Boethius, The Consolation 1.1

To pleasant songs my work was once given, and bright were all my labors then;

but now in tears to sad refrains am I compelled to turn.

Thus my maimed Muses guide my pen, and gloomy songs make no feigned tears bedew my face.

Then could no fear so overcome to leave me companionless upon my way.

They were the pride of my earlier bright-lived days.

In my later gloomy days they are the comfort of my fate;

for hastened by unhappiness age has come upon me without warning,

and grief has set within me the old age of her gloom.

White hairs are scattered untimely on my head,

and the skin hangs loosely from my worn-out limbs. . . .

— from Book 1, Poem 1 (tr W.V. Cooper)

We are all familiar with feeling sorry for ourselves, and how there is an odd sort of comfort in dwelling upon our sadness. I suspect I am more susceptible than many others to this weakness, first because I am by disposition already melancholic, and second because I have grappled with the Black Dog since my early twenties. Faced with pain, loss, or disappointment we may feel that there is no source of relief, and that there is no hope for healing. Left with the impression that we possess nothing else, we cling only to the disappointment itself, to the certainty we have been wronged, because the absence of any meaning is the only meaning we have left. The sole purpose apparent to us is the complete absence of purpose. It is the false security of being certain we are victims.

I do not know if all of us must endure a dark night of the soul, though I suspect we all do in our own way and in our own time, even if we never reveal it to others. Some of us may slip into it many times, some may find their way out quickly, some may never escape it at all.

I remember once coming across the most confident and strong-willed person I ever knew desperately crying in a hidden corner of a library. I offered what comfort I could, not by giving solutions but simply by pledging friendship. The moment passed, and it was never spoken of again, as if it had never happened. I don’t think another person ever knew of it.

I myself struggle with a crippling sadness on many days, and I resist the temptation to succumb to it. I feel it gnawing deep inside of me, though most people who know me would never suspect it. I was once described, much to my confusion, as the quiet happy fellow that smiles in the corner.

The Muses, the spirits of our creativity, have a way of magnifying our feelings, such that we feel even greater elation when we express our joy, even greater gloom when we express our misery. Music, poetry, or film will always give more weight to what is already in my heart. In modest doses this can be a helpful tool, but in excess it becomes a horrible burden. I can be swept back and forth between extremes of elation and dread, insisting at one moment I am the happiest man on earth, bemoaning at another that nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

I think I understand what Boethius is describing. His writing once mirrored his triumphs, but now it mirrors only his tragedies. He has lost everything he holds dear, and he finds he can only contemplate his sadness, even as his reflections merely draw him deeper into despair.

Is there any way to break out of such a destructive cycle of grief?

Written in 2/2015

Image: Boethius in prison, from an Italian manuscript (1385)