On Depression

When I was younger and green under my shirt I went alone to Scandinavia to study poetry. I learned many things in solitude—things superfluous and sometimes divine. One night walking on a bridge in Helsinki with sleet driving into my face I met an intoxicated woman who said she was a vampire. She asked for a cigarette. I gave her the whole pack. “It is a privilege,” I said, “to give a pack of cigarettes to the queen of blood.” Then I went my own way. “If there’s anything sorrier than a vampire, its one who smokes,” I said half aloud. I knew, even in my early twenties, that “half aloud” was my vocal register for depression—more than writing, more than shared words. Half aloud was where my depression lived. Sometimes I spent whole weeks alone. I whispered often. One night I discovered a poem that perfectly captured my brand of depression by the Swedish-Finnish poet Edith Sodergran who lived and wrote in the early years of the 20th century. Here’s her poem:

Vierge Moderne

 

I am not a woman, I am neuter.

I am a child, a tomboy, and a rash decision,

I am a laughing streak of scarlet sunlight—

I am a net for all ravenous fish,

I am a toast in honor of all women,

I am a step toward chance and ruin,

I am a leap into freedom and the self—

I am the blood’s whisper in men’s ears,

I am the soul’s fever chill, the desire and denial of the flesh,

I am an entrance sign to a new paradise,

I am a flame, searching and bold,

I am a body of water, deep but daring up to the knees,

I am fire and water in an earnest union on free terms…

 

—translated from the Swedish by Malena Morling and Jonas Ellerstrom

Its safe to say that poetry has always been the place of rash decisions, ravenous fish, chance and ruin. Lyric smarts are fast, “daring up to the knees”; pushed by desire and denial. Doors open and close; branches sway; sunlight is something more than half mad. 

The year I discovered Sodergran I knew I was a person who would live his life with depression. I understood only a small portion of the depression would have to do with my blindness. I was sad in the way of anyone who steps toward chance and ruin and who leaps into freedom and the self—for all such impulses must be sad; for they are the stuff of the child, a tomboy, the maker of rash decisions. And they are the stuff adulthood abjures and you may read anything you like for adulthood—capitalism, Sunday School, post-analytic philosophy. It hardly matters the name…

People who live with depression know about free terms—Sodergran’s line suggests an ecstatic electrolysis of transcendent and elemental joy. People with depression know this vision. You can again call it anything you want—but you can’t call it depression itself—for the vision is what depression knows.

Half aloud. I am a child, a tomboy, and a rash decision…

Depression says I am the blood’s whisper in men’s ears…