The Vile Maze of Melancholy: A Hitchhiker's Guide

A Jounrey Through Melancholy
The Vile Maze of Melancholy: A Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Introduction

Herewith and hereafter I shall map a journey through melancholy’s vile maze.

The road is well-marked by tangled thickets, dark woods, deep pits, primrose paths, briar patches, cul-de-sacs and rocky roads.

I write as a hitchhiker because the journey is made with borrowed resources. My own wings are not suited for lofty flight. Weak knees impede my progress through difficult terrain and my vision is neither far-sighted nor insightful. I am no Lynceus; neither am I a Phaeton or an Icarus, foolish travelers who ignored the advice of their wise elders. I am Davus not Oedipus. I am no solver of riddles.

Like Dante, I need a Virgil to guide me, a Beatrice to inspire me.

I have found my Virgil: Robert Burton (1577-1640), clergyman, man-of-affairs, Oxford don and ‘by any known standard…regarded as one of the most learned men that every lived” (Bergen Evans). But his erudition did not protect him from shipwrecking his life on the jagged rocks of melancholy. In 1621, Burton published a tour de force The Anatomy of Melancholy, one of the most popular books of the age and one of the richest books in the English language (twenty per cent of which is written in Latin).

I shall begin now, hoping to find my Beatrice along the way.