"Don't Worry, Be Happy!"

Melancholia seems to be getting more press these days. I think this is a healthy reaction. Most of the delusional clamor we hear exhorts us to be happy, cheerful, perky. It is shameful to be otherwise. Look at what you have and how well it shines. Though, Native Americans measure a person's wealth by the number of friends one has. The rest of North America has a different yardstick.

Roy Strong's "The Renaissance Garden in England" comments on the influence of melancholy on the devlopment of landscape gardening. The Renaissance inherited two traditions from the humour, melancholy: the cold dry Galenic and the Aristotelian that is favourable to imagination and intellect. During the early 16th century this positive melancholy was revived and transformed by Marsilio Ficino by fusing the notorious excessive black bile and Plato's divine madness (I'm partial to the Dionysian). This became a big hit in Elizabethan England. The men in black with large floppy hats preferred the shade of the greenwood tree to the brightly lit formal gardens. The dark naturalistic glade was the place to be, well, melancholy.