MDMD(5): Four kinds of melancholy.

[Michel Ryckx]

Having made up some posts on MDMD(5) I think not very good, here's part
one of the Scraps and Left-Overs of MDMD(5).  Not very elaborate; but
many posts aren't these days.  And it's about a novel.

The parenthesis at page 74 describes Robert Waddington's melancholy as
not black, but "lighter and faster, tho' not less lethal, than the
traditional Black Sort".  A kind of leucocholy?

I've always liked the word 'lethal' for of its origins: from Greek
'lanthanomai', to hide, verbal root 'lat-' or 'let-'; the Lethe river is
the river that makes forget.  And I am still making the connection in
the first place with hiding or forgetting, and in the second place with
'deadly'.  For what it's worth.

The Doyenne's description of the Melancholy surrounding Mason, though
we're not certain it is her speaking; in any case the way he is
considered by the settlers, is the second melancholy.

There's a third one: Cornelius being presented as torn by the 'steadfast
Gravity of Africa', a continent pulling and pulling, and probably
immobilizing him.

And, perhaps, theres an authorial melancholy as we see different echoes
of the Sixties decade of the previous century ('Strawberry Hill' and the
'Beetle Variety')

Michel.