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A Field Guide to Melancholy
- Narrated by: Ray Murphy
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
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A Field Guide to Melancholy
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Publisher's summary
A depressive illness or a passing feeling? Mental detachment or a precursor to genius?
Melancholy is a critical part of what it is to be human, yet everything from Prozac to self-help psychology books seems intent on removing all signs of sadness from contemporary existence. Complex and contradictory, melancholy’s presence weaves through the histories of both science and art. The Field Guide to Melancholy surveys this ambivalent concept and takes a journey through its articulation in a variety of languages, from the Russian toska of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, to kaiho – which is expressed in the dancing of the Finnish tango. Melancholy is found in the historic traditions of death’s presence in paradise, the tears of nature, along with nostalgia, pathos, and melancholy’s presiding god, Saturn. In contemporary society, melancholy becomes a fashion statement in the subculture of the Emo.
By drawing on a range of disciplines from psychology and philosophy to architecture and design, and by examining the work of creative figures as different as Ingmar Bergman, Albrecht Dürer, WG Sebald and Tom Waits, Jacky Bowring provides an original perspective on one of the most elusive, enigmatic and fascinating of human conditions.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Published to great acclaim in 1873, Walter Pater’s compendium of idiosyncratic, impressionistic essays on the Renaissance gained him a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. Oscar Wilde called it the “holy writ of beauty.” It was Pater’s cry of “art for art’s sake” that became the manifesto for the aesthetic movement. He believed that art should be sensual and that beauty should rank as the highest ideal. Marked by elegant fluency, Pater’s essays discuss Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and other artists who, for him, embodied the spirit of the Renaissance.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Bizarre....no idea what I just listened to.
- By GogolGirl on 10-14-20
By: Walter Pater
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The Courage to Create
- By: Rollo May
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 164
What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement. A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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May takes on the Creative Act
- By Lowball on 01-16-19
By: Rollo May
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The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 229
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 132
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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5 out of 5 stars
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A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
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Wagnerism
- Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Alex Ross
- Length: 28 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 116
Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international best seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics - an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not Just for Wagner Experts!
- By Rupert Pupkin on 09-26-20
By: Alex Ross
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The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Duncan Steen
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
One of Nietzsche’s earliest works, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a remarkable source of inspiration. It is here that the philosopher expresses his frustration with the contemporary world and urges man to embrace Dionysian energy once more. He refutes European culture since the time of Socrates, arguing that it is one-sidedly Apollonian and prevents man from living in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Apollonian vs The Dionysian
- By JCW on 02-05-18
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Silence and Beauty
- Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
- By: Makoto Fujimura, Philip Yancey - foreword
- Narrated by: Ova Saopeng
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Shusaku Endo's novel Silence took visual artist Makoto Fujimura on a pilgrimage of grappling with the nature of art, the significance of pain, and his own cultural heritage. His artistic faith journey overlaps with Endo's as he uncovers deep layers of meaning in Japanese history and literature, expressed in art both past and present. He finds connections to how faith is lived amid trauma and glimpses of how the Gospel is conveyed in Christ-hidden cultures.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A unique book of history and reflections
- By M. Burlingame on 02-26-18
By: Makoto Fujimura, and others
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
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So Much Longing in So Little Space
- The Art of Edvard Munch
- By: Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard sets out to understand the enduring and awesome power of Edvard Munch's work by training his gaze on the landscapes that inspired Munch and speaking firsthand with other contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer, for whom Munch's legacy looms large. Bringing together art history, biography, and memoir, Knausgaard tells a passionate, freewheeling, and pensive story about not just one of history's most significant painters, but the very meaning of choosing the artist's life, as he himself has done.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good start
- By Barbara O on 11-08-23
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Asian Journals
- India and Japan (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
- By: Joseph Campbell
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a year-long voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What a journey!
- By Anonymous User on 08-11-18
By: Joseph Campbell
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Measure for Measure
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Royal Shakespeare Company
- Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
A performance of the tragi-comedy by the Royal Shakespeare Company. When a young woman is offered the choice of saving a man's life at the price of her own chastity, what should she do? The political and moral corruption of Vienna has driven Duke Vincentio into hiding while his deputy governor, Angelo, is left to revive the old discipline of civic authority. Angelo's first act is to imprison Claudio, a young nobleman who has gotten his betrothed, Juliet, with child.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Highly recommended
- By Todd on 10-16-08
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My Bright Abyss
- Meditation of a Modern Believer
- By: Christian Wiman
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story5 out of 5 stars 31
Seven years ago, Christian Wiman, a well-known poet and the editor of Poetry magazine, wrote a now-famous essay about having faith in the face of death. My Bright Abyss, composed in the difficult years since and completed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith - responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition - might look like.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Meditative Poetry in Prose
- By Marianne Murphy Zarzana on 07-21-19
By: Christian Wiman
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On the Natural History of Destruction
- By: W. G. Sebald, Anthea Bell - Translator
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
On the Natural History of Destruction is W.G. Sebald's harrowing and precise investigation of one of the least examined "silences" of our time. In it, the acclaimed novelist examines the devastation of German cities by Allied bombardment, and the reasons for the astonishing absence of this unprecedented trauma from German history and culture. This void in history is in part a repression of things - such as the death by fire of the city of Hamburg at the hands of the RAF - too terrible to bear.
By: W. G. Sebald, and others
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Care of the Soul, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Ed
- A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
- By: Thomas Moore
- Narrated by: Charles Bice
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 147
In this special 25th anniversary edition of Thomas Moore's best-selling book, Care of the Soul, listeners are presented with a revolutionary approach to thinking about daily life - everyday activities, events, problems, and creative opportunities - and a therapeutic lifestyle is proposed that focuses on looking more deeply into emotional problems and learning how to sense sacredness in even ordinary things.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love Thomas Moore's Care of The Soul
- By Dorothy Cetta on 09-14-18
By: Thomas Moore
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Primitive Mythology
- The Masks of God Series, Volume I
- By: Joseph Campbell, David Kudler - editor
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 116
The author of such acclaimed books as The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth discusses the primitive roots of mythology, examining them in light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Epic speculation into the origins of our mythic consciousness
- By BGZ on 01-10-19
By: Joseph Campbell, and others