Spleen - is it sadness or apathy?

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Our mood is subject to constant change. We are influenced by the people with whom we communicate, and circumstances, and many other factors. Ups and downs alternate. There are so-called biological rhythms. In a general sense, the blues is a reduced mood. This concept should be distinguished from depression, and from melancholy, and from sadness, and from grief. Let's try to consider the nuances of these emotions.

First of all, you should pay attention to the duration of the condition and its causes.

For example, sadness and grief, as a rule, are provoked by circumstances: loss, separation, death of a loved one. The duration of this period is different for everyone, but it is still possible to clearly determine when it began, and note when a person begins to recover. They also differ in intensity of experiences. It is sometimes believed that the blues is a subdepressive state. That is, there is no clinically pronounced disease, but there is a long-term decrease in tone, mood, emotionalbackground, and this may indicate that something is wrong with mental well-being. The British call this state of spleen.

French and Italians - melancholy. By the way, national differences in the interpretation of emotions are extremely interesting. Remember the famous lines: "… the Russian melancholy took possession of him little by little …"? It is no coincidence that an epithet is used here, indicating the national mentality.

In Japanese culture, the concept of "mono no avare" has long existed. As a rule, it is translated as "the sad charm of things." In fact, of course, the feeling itself is not unique to the Japanese. In Russian culture and poetry, one can often find the expression "an aching feeling, pleasure." Remember what emotions you experience when looking at a beautiful landscape, inhaling the aroma of a freshly cut meadow, listening to your favorite music? The feeling that beauty is transient, that complete unity with nature, immersion in sounds is impossible… In part, this emotion is akin to nostalgia.

Another thing is melancholy and melancholy. It is the absence of the ability to enjoy, to enjoy. Nothing pleases, rather annoying. People tire, everything seems boring and insipid, comprehended and tested a long time ago. There is no freshness in feelings. And, for example, melancholy, which is akin to the concepts of "spleen", "despondency", is perceived by us differently: it is a kind of bright sadness, nostalgia for the beautiful.

The shades of meanings contain a lot of important indications of the peculiarities of the nationalcharacter, and differences in the strength and intensity of experiences.

Of course, all people have a lot in common, but each of us puts our perception into understanding the state in question. Much of our emotional background is due to both climate and natural phenomena. For example, for a Russian person, the blues is a seasonal decrease in mood. As a rule, it is associated with rainy, gray, languid days, with low skies and hopelessness.

For the British, spleen is a slightly phlegmatic state, which is also associated with climate features: fogs, high humidity. And in the south of Europe, for example, the impact of special winds on a person is widely known. Foehn and sirocco affect not only animals, children and weather-dependent people. They cause changes in the psyche, irritability, anxiety, depression. Because of such winds, the condition of patients worsens.

It is worth turning to poetry in order to better understand the peculiarities of the national experience of emotions. For example, for Russian poets, the spleen is, rather, not sadness or sadness, but apathy. As in the poem of the same name by N. Ogarev: "There are days when the soul is empty." Or P. Vyazemsky: "I involuntarily wait for something. I'm vaguely sorry for something." It is uncertainty and a feeling of boredom, unreasonable dissatisfaction with life and oneself - the main property of the blues.