A Case for World-Weariness: The Human Condition of Weltschmerz

Deep sadness about the inadequacy of our world seems to be the second stage of the coronavirus quarantine in this country. We seemed to have adapted to loss--loss of loved ones, jobs and income, and the life that we once took for granted. Yet recently riots and demonstrations protesting the latter have been in the forefront of the news as President Trump Tweets "Liberate Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia!" at the same time giving states specific guidelines to open up the country in phases approved by doctors and scientists. Citizens of these states and others have now declared their rights to hairdressers, nail salons, gyms, bowling alleys, stores and restaurants despite the growing number of cases. It's the consumer conspiracy.

And of course art always has a way of reflecting the mood of a people.

Conceived in 1880, Rodin's sculpture The Thinker was originally the crowning piece of the artist's work titled The Gates of Hell based on Dante's Divine Comedy and was first called The Poet. When it became immensely popular in 1904, it was enlarged in the garden of the Musee Rodin, installed outside the Pantheon in Paris and at the sculptor's home in Meudon on the tomb of Rodin and his wife in 1906. It is reminiscent of Dante himself, a free-thinking man grappling with his suffering through poetry. The sculpture, now known as The Thinker, shows a powerful figure lost in thought rather than a tortured soul.

So why has this amazing piece of sculpture become a celebrated work of art? When people imitate the subject's thoughtful position, what is it that they're attempting to communicate? What deep feeling have they intuited?

As you might have guessed, there's a word for it: weltschmerz, pronounced velt shmerts, and it means literally world weariness.

In the 1830s the word weltschmerz was coined by German writer Jean Paul as he described the poet Byron's sadness about life. This prevailing mood of melancholy was the keystone of the Romantic poets who expressed their long-suffering struggle for individualism and personal freedom in poetry.

The barometer for the spike in usage of the word weltschmerz is the country's level of strife and transition after a conflict marked by anxiety and frustration: WW I, the Spanish Flu epidemic, WW II, the Viet Nam War, the AIDS epidemic, 9/11,  the Iraq War, and now the Coronavirus Covid-19.

In Germany in the 1980s, weltschmerz was mentioned before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the UK experienced a period of weltschmerz after months of agonizing over Brexit. The despair that people the world over have felt about the environment, poverty, deforestation, health, security, and economic woes evokes shades of this word, but no one has come up with a better one. Angst? Ennui? They somehow miss the mark.

Today a spirit of melancholy has filtered through the quarantine and managed to infect a number of people who have not been able to adapt well, understandably so with good reason. The security of an income means taking care of not only oneself but also one's family, the most honored tenet of human society. When suddenly, through no fault of one's own, the ability to perform that treasured duty is taken away, melancholy inevitably sets in. Add massive sickness and death, and you have weltschmerz.

And now the question is, how do people get through this world-weariness, this weltschmerz, and will we learn from it and change our behavior? There most likely isn't a soul on the planet who hasn't thought about it and posed this question, but I'm adding three more ideas to the pile for your consideration:

     

1.  Try to develop tolerance for uncertainty and become more open to new challenges. Jung tells us the more comfortable we are with ambiguity, the more able to cope and feel contentment we will be.

2. Learn how to be alone, face yourself, and set aside time to invite introspection. While meditation is helpful, the point here is to allow thoughts about all aspects of your life to mill around in your brain. You can't learn who and what you are if you don't pay attention to yourself.

3. Recognize the needs of others and do something, even something small, to make someone's life better. Research tells us when we do something good for others, our old brain thinks we're doing it for ourselves, creating positive feelings.

Weltschmerz is a natural consequence of desperate times, but if we've learned anything, we know this: It's the hard times in life that make us better than we were.

Hobnobbing in the New Normal, or A Happy Birthday Shoutout to Shakespeare!

A good way to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday this coming Thursday, April 23rd is to hobnob with the people you love.

Uh, hobnob? What exactly is....?

Hobnob? Well, it's a good Lambent Literacy word that implies what we all crave right now during this Coronavirus quarantine, but it's also a word attributed to the coinage of the great William Shakespeare, one of hundreds of words he invented.

The origin of hobnob is Old English (habban--to have + nabban--not to have) and as two words, hab nab, the expression came into use some time between 1595 and 1605. The shortened version hab nab eventually became hobnob, which first appeared in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night in a conversation between Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek. The English of his day began using it not only in the context of  drinking together but also in mingling or associating casually with friends.

