THE MELANCHOLIA OF ‘SONBAHAR’1:

Politics of Dignity By Ahmet Araşan (June, 2009)

“Medicine makes men ill, mathematics sad, theology wicked”.

Martin Luther King

Introduction:

The movie Sonbahar, right after it was released, has reached a great deal of success. The positive critiques were fourfold. First credits went to the scenario, which revolves around a story of sadness, melancholy, and love, and maintains a certain level of dynamism while featuring such a dense mood. Secondly, the movie encompasses the local life of the very northeastern region of Turkey, in its native language interwoven with the beautiful landscape; it delivers a lot of local flavors that outstandingly blends the aroma of a documentary into the movie. Thirdly, its quality of directing, acting, sound tracking, filming is way above the average with regard to international standards. And lastly, the politics incorporated in the movie, the socialist content of it and the anti-F-type-prison messages conveyed have received a lot of appreciation from the left wingers. As a result of these positive views, the movie has received 25 national and international awards within a year, among which are the best movie award of Altın Koza, Siyad, Ankara, Trento film festivals, best scenario award of Siyad, Ankara, Locarno film festivals, best actor award of Yeşilcam, Siyad film festivals, and various movie awards of Yeşilçam, International Avrasya film festivals, Gezici film festival, Med film festival, Engers film festival, International film festival. One of the most striking things regarding the film is its being the first feature-length engagement of the producer F. Serkan Acar, the director Özcan Alper, and the leading actor Onur Saylak (Yusuf); moreover it is the supportive actress’s (Raife Yenigül) first ever movie, who, is basically an indigenous person. The other main characters of the movie are the leading actors Serkan Keskin (Mikail), and Megi Kobaladze (Eka). The success of the movie, despite the lack of experience of most of the main figures demonstrates the rigorous, sacrificial and comprehensive work created.

In the extra scenes that is attached to the DVD of the movie, there is an interview with the Director (who is also the scenario writer), who indicates that it has been almost four years since he first started to engender the narrative, in parallel to doing interviews with the F-type-jail prisoners, reading diaries of them, visiting the region which is at the same time his own birthplace, talking to the locals and implementing preparatory technical studies on the landscape. According to his words, what he wanted to do is to make a movie to highlight the traumas that the F-type prisoners and the hunger strikers suffer, around a story of melancholy and love, in his beautiful

1 It means Autumn

homeland, as well as not letting the incidents of F-type, together with his local language of “Hemşince” to be forgotten. He also asserts that he read books concerning the theory of the mood of the movie, which is melancholy, from the eastern philosophy to western melancholy, and while writing and directing the movie, he tried to use also the basics of the philosophy of Albrecht Dürer. He adds that he made the leading actor Onur Saylak to go through all those melancholy texts to act properly - that is in alignment with the philosophy of melancholy.

As a matter of fact, the Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer’s philosophy of melancholy is merely revealed by his monumental engraving “Melencolia I”, and the numerous books and hundreds of articles that were written about it. It is a depiction produced 500 years ago based on a certain discourse that the artist believes in. Moreover, it is not an exemplification of the cases of melancholia, rather, this engraving of Dürer’s picturing a woman, whose wings alone distinguish her from all other representations, is a symbolic realization of Melancholia; is the image of an abstract.2

However, the real stories of the F-type prisoners’ temperaments seem to be little different than what is depicted as Melancholia in Melencolia I. Only between 2003 and 2005, among 404 prisoners of F-type prisons who applied to psychiatrists, 203 of them were diagnosed to have a psychological disorder; among which 52 of them were diagnosed to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, 37 of them to suffer adjustment disorder, 36 of them to suffer major depressive disorder, 17 of them to suffer pervasive anxiety disorder, 6 of them to suffer complex posttraumatic stress disorder and the rest were diagnosed with various emotional disorders and depressions, which most of them are the post-Renaissance definitions of “disorder”.

Starting from Wilhelm Griesinger, as stated in the chapter of “States of Mental Depression-Melancholia,” of his book of “Mental Pathology and Therapeutics (1867)”, melancholia was started to be depicted as a mental disorder.3 This is the notion of Melancholia that the Director of Sonbahar does not fall for. The psychologically affected socialist strugglers of F-type prisons are detached from the state of mental depression, which is a state associated with a mentally sick person. Throughout the movie, although he is made-up to look sick, dull, gloomy, moody, Yusuf does not behave as an intensely disordered, insane person except for one instance which he lets the insanity out by running away from other people. It is one of the least disturbing and noble sort of madness that could ever be seen… The scenes involving insanity are deleted during the editing stage. One of those scenes involves an episode of hallucination (loaded as an extra to the DVD copy), being qualified as a disorder by German Psychologist Emil Kraeplin in his textbook of psychiatry.4 The Director rather uses the classical images, the representational discourse, the image of an abstract, thus abstracting the effects of F-style victims instead of demonstrating the concrete, specific outcomes based on contemporary discourses engendered by the derivatives of depression. 2 Klibansky et. al. p. 304 3 Radden, p. 225 4 Kraeplin, p. 271,

