different ways the origin of the artist's and poet's power. And in the last poem, entitled “Merlin”, he turned back, for the embodiment of the ideal poet, to the ancient bard.

Lycophron on Io and Isis

1986 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 472-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Gwyn Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
The Subject

The Hellenistic poet Lycophron, who wrote tragedies and assembled the texts of comedy under Ptolemy Philadelphus for the Library at Alexandria, was probably also the author of the long poem Alexandra, which deals mainly with the theme of Troy. Recent studies by Stephanie West have appreciably advanced our understanding of this rather difficult poet. For the passages where Lycophron surprisingly presents phases of Roman history she cogently adduces a later poet, a ‘Deutero-Lycophron, …to be sought among the artists of Dionysus in southern Italy’. A theme in Graeco-Egyptian mythology is the subject of the present paper; and one of my main points is that recent Egyptological research has a clear bearing on one of the problems.

scholarly journals Large Landholdings in Brabant: Unravelling Urbanization Processes in the City-Territory

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-131
Author(s):  
Guillaume Vanneste
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scale Properties ◽  
Ecological Relations ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City ◽  
Fragmentation Processes

Through the observation of land property (le foncier) and, specifically, large landholdings, this research aims to take a fresh look at urbanization and urban planning in the Belgian Walloon Brabant Province. In contrast with most Belgian urban studies that tackle the issue of sprawling urbanization through small-scale parcels, fragmentation processes and individual initiatives, this investigation complements recent research on estate urbanization by examining large-scale properties and how they played a role in the city-territory’s urbanization during the second half of the 20th century. Large landholdings in Walloon Brabant are remnants of 18th century territorial dominions inherited from nobility and clergy, progressively dismantled, reorganized or maintained as result of the urbanization dynamics integral to the reproduction of modern and contemporary society. The village of Rixensart is the subject of a series of these transformations. By mapping the de Merode family’s large landholdings in the south of the commune and analyzing the allotments permit, we retrace urban transformations and the reordering of social and ecological relations through changing land structure. The palimpsest notion is used as a tool to unravel the set of actors involved in urbanization dynamics and to highlight the socio-spatial transformations and construction of recent urbanization. The profound transformations taking place in Walloon Brabant today present an opportunity to reflect on its future, and questions regarding landed estates suggest potential for tackling the city-territory’s greater systemic challenges.

scholarly journals Miłosz Wobec Conrada w Traktacie Moralnym / Miłosz and Conrad in the Treatise on Morality

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 489-512
Author(s):  
Jolanta Dudek
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
World War ◽  
Communist State ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War ◽  
Secret Agent ◽  
Second World

Summary It would appear that Czesław Miłosz’s Treatise on Morality - one of whose aims was to “stave off despair” - was largely inspired by the writings of Joseph Conrad. That Miłosz had no wish to draw his readers’ attention to this is perfectly understandable, given Conrad’s particularly low standing in the eyes of communist State censors. This long poem, which extols human freedom and pours scorn on socialist realism (together with its ideological premises), is one of Miłosz’s best known works in his native Poland, where it was published in 1948. The Treatise on Morality may well have been inspired by three of Conrad’s essays that were banned in communist Poland: ‘Autocracy and War’ (1905), ‘A Note on the Polish Problem’ (1916) and ‘The Crime of Partition’ (1919). After the Second World War, translations of these three essays were not available to the general Polish reader until … 1996! Conrad’s writings helped Miłosz to diagnose Poland’s political predicament from a historical perspective and to look for a way out of it without losing all hope. An analysis of the Treatise on Morality shows that only by reconstructing the Conradian atmosphere and context - alluded to in the text - can we fully grasp all the levels of the poet’s irony, which culminates in a final “punchline”. Apart from allusions to The Heart of Darkness and the brutal colonization of the Congo, the fate of post-war Poland is also seen through the optic of those of Conrad’s novels that deal with the subject of depraved revolutionaries: Nostromo (1904), TheSecret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911). Conrad’s ideas for ways to fight against bad fortune and despair are suggested not only by his stories Youth (1902) and Typhoon (1903) - and by his novels The Nigger of the “Narcissus” and Lord Jim - but also and above all by his volume of memoirs entitled A Personal Record (1912), in which he relates his yearning for freedom as the young, tragic victim of a foreign empire. In an article entitled ‘Joseph Conrad in Polish Eyes’ and published in 1957 - on the hundredth anniversary of Conrad’s birth - Miłosz writes that, through his writings, Conrad fulfilled the hopes of his father (who gave him the name “Konrad”) and that although “the son did not want to assume a burden that had crushed his father, he had nevertheless become the defender of freedom against the blights of autocracy”

Haunted spaces: trauma, mourning, and melancholia in the HIV epidemic in France

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Brian Troth
Keyword(s):  
Gay Men ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
Hiv Epidemic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
Mourning And Melancholia

Several AIDS films produced in France in the last five years approach the subject of AIDS in a memorialized fashion, resulting in the contemporary stakes of the epidemic going unheard, as noted by François Berdougo and Gabriel Girard. In this essay, this phenomenon is read as a cultural trauma and melancholia for gay men. Through Freudian trauma theory and Derridean notions of hauntology, this article argues that gay men are unable to escape the specters of the AIDS epidemic. First, the article explores the way haunting is invoked through public health campaigns, reactions to the epidemic, and cultural productions. Second, it engages with the 2016 film Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau to assert that while contemporary discourse is still marked by spectres of trauma, today’s advances in medicine and understanding of the disease allow for certain sexual behaviors to be practiced without fear of contamination and with the resolution of melancholia. Théo et Hugo accomplishes this through a reversal of the Orphic tragedy, here reread as an invitation to live life after AIDS.

scholarly journals Az abúzus nyelve

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcell Szabó
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
Social Language ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
The Subject

According to the reviews of Szilárd Borbély’s long poem Hosszú nap el (1993), the monotonous and repetitive characteristics of the work are based on the imitation of lingual sense-making and its unconscious processes. Most of the interpretations influenced by the ravaged and flawed side of the text have been dissolved in the varios trophes (stuttering, incantations etc) of orality and social language use that refer to the performative function of language. The analysis of the poem’s allegorical structure highlights that the identity of the speaking self is unsettled by the repetition encoded in the trophe and by a temporality which ties the birth of the subject to the witholding of speech. In my paper I attempt to reveal the patterns of a manipulated and ”overcoded” language behind the syntactical and rhetorical infractions of Borbély’s poem.

Words

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1320-1327
Author(s):  
Colbert Searles
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
The Subject

THE germ of that which follows came into being many years ago in the days of my youth as a university instructor and assistant professor. It was generated by the then quite outspoken attitude of colleagues in the “exact sciences”; the sciences of which the subject-matter can be exactly weighed and measured and the force of its movements mathematically demonstrated. They assured us that the study of languages and literature had little or nothing scientific about it because: “It had no domain of concrete fact in which to work.” Ergo, the scientific spirit was theirs by a stroke of “efficacious grace” as it were. Ours was at best only a kind of “sufficient grace,” pleasant and even necessary to have, but which could, by no means ensure a reception among the elected.

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