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A Field Guide to Melancholy
- Narrated by: Ray Murphy
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
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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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Story
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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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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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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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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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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not just for Munch fans
- By Alexander on 08-19-24
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Epic speculation into the origins of our mythic consciousness
- By BGZ on 01-10-19
By: Joseph Campbell, and others