Say one compares any possible scenes of disorder in alignment with the image of melancholia in Melencolia I, and the image of the disordered persons. Which one would be less undesirable, more reasonable to watch? That could be not easy to tell. But we may assert that the former one is less disturbing in numerous aspects; more mystified than the latter one, and might lead the watchers to believe that it involves more wisdom than the latter one. The character in the former scenario may even drive some admiration towards his state of mind. That brings the question that, whether if this attitude toward the former image of Melancholia is because that image is more dignified than the other sort of images of disorder of Melancholia or not. That is, can we talk about a hierarchy of dignity among the discourses of Melancholy and Melancholia? Throughout this paper, the reply to that question is discussed over Dürer’s “Melencolia I”, the interpretations of that engraving, and over the melancholic movie “Sonbahar”.

Discourse of Melancholy So Far

In this section, the liberty to brief the entire history of the discourses of melancholy, starting from the ancient Greek is taken. During the period from Aristotle to Dürer, the persons which are idle, gloomy, moody, sad, full of sorrow, restless, having the feeling of futility, weary, feeling grief, introvert, under despondency, contemplation, and showing some kind of disorder –not the ones of severe madness and mania- were said to be in melancholia, and when someone is said to be under melancholia, he is believed to be in at least one of the above states. Melancholia is the disorder identified by Greeks, Melancholy, on the other hand, is the normal part of the human condition distinguished during renaissance. However, there was no distinction in the layman’s mind between the melancholy temperament and the melancholic disease.5 One other distinction between melancholy and Melancholia was pronounceable in the causality stage. Discourses about depression and varieties of it dominated and acted as “the Melancholia” of that epoch.6 Melancholy was a sickness believed to occur as result of the imbalance of the excretion of one of the four humors of the body, the black bile,7 which is excreted by the spleen. The other three humors was the phlegm, the blood and the yellow bile. In this most general sense (found for example, in the writings of Galen and Avicenna), Melancholia named a wide range of medical disorders, including epilepsy and apoplexy. However, medieval illustrations of melancholy as one of the four humors typically blur such differences.8

The melancholic person’s image is built by various descriptions. Teresa of Avila, while trying to define how it was possible to detect a melancholic, was saying "consider someone a rational person and deal with her even though she isn’t”9. Generally speaking Melancholia was considered to be a cerebral malady sustained by a passion of a sad, debilitating obsessive character. It was a madness with the

5 Radden, p. 6 6 Radden, p. 3 7 Radden, p. 4 8 Radden, p. 5 9 Teresa of Avila, p. 108

mind always fixed on a single object, a partial insanity,10 tendency to gloom and a sense of futility and despair.11

The Greek and medieval discourses of Melancholy involved causality of various kind. First, the imbalance of black bile and adust (burnt) melancholy resulting from heating of the hypochrondriacal organs, which sends smoky vapors to cloud and darken the brain and its functions was used to define the causes of melancholy and melancholia.12 Then, in the medieval age the divinity got into the causality. It was the wound in the spirit by an evil, sent by God.13 Distinction between acedia (sorrow, unwillingness, uncontrollable) and desidia (sloth, willingness, controllable) was made during those days. Acedia was a midway between a disease and a bad habit, because it was only partially dependant on the freewill. Desidia, on the other hand, as it was an attitude intentionally taken, was subject to penance.14

Ficino’s new ideas came into the picture: he put emphasis on freewill of the melancholic person: melancholics were ready to pay the price as being the geniuses. And he also proposed the astrological factors (mainly Saturn) as another cause of melancholic states.15 On the other hand, starting from the Renaissance some started to see the cause of melancholy as without a cause. It was defined as “fear and sadness without a cause”16.

Other important attributes of Melancholy and Melancholia were the genius and creativity that were brought into the scene by the question of Aristotle (or follower of Aristotle), in his book Problems:

“Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic, or are infected by the disease arising from black bile?”17

Starting from that question on, suffering of Melancholy was associated with greatness.18 The misery of the melancholics in the depictions was always, if not balanced, reduced by this discourse of genius and creativity. However it did not help melancholics not to be perceived as -at least partially- insane, people to stay away from, people that have committed a sin, people, as being responsible for their desidia, idleness, weariness, despair, contemplation, who are guilty. In parallel to these views were, their image was, if not a mad person, like somebody detached from everything around him, sleepy, moody, exhausted and restless.