Although Shakespeare couldn't have predicted the Covid-19 of 2020, he knew firsthand what it was like to be quarantined in a pestilent epidemic in the 1590s and again in 1603. His only son Hamnet contracted the Bubonic Plague, spread by fleas on black rats, and died in 1596 at the age of eleven. In 1593, when the plague closed theatres and quarantined ships as well as victims of the disease behind doors marked with a red cross, Shakespeare wrote a long poem dedicated to his patron the Earl of Southampton called Venus and Adonis. He did what we're all doing now, engaging in alternative activities at home. And with the theatres closed perhaps he was also hobnobbing with his fellow actors of the King's Men, the troupe assembled under James I. Pubs were closed only to infected citizens. Unfortunately social distancing between 1590 and 1603 was limited, which may be why the plague returned in waves.

In 1603 at the height of the return of the plague, the dark tragedy of Othello was written. When the disease died down and the Globe Theatre reopened, the romantic Measure for Measure was produced, reflecting the sanguine change in the general mood of the public in London and its suburbs.

An interesting note here is that wealthier citizens relocated to their country homes away from London, the epicenter of the plague, to escape contagion. King James I, who had recently succeeded Elizabeth I, warned them of spreading the disease to the rest of the country. Right. No personal travel restrictions, just a warning. Ah,the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks to scientists and the age of information, we know better now. We can hobnob to our heart's content on our phones and internet: Face Time, Zoom, WhatsApp, Skype, and many potential sources that keep growing.

Shakespeare not only wrote plays and poems; he also coined over 1700 words, many of which we still use today. On this 456th birthday celebration, let us hobnob together in the safest way possible and drink a toast to the greatest writer who ever lived.

Chutzpah!

Americans are experiencing the greatest challenge since WW II. If my mother were still alive, bless her, she would say our pain was no doubt equal to the Great Depression and the war that followed. Yet because my family and I have not succumbed to the Covid-19 coronavirus and pray we do not, the most difficult burden for us has actually been fear and isolation as we remain quarantined. The enemy, invisible to the naked eye, ravages the bodies of our families and friends while wreaking havoc on our psyche.

Like the leaders and soldiers past and present that stood on the literal and political front lines for the safety and recovery of our nation, there is one group of people that continues to demonstrate the kind of grit and sinew, the incredible guts and fortitude that guiding a nation out of a monstrous disaster requires: our overwhelmed health care workers and all the people who continue to provide services that help us keep our heads and hearts together. I'll add postal and grocery workers, farmers and truck drivers, all of our essential workers to that list as well.

In the late nineteenth century, Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe introduced into American English a Hebrew (Aramaic) word that expresses a kind of audacious moxie that no other word can claim: chutzpah, pronounced hutspa. According to Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, chutzpah implies not only insolence or cheek in its temerity. It is spiritual audacity that finds a place of honor in Jewish religious thought. And yet people who are not Jewish have come to appreciate the word's unique strength of character as well. Oprah Winfrey's Chutzpah Awards are presented to women whose boldness has enabled them to perform amazing feats. Americans may not use it or spell it correctly, but the word chutzpah has taken its place in our vernacular when we are in dire need of a word with unequivocal meaning. And we are indeed in dire need.

How could we describe the people who go to work every day to save our lives, putting their own lives in jeopardy in this pandemic, with more precision than by crowning them with chutzpah.

It's an interesting word. The Jews believe the word chutzpah can connote a status of good or bad--acting out chutzpah to do something shameful or exhibiting chutzpah to do the right thing to avoid being shameful.

I have no doubt our healthcare workers demonstrate good chutzpah--the fierce-as-a-leopard kind. Still tired, they leave their homes and families, don gloves, masks, shields, and hazmat suits, and enter the hospital rooms of the critically ill and dying. It's a dangerous but also heart-wrenching job that often results in entering a room one morning to find their patient coded, doctors rushing to the room to begin immediate resuscitative efforts. Exhausted, face bruised from hours of wearing face gear, devastated as they watch a once healthy 32 year old man breathe his last alone, no family or friends at his bedside. I'm tearing up even as I write this. Are there really any words to describe how nurses, doctors, EMTs, and frankly anyone working in a hospital can face these challenges? I think I know one.

A dear friend is on his hospital's intubation team, and when he leaves the hospital after a long and exhausting shift, he showers, changes clothes, and returns to his family with anxiety, fearing he may spread the virus to his loved ones. He's not alone. This is the story of everyone in the field from service workers to doctors and nurses. Grit and sinew? Chutzpah.

Actually, if you think about the opposite (bad, some say) chutzpah that covers acts that are brazen, impudent, arrogant or insolent, then I would have to say yes, even this kind of chutzpah describes the ferocity with which these weary superheroes seem to tackle the beast.

