Black Square – Kasimir Malevich (1915)
In this darkest time of the year, missing the sun and long, light evenings, my mood dips and I feel like hibernating. The classic symptoms of SAD which I have had since childhood. These light deprived days and our frequent leaden skies, remind me of that couplet from one of Baudelaire’s Spleen poems:
Quand le ciel, bas et lourd, pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l’esprit gémissant, en proie aux longs ennuis.
Looking over some of the Greek poems I have studied over the past year, I came across this one by Odysseas Elytis from his collection Maria Nefeli. I find he is often obscure and difficult to understand, but this short poem has the directness of everyday language and seems to speak out of a personal experience of depression. It offers no great insight or comfort, other than his own observation of sadness. It seems to me that Elytis may also have had SAD and that is why the sun is such a potent symbol in his work, and maybe why he described himself as ‘iliopotis’, a sun drinker.
Good morning, sadness
Hello, sadness
Good morning, sadness
the insect that nestles inside me
and watches all night long for me to open my eyes…
Initially I have forgotten you:
I look at the lines on the ceiling –
but suddenly you invade
my consciousness.
You come and make my morning coffee taste bitter
and see off the least pleasure
of my hand on the window catch
you bring troubles to the bath water
provoke the first unpleasant telephone call
you are a monster
a miniature Minotaur that demands food
and is kept alive by the least thing…
Eat, eat, Minotaur:
this is flesh, not air
if you carry on this way, there’ll be nothing left.
Hello, sadness
Good morning, sadness
you have installed yourself permanently inside us
you are worse than viruses and bacilli
philosophers examine you through a spectroscope
you have given rise to an exceptional literature.
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