Real glorification of melancholy happened as a result of humanism of Renaissance. The dignity came by the introduction of romantic melancholy, followed and pioneered

10 Radden, p. 5 11 Radden, p. 11 12 Radden, p. 5 13 Radden, p. 8, 14 Radden, pp. 19-20 15 Ficino, p. 88 16 Burton, p. 130 17 Radden, p. 12 18 Radden, p. 15

by the outstanding novel of Goethe, “The Sorrows of Werther”. The sufferers of melancholy as a result of love, and even the suicides, although acknowledged with t pity, were also respected, and sometimes even admired. But, this sort of melancholy was rather thought as a temporary mood and was not taken so seriously to elaborate. Then comes the era of enlightenment with the special emphasis on science an empirical knowledge. Starting from the 18th century, the notion of psychology has started to be established. Although the ancient notion of imbalance of black bile and the vapor of adust melancholy continued to be discussed until the 19th century (black bile= dark, smoky vapors=gloomy19), melancholia was explained by the psychological discourse. Two legacies of the past wedded with psychology. The reason and passion was then polarized under thinking and cognition on one side, feeling or affection on the other. So disorders were classified under two categories: insanity of emotions, and insanity of intellect.20

It was Pinel who first linked extreme disorders with melancholia and defined melancholia as being the primary stage of mania.21 Somatism puts equal emphasis on mental diseases as a class of natural disorders, and the physical diseases.22 Than, Kraeplin introduced the notion of depressive states as mental disorders, resulting from the localized lesions in the brain. He used the term of periodic psychoses for the collection of affective conditions, which included mania, melancholia and circular insanity. He also took the task of defining psychiatric classification by discovering and naming the naturally occurring kinds of mental disorder.23 Depression was originally referred only to as a quality or symptom of melancholia. Melancholia on the other hand, was a condition, “the depression of feeling is unattended by delusion.”24 There has been a growing medicalization of melancholia in the 19th century, from a conception of a mental disorder of unreason, which is a tamed, muted medical condition.25

Than, melancholia had been elaborated by Freud as an extension of a state of mourning. The ancestors of the above scientists took melancholy as a theme mainly under the general topic of depression. Melancholia, after been distinguished from the mood of sorrow of melancholy, was becoming a domain of science of psychology. It started to dissolve in the sub-categories and new categories of the disorder of mental diseases. Melancholia is less and less used in the discourses of mental diseases, and even if it is used, it is just to define a category of a disorder. Melancholia which once used to be the main category of mental disorders, used synonymously with any kind of mental disorders and awkward behavior, today is an attribute of few mental diseases. On the other hand melancholy is used generally as a temporary mood of suffering mostly taken on by marginal people.

19 Radden (Ed.), p. 10 20 Radden (Ed.), p. 26 21 Pinel, p. 207-208 22 Mercier, Radden, p. 25 23 Kraeplin, p. 260 24 Mercier, p. 23 25 Radden, p. 21

The Dignity of Melancholia in Melencolia I of Albrecht Dürer:

Two human-like figures in an engraving dated 1514… One of them is a winged mature woman, staring at nowhere, her chin in her hand, sad and angry; the other one is a winged infant (a putto) beside her, sitting on a wheel, probably working on something in his hand. The sun on the horizon is dark, dispersing an evening-like light… A skinny dog is lying on the ground. From the woman’s belt hang keys and a purse, symbolizing power and wealth respectively. She is surrounded by several measurement instruments. Above her head is a panel of 'magic' numbers (they add up to 34 in all directions) and an hourglass showing time running out, also resembling “Saturn”. At her feet are the tools that can fashion the material world. The tools of geometry, artisanship and architecture surround the woman, unused. Yet she does nothing: lost in thought, indifferent to everything around her, she turns away from the light. A scale representing balance is hung on the wall, empty. A truncated rhombohedron with a faint human skull on it, a perfect stone sphere, a bell etc. Indifference of her...

A bat-like creature flying through the night sky declares the subject of this famous engraving: Melencolia I. (archaically spelled). This is the only denotation made by Albrecht Dürer, the artist of the engraving on this art piece. It denotes that this art piece represents Melancholia. Than the legend talks: The dark temperament is personified by a female figure seated in the foreground. It is an allegorical composition which has been the subject of numerous of interpretations, a considerable amount of them being contradicting and accordingly being opposed by other experts. But one thing that we can be sure of is, as its title tells, this engraving is a depiction of Melancholia.

Apart from the denotative title, there are a lot of connotations and allegories, which refer to most of the discourses of Melancholia put up until then. The woman is mature, in the decline period of her life, which corresponds to the decline mood of human beings, which is melancholia. The maturity also resembles to autumn, which is considered as the decline period of the year, thus melancholia. The connection between the ages and the four humors is built through a reference to a woodcut of 12th century containing four women indicating four ages of four figures sitting in each quadrant of a circle which the decline is associated with the black bile26. Autumn is dry and cold, just like black bile, and melancholia arises from the imbalance of the black bile. All these connections and implications are commented by Erwin Panofsky, in his book “Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer”.27