People like me, who stay at home, order groceries, engage in FaceTime, WhatsApp and Zoom, bike or take solitary walks, bake far too many cookies, binge on movies and rekindle old hobbies or develop new ones, will be just fine in this age of new normal. Despite the fact that we will not witness the life we once knew any time soon, if ever, we will not only cope; we will endure. One recent study reported a return to "business as usual" as far away as 2022, but the experts generally agree that social distancing will continue for months to come and the traditional hand shake may become a tradition of the past. No matter the outcome, it is my hope that we will reflect on and cling to our common values. As Anne Frank wrote in her journal in her secluded hiding place, "In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart." Let us assume the chutzpah of Anne Frank, of our health care and service workers, and face the future with tenacity and good will and love for life and each other.

Our Journey to the Empyrean

No one will ever forget the spring of 2020 when the coronavirus Covid-19 sent 90 percent of the country and much of the world into isolating quarantine. Regardless of the underlying politics of the decisions that have been made each day, people are now sequestered in the middle of  a journey for a new normal--unemployment, isolation from families and friends, a sudden lack of supplies for hospitals as well as ordinary households, and serious illness and death. Many wonder if life will ever be the same again.

My husband Patrick and I watched Queen Elizabeth deliver her address to the UK today while the rest of the world also watched via various screens. She asked us to remember when she served in the military during WW II and followed her countrymen as they struggled through extremely hard times. Yet they survived to rebuild their lives--not only survived but came back strong. This is not to say they have forgotten. One doesn't forget such times, but this message from the Queen was clear to all who listened: find purpose in life, help each other, and work together to do whatever is necessary to conquer the enemy. 

As the pandemic spreads, the world has been exposed (pardon the pun) to a new vocabulary, new words and some old ones that we didn't expect to turn up in our daily conversations or news media: coronavirus, Covid-19, personal protective equipment (PPEs), social distancing, intubation, pandemic, and a host of others. We didn't choose to learn or to use this new vernacular. It was forced on us as we attempted to understand the unseen enemy. 

Since this blog is all about literacy, especially the beautiful words we use to communicate with clarity and precision, I'd like to introduce to you another word, one that implies hope and promise, possibly an antidote to our current feelings of depression or perhaps simply to our weary struggles with life right now . 

Empyrean

And it has a history that dates back to the Greeks--empyrios--fiery. But let's not stop here. There is so much more to this word.

In ancient cosmologies, heaven was the name given to the firmament--perhaps the sun filling the sky with its fiery tentacles. In later Christian literature, the Empyrean was the dwelling place, the throne of God. (I have no doubt early 18th Century Jonathan Edwards believed in a fiery God.)

In Dante's Paradiso (1307-1308), Dante ascends to the Empyrean where he sees the beautiful Beatrice and eventually he is also able to see God.

Today the word empyrean refers to the visible heavens, the firmament such as the one in this photograph. The adjective form is empyreal.

So, when would I ever use this word, you ask. Maybe never, but as with the other beautiful words in Lambent Literacy, it isn't so much the frequency of use but the meaning behind the words that encourages the reader to reflect, to grow in the way we view our lives, especially under duress.

Patrick and I have a garden that we visit every day. We have a bench that overlooks the entire landscape and that's where we sit, often with a cup of tea. The blue sky overhead is a canopy that envelops all below--the flowers, vegetables, our lemon and fig trees, the line of sugarberries, elms, and mulberries that the birds so happily planted for us. When I was little I thought God lived up there among the clouds beyond that canopy. As I grew older, I took on a more transcendental Jungian view: God is in me, His goodness in every thing He created. But as we often do, we've allowed the words firmament, heaven, Empyrean to be stand-ins. When we speak of God we often look up to the firmament even if we don't believe His throne sits anywhere up there. And that's okay. The visible helps us to accept the invisible.

So now you're wondering what all of this has to do with the Covid-19.

Well, it's about hope and promise. When you put it all together, it's possible to see the beauty and goodness around you, maybe that you haven't acknowledged in a while, that can strengthen your faith. Faith in your country, faith in humanity, faith in nature, faith in the people who love you, faith in yourself. It's another journey, one to the Empyrean in our minds, one that can save us and perhaps even change us so that what we choose to take from this new normal will mold us into kinder, more compassionate, more introspective human beings with a new plan for living well.

So, if you think you might want to add this word to your vocabulary, here's how to pronounce it: 

Em  pa  re'  an (Each a is a schwa sound and the accent is on re.)

It isn't over yet. Be safe and well. Be kind to one another.