In what is an adaptation from his forthcoming book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Eric G. Wilson has written an interesting piece for The Chronicle Review entitled, ‘In Praise of Melancholy‘ in which he writes:

Melancholia, far from a mere disease or weakness of will, is an almost miraculous invitation to transcend the banal status quo and imagine the untapped possibilities for existence. Without melancholia, the earth would likely freeze over into a fixed state, as predictable as metal. Only with the help of constant sorrow can this dying world be changed, enlivened, pushed to the new.

These are not metaphysical claims, not some New Age claptrap. On the contrary, these statements are attuned to the sloppy world as it simply appears to us in our everyday experience. When we, with apparent happiness, grab hard onto one ideology or another, this world suddenly seems to take on a static coherence, a rigid division between right and wrong. The world in this way becomes uninteresting, dead. But when we allow our melancholy mood to bloom in our hearts, this universe, formerly inanimate, comes suddenly to life. Finite rules dissolve before infinite possibilities. Happiness to us is no longer viable. We want something more: joy. Melancholia galvanizes us, shocks us to life.

Melancholia pushes against the easy “either/or” of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the “both/and.” It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to the ability to play in the potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds’.

While Wilson’s word is not the whole truth, is he not onto something important for theology … and for theologians? Reminds me of a piece I once wrote for Princeton Theological Review on art, tragedy and sacramentality in Ibsen, Forsyth and Dostoevsky.