26 Klibansky, et. al. p. 292- 293 27 “the body and the mind of man were conditioned by four basic fluids which in turn were supposed to be coessential with the four elements, the four winds (or directions of space), the four seasons, the four times of day, and the four phases of life. Choler, or yellow gall, was associated with the element of fire and was believed to share the latter’s qualities of heat and dryness. It was thus held to correspond to the hot and dry Eurus, to summer, to midday, and to the age of manly maturity. Phlegm, on the other hand, was supposed to be moist and cold like water and was connected with the wind Auster, with winter, with night, and with old age. The blood, moist and warm, was equated with air and was likened to the pleasant Zephyr, to spring, to morning, and to youth. The melancholy humour, finally the name deriving from Greek ‘aXcuya Xoosy’ black gall was supposed

Various interpretations were and still can be made regarding the figures and allegories that this engraving contains. However, this paper is concerned with the aspect of dignity of the engraving with respect to the other depictions and theories regarding Melancholia. Melencolia I is produced in the era of Humanism. The 16th century initiated more dignified figures of Melancholia, especially after Melencolia I.

“Hence as soon as in the 16th century the sleepy melancholic had been replaced by one doing intellectual work, the now unemployed slumber-motif naturally reverted to the phlegmatic. Sleepiness turned into (abandoned) intellectual work, inferior slumber attitude into calmness, introversion”28

The objects of referral to certain humanist thinkers can be detected on the graving of ‘Melencolia I’ too. The first object is the magic square. The magic square is there to counteract the unfavorable effects of Saturn as a Jovian device.29 And the hourglass is a direct representation of Saturn. It is well known that the humanist thinker Ficino (1433-1499) has introduced the astrological effects on the mood of Melancholia. Ficino thinks that some of the melancholics are indeed intelligent people and every learned person is subject to phlegm and black bile30. As a predecessor of Albrecht Dürer, he highlights merely the intelligence of the melancholic human beings, without mentioning the undesirable states of them. Dürer's immediate source for the inspired melancholy was, however, not Ficino, but Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia. The date of Dürer’s engraving is, nearly 20 years before the publication of the printed version of Agrippa's work in 1533. It is therefore assumed that Dürer must have used the manuscript version of 1510, which was circulated in manuscript copies and was certainly available in the circles in which Dürer moved31. Walter L. Strauss supports this point of Dame Frances Yates:

“The iconography of Melencolia I does not fully satisfy Ficino’s specifications. Dürer obviously stresses the geographical and imaginative aspects of melancholic temperaments. These coincide more closely with the first three types of melancholy described in Agrippa von Nettersheim’s De Occulta Philosophia. Although strongly influenced by Ficino, he divides melancholy into “Melancholia Imaginativa” a condition mainly affecting artists, architects and artisans, “Melancholia Rationalis” that encompasses medicine, natural sciences and politics, “Melancholia Mentalis“, covering theology and divine secrets. Viewed in this light Dürer’s engraving fall into place. It is obviously the representation of “Melancholia Imaginativa.”32

So it can be concluded at this point that, Dürer influenced by the dignified image of Melancholia described primarily by Agrippa, and by naming his engraving as Melencolia I, he pointed out that he was depicting the first category of Melancholias

to be coessential with earth and to be dry and cold; it was related to the rough Boreas, to autumn, evening, and an age of about sixty.” Panofsky, www.archieve.org 28 Klibansky, et. al. p. 299, 29 Strauss, p.168 30 Ficino, p. 89-93 31 Yates, www.lib.rochester.edu 32 Strauss, p.169

of Agrippa. He seemed secondarily to be influenced by other humanistic thinkers and artists including Ficino. Although it involves the imbalance of black bile, a decline, cold and dry climate etc., the first Melancholia of Agrippa that is “Melancholia Imaginativa” is obviously a category of dignity, because it is an attribute of the artists, artisans and architects, and relates to genius. That is why this engraving is called as the depiction of suffering genius, suffering brilliance. It is the depiction of melancholic genius. But what could be the reason that made Dürer to believe in this first category of Melancholia of Agrippa and depict that? One of the reasons could be the second decade of the sixteenth century representing the most "humanistic" phase of Dürer's life33. But it is for sure that he produced something unusual, something never done before, for so many scholars.

“[…] the legend says to us neither “this is meant to represent black bile” nor “this is a typical example of the melancholy temperament,” but “melancholy is like this………..the figures of weariness and sloth in the fifteenth-century pictures are examples of the ‘melancholic man’ “34.

