Darian Leader, Del III

Angående förlusten av en bok samt melankolikerns högst postmoderna dilemma:

"In some cases, what can be easily labelled 'depression' may conceal the fact that the subject has already died with their lost one. This may be a response not only to a real bereavement, but to the loss of a lover, a friend or even a political or religious idea. Several of the medieval medical texts on melancholia, in fact, mention the loss of one's books or library as a precipitating factor." (p. 173)

"We saw earlier how the work of mourning involves killing the dead. The mourner has the choice of killing the dead or dying with them. The melancholic choice here is to die with the dead. [---] Dying with the dead puts the melancholic in a very particular position: the world of the dead and the world of the living." (p. 172)

A melancholic subject is in two places at once, two entirely different spaces that cannot be superimposed. Critically, this sense of impasse is communicated. This means that part of the melancholic's struggle is to do with language, with finding a way to express the impossible. It isn't that the melancholic has got a problem and then wants to express it, but that wanting to express - and feeling that expression is blocked - is actually part of the problem. [---] Thus, at the heart of melancholia is a problem to do with language. Words and things seem radically separated for the melancholic." (p. 188-189)