“Renaissance philosophers had suggested a new interpretation for melancholy, as the temperament of genius (in the modern sense). Melancholy was possessed by artists, in whom 'Imagination' predominates; 'Reason' dominates scholars; while the final stage of 'Spirit' was the preserve of theologians. If this interpretation is correct, Dürer has presented us with a portrait of his own temperament as an artist. Earlier engravers had cheerfully copied the work of other artists, but Dürer sought 'to pour out new things that had never before been in the mind of any other man'. His originality has made this print hard to interpret.”35

What is it then, with respect to the history of the discourses of Melancholia? It was all dark figures of sick and isolated subjects before Melencolia I. The depictions were rather to condemn the mental state of such a disorder. The engraving of Melencolia I, unlike its predecessors signifies a disorder in a more esteemed fashion. The preceding illustrations depicted four humors, thus the illness of melancholia. However the illustration of such an illness is much more humanistic compared to the ones illustrated as to being cauterized stretched out on a kind of rack. There were also paintings of cures by means of flogging or by music.36 Dürer did not do so. He selected a completely unique design and metaphors to represent Melancholia. His image of Melancholia was not compatible with the categories of legendary philosophers before that epoch, neither with the tradition of perceiving melancholia as a disorder.

That is, what Dürer has done with this engraving was freeing the discourse of Melancholia, shifting it from the strict frames of humor discourses and sick visions, hence literally opening up a “new horizon”, leading to a new discourse of Melancholia.

“It is therefore a fact that Dürer was the first artist north of the Alps to raise the portrayal of melancholy to the dignity of a symbol in which that appears a powerfully compelling concordance between the abstract notion and the concrete image…..truly symbolic forms

33 Panofsky, www.archieve.org 34 Klibansky, et. al. p.304 35 Bartrum, www.biritishmuseum.org 36 Klibansky, et. al. p. 291

of representation were evolved by artists of the Italian renaissance…….and the transcendental in terms of a rational world order and to discover the means of sublimation which Dürer also used, wings for the chief figure, the ‘putti’, and so on.37”

“If Dürer was the first to raise the allegorical figure of melancholy to the plane of symbol, this change appears now as the means of a change in significance: the notion of a “Melancholia” in whose nature the intellectual distinction of a liberal art was combined with a human soul’s capacity for suffering could only take the form of a winged genius.38”

It can be said that, all along the history of Melancholia discourse, the depiction of Albrecht Dürer has been a mile stone that enabled another way of perceiving certain needs and behaviors. As a matter of fact, Aristotle about 1800 years ago mentioned about the possible positive traits of the melancholic subjects. However, Melancholia was always associated with a bad disposition, with negativity, by putting unpleasant, disapproved causality behind it. It was either because of too much wine, or due to an imbalance. Sometimes it was because of burnt organs, and sometimes because of an evil. And in most cases it is regarded as a preference, thus anyone who does not take the option of getting out of it, must have had a bad nature. Upon the introduction of astrological reasons, unreason and glorification, by directly associating it with intellectuals and learned people; coupled with a degree of respect that comes from humanistic ideas, the ideology behind “Melencolia I” was engendered during the Renaissance.

How about the post-Melencolia I era? In what way it influenced the ensuing discourses of melancholy? This paper is not in the position to explore the connection with later discourses of it. However, it can be said that a notion of a dignified, non-criticizable melancholy came into the scene, which is mostly associated with the lovers, artists, thinkers, scientists etc., generally speaking with the intellectuals. Melencolia I, opened up a road towards a Melancholia of dignity. If the history of the discourses of melancholy can be viewed as a continuum, the epoch of humanism is the peak of it in terms of dignity. Because starting from the 18th century, disorders were, if not condemned, started to be isolated from the community, classified, rendered as subaltern, belittled, and used rather synonymously with wretchedness and misery.

Melancholia, in a way, by the leverage of Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I, has been an instrument of humanism, which tries to underline the worst individualistic moods and dignity in such… Dignified Melancholia had been a divergence from the mainstream belief in the society. In this way, this awkward attitude acted as a symbol of resistance against the oppression on humanity. This symbol involved the faded divinity and disregarded dominant life style of an epoch. Transforming the insane concept into a character full of dignity is the crucial point of such symbolization. Besides, Melancholia was thought as the least severe, least distracting and least hazardous mental diseases. In his five-part classification of mental disorder Philippe Pinel, one of the first and leading psychologists of the history, ranked melancholia as

37 Klibansky, et. al. p.306 38 Klibansky, et. al. p.308

the initial stage of the mental sickness, which incorporates only limited nature of disorder.39

However, ‘Melencolia I’ doesn’t seem to be a point on that continuum. Because, it is a proposition of a new and unique kind of melancholia which no negative aspects was attributed. It encompasses all prior negative discourses, but does not demonstrate them. It can be told that they are there only by legend (the known discourses). He embedded these negative features to the codes of the engraving but discarded the impact of them. The engraving is awkward but there is almost nothing to dislike in it. There are contradictions, ambivalences, unusualness, but only as much as the awkwardness of a dream. There is almost nothing undesired (except the bat may be). All other discourses have the dark side of the moon but not Melencolia I. No such words like spleen, insanity, contemplation, derangement, weariness, desidia, dullness, spleen, indifference, sloth, lethargy, and even despondency can be used while interpreting this engraving; all discarded. The words such as sadness, sorrow, anger, suffer, acedia, futility, in vain, introversion, grief are left for use; the words one way or another containing non-detestable temperaments of human. If the continuum of the discourses of Melancholia were a plateau, Melencolia I should be an impression of a peak above the clouds which should not have been there. It is the abstraction of all the cases of Melancholia and qualifying all others as a representation. So, in accordance with the neo-Platonist Ficino, it is more like creating a Platonic ‘idea’, the ‘idea’ of Melancholia…

“Sonbahar” as a Means to Match the ‘Idea’ of Melancholia

The movie starts in a jail, where an announcement of anti-propaganda by the guardians to end an hunger strike takes place is heard. Against this announcement voiced by a microphone, the slogans of the prisoners to dominate the announcement are heard, but not that strong... We cannot see the protestors. In the next scene, two guardians take Yusuf to the infirmary of the jail. After the inspection, there the doctor reveals that his lungs are “ruined” mainly because of the hunger strikes against the F-type jails which Yusuf participated. So, also since he has not long time left for the end of his sentence, he could appeal for release due to his physical illness. Yusuf shows no reaction for having ruined lungs, stays indifferent, rather stares at a crow in the garden. Yusuf is released and heads back to his mother’s house, located in the very northeastern region of Turkey, in a small village of the town “Çamlıhemşin” by the Black Sea. He again seems to be indifferent towards his freedom.

The movie’s scenes are designed to depict the engraving of Melencolia I almost one to one, or to put it in another way, to re-depict the idea of Melancholia of Albrecht Dürer. The name of the movie is deliberately selected. Moreover it is implied by the Director that the narrative was shaped accordingly, to take place in the season of autumn (Sonbahar-despite the fact that the autumns of north eastern Turkey are not dry and cold like the black bile - rather mild and rainy). The name of the season is given to the movie to represent the Melancholia. In addition to that, by doing this, it is 39 Pinel, p.204

almost tagged as a movie of Melancholia just like the bat tags Melencolia I as an engraving of Melancholia. Besides, Yusuf’s sickness is related to his lung, -being an organ which is just below the spleen, the organ of black bile- which also happens to be an allegory of the physical imbalance that is associated with his melancholia. On the other hand, black bile, according to Ficino, is natural and, therefore leads us to judgment and wisdom.40 So melancholia having a cause of imbalance of black bile is associated with brilliance, rather genius. As a matter of fact, the implied meaning in Yusuf’s illness pertaining to his lungs may be twofold. First is the association with the spleen as explained above. Second, is the connection to the stoic belief of pressure on chest or pain in the chest being due to the dissatisfaction and gloom of Melancholia. So there is a two-way causality here. Stoic belief is important because according to stoics the happiness in life relates to wisdom, and controlling of the excessive emotions. And a paradox of stoicism clearly reveals their view towards the fool and mad people: “all fools are mad”. Even though it looks paradoxical, any demonstration of madness is unacceptable by the stoics.41 There seems to be the influences of stoicism in the movie in relation with this narrative about a person of disorder. Yusuf, in the movie suffers a kind of madness which is not compatible with Melencolia I nor stoicism just for once, It is a circular insanity situation which resulted in him driving his friend’s Mikail’s truck aimlessly and madly, breaks at a point along the road, comes to the edge of the cliff, and screams. It is noticeable that he even lives this state of insanity away from the society, which contributes to the idealness of the Melancholia he is suffering. Another evidence for the Director’s intention to film a Melancholia that matches the ‘idea’ of Melancholia is the deletion during the editing of the film of a scene of an improper Melancholia scene of hallucination as well as the madness mentioned above.

Yusuf starts to live a life of introversion in his mother home, who is living alone after her husband passed away and her daughter got married and moved to another region. He does not talk, leaves the questions unanswered, never tells anything from the days of his imprisonment. Unlike the contemporary feminist writings claim, Yusuf’s melancholia is not a loquacious one, rather a mute suffering.42 He does not entirely leave himself to the love and care of his mother as suggested. Yusuf spends most of his melancholia outdoors, mostly in the garden of his mother’s house. The garden of the house, which is on the slope of a hill of woods and green, has got a beautiful scene. The place where Yusuf rests is almost a prototype of the garden of the winged woman of Melencolia I. He sits on a bench, some artisan tools together with pots and pans are dispersed around and there is a short wooden stairs up to the balcony. He does not have wings, but the clouds below him which are most of the time within the scene gives the impression that he is flying. There are no tools or shapes or figures of architecture (geometry and mathematics) but he reveals that he is a mathematician. So the garden is decorated by imaginary mathematic figures by

40 Ficino, p. 91 41 Gowlan, pp. 14-15 42 Radden, p. 34

that specification. There is a thin, probably rarely fed dog always lying next to him. A child comes to meet him and Yusuf promises to study mathematics to him. In some other scene the child is shown as working on something in his hand in several scenes (I wonder whether the putto was taught mathematics by the winged woman to help him pass his exams). There are also stones around and sometimes he puts his chin in his hand. One may try to interpret the scene as his mother being the winged woman, and Yusuf being the putto. But the one who has the brilliance is Yusuf. Yusuf’s brilliance comes from his intelligence and virtue of him based on his struggles for his political ideals. His mood can be explained as sad just like the winged woman. His looks are very similar to her too, he does not smile, stares with frowning brows. Almost all the pieces of the engraving are there.

He is in rest, does not seem to be in idleness but rather in acedia. He lives in seclusion related to acedia, but not related to any asceticism; nor because he is exhausted. Rather he is in meaninglessness. He does not do anything other than resting. The Director accumulated all the theories about Melancholia starting back from Greek philosophy, up to Renaissance. He intends to combine the acedia and corporeal effects of melancholia. Acedia calls for the devil, the devil stimulates the disease of the body, the disease stimulates the acedia. He has a mood like he is not in interested in life but he doesn’t seem to have a feeling of self-disgust. Indifference is the main attitude of his. He is indifferent to almost everything. He stays indifferent when he hears that his former lover after he was jailed has got married with somebody else. He hardly accompanies his friend Mikail to a restaurant even though his mother forces him to join in to “a normal life”. He never expresses any willingness to rush for a normal life. He also does not show any desire for sexual encounters, not even when the prostitute visits him in a hotel room and wants to have sex with him.

What is the cause of Yusuf’s melancholia? No word is spoken out about it, just like no word is made about the cause of the melancholia of the winged woman in the engraving. That there is no evidence that the idleness of the prison caused the melancholy of Yusuf as opposed to what Richard Burton suggests.43 Sometimes he sees nightmares but not about the time he spent in his cell, only about the struggles he has gone through, or the hunger strikes that he has been. The cause of Yusuf’s melancholy is not denoted, at least to the spectators, no symbolic depiction of the causality is there to agree upon to be the reason.

Rather the other characters seem to be in melancholy because of various other apparent causes. Mikail, Yusuf’s friend suffers to live a life which he has no interest in, not even in his beloved wife. He also believes that he is alienated in a village of aged men. His cause of melancholy is also in accordance with Aristotle’s cause of having a lot of wine (in the movie it is rakı instead). Eka, the Georgian prostitute suffers the melancholy of an undesirable life, which isolates her from her child and normal life. Yusuf’s mother is in big sorrow, rather in melancholy of being unconscious of what she has lost. She seems to identify herself with Yusuf and

43 Burton, p. 133

complains about the sufferings he had as if she has suffered them herself. She says she haven’t had tea for ten years (ever since Yusuf was Jailed). She even thinks she is suffering from a lung disease at that moment too, although she does not seem to be. She is angry with his son to select a life that took him to the prison, she could not direct her anger to his imprisoned son, so she punishes him within her self. She actually punishes herself for Yusuf’s sufferings. She thinks she is going to die soon as a sign of low self-esteem. This is the notion of Melancholy of Loss by Sigmund Freud.44

One may immediately jump on the cause of loss for Yusuf’s melancholia; loss of the ideals of socialism… There seems to be no trace of mourning in his sufferings, as the Director explicitly denotes. His suffering carries all the symbols of Melancholia. However it cannot be claimed that his melancholia is caused by an unconscious loss of a love-object (or an ideal) which is stated by Sigmund Freud as the main cause of melancholia45. The melancholia of Yusuf consists of sadness, loss of interest in the outside world, but he does not suffer an eradication of ego. His self-esteem is high; he never humiliates himself in front of others nor within himself; he does not deny life or nourishment; never self-criticizes. He never shows a feeling of inferiority. He does not apply self-punishment of any sort. He does not lose his self-respect. But he cannot socialize, he does not speak much, he is silent most of the times. This condition of melancholia is explained in Philippe Pinel’s work as “limited nature of disorder”. “[…] At other times, they observe the most obstinate silence for many years, and friendship and affection are refused participation in their secret”.46 He cannot tell what has happened, probably because of that big sorrow involved in the things he is to tell if he were to tell. He does not complain from any sort of unjustness he had witnessed or suffered by himself. In addition to that, there seems to be no regret, no contrite by Yusuf about the things he has been involved in. He does not nourish a feeling of revolt nor revenge in his mind. He might be unconscious about what qualities are lost, but he does not blame himself for not having what was lost.

Three incidents in the movie prove this proposition of the feeling of loss not being the cause: one of them is the scene in which they talk each other with Eka. Eka says, “So you lost your best years in prison for the ideals of socialism, are you crazy?” Yusuf neither complies nor disagrees, rather he stays indifferent.

The other incident relates to the meeting with one of his former socialist leaders, Cihan. Even though he appears for a couple of minutes and his face is not seen, Cihan’s figure is also crucial in the movie, as he provides another reference point in understanding Yusuf’s melancholia. Cihan is not in melancholia, rather living his normal, connected life, not fallen into a feeling of loss. Rather he believes he has fulfilled the goals of his ideals only because he struggled for them. Probably he was so rational that he did not make himself believe in a very difficult thing like a

44 Freud, p. 281 45 Freud, pp.283,284 46 Pinel, p. 207

revolution. After Cihan makes several comments about the value of their struggle Yusuf again stays indifferent, does not comment.

And the last incident to mention to point out the irrelevance of the feeling of loss with the melancholia of Yusuf, takes place at a chalet on the mountain. After getting drunk Mikail says that even the socialism in Russia had been collapsed, what ideals to follow then? Again Yusuf stays silent and indifferent (at the end of this conversation Mikail curses to the spleen of Yusuf, if all the possibilities of allegories are to be searched). Is the reason of his indifference his awareness of his closeness of his death? Not really. Because he seems to be in the same mood even before the doctor says that his lungs are ruined. So it is neither because of the loss of his own life nor because of the loss of his ideals.

So it can be concluded at this point that the melancholia he has, does not have any reference or connection to the melancholy of Freud. It is not a mental disease of melancholy. But than, is it, as Richard Burton suggested in 17th century, melancholia of sadness and fear without a cause? Does Yusuf big sadness without a cause?47 The only thing that has the possibility to be the very basic cause of his melancholia, as the Director asserts in his interview, and more importantly as the legend of F-type tells, is the very fact that he had stayed very long in an isolation in his cell. He has even developed the habit of playing chess by himself, by switching to the opposite seat. Although this fact remains abstract throughout the narrative as to what happened to him in isolation remains unrevealed, it can easily be told that a direct linkage between the isolation of the F-type prisons and disorder (melancholia) is there, it is more than implied, and it is very typical for a melancholic person to remain silent about it. The isolation is not mentioned but given as a direct cause of such a mental state.

Certain memories pop out. These are only the memories of him regarding the riots he participated in jail and the anarchism he was involved in before and during the imprisonment, shown in fragments throughout the movie. These repeating fragments of the same incidents seem to be in accordance with the theme of Herman Boerhaave’s definition of Melancholy: “the patient is always intent upon one and the same subject”,48 which asserts the notion of obsession on an idea. But in none of those fragments there appears an object of obsession. So it is still the abstraction, the idealization of the struggle, not a suffering because of self-criticism, not a mirror affect, not sadness for not achieving self-emancipation (a major concept of 19th century) but it is a humanistic melancholia, that is the sorrow of the in vain socialistic struggles. He is in acedia but never disintegrated, has a single heart undivided by neither any curiosity nor any regret.

There is no such element in the melancholia of Yusuf, which could be interpreted as similar to the one the Baudelaire’s swan has on sidewalks of Paris; away from her natural habitat , in feeling of anomie, estrangement, who is suffering from this unfit.

47 Burton, p.10 48 Radden,

The admiration to arts can be observed, as he carries a painting, he stares at couples dancing on TV and forgets everything else. Yet, he has not got any predominant creativity presentation.

Over the time Yusuf shows interest in the Georgian prostitute he meets in town, Eka. In the beginning he hardly attempts to see her in town. He even turns his face away for not to be recognized by her on the street. But then, his indifference, his inertia towards her is replaced by the willingness to travel with her to Russia. Only love seems to have the power to replace his mood of melancholia. But in the movie, Yusuf never demonstrates an over willingness, a passionate desire towards that woman. She does not become his obsession. After Yusuf realizes that she have left without waiting for him, he demonstrates that he is ready to forget her by just throwing his passport on the desk after he gets back to his mother’s home, and by not showing any typical behavior of grief or emotional insanity.

In the movie Yusuf’s melancholia is so well defined, clear-cut and idealized that the Director doesn’t want any other sort of melancholia causality to interfere with his state. The only obsession we see in the movie is the obsession of Yusuf to the mountain, which he does not seem to relieve before achieving it; he puts pressure on Mikail to take him there, which he finally does.

In this movie full of symbols, the crow sometimes gets in the picture as a disturbing object. Either it wakens Yusuf from his sleep or is hounded away by the mother. The crow is a direct representation of the carrion crow, which may connote the fast journey of Yusuf towards his death. Death is irrelevant with regard to the form of Dürer’s Melancholia. According to Panofsky, a man falls sick and may ultimately die; we still speak of "melancholy" and "cholera" as mental or physical diseases.49.

Conclusion: The Politics of Dignity

The Director explicitly states that by making this movie, he realized his own political goals of underlining the effects of F-type prisons and the suffering associated with those. And at the end of the movie the riots against the F-type prisons were glorified, the socialist struggles were dignified; the strugglers against the F-type prisons and capitalism, through the character of Yusuf are almost honored and graced. In such a movie full of symbols and allegories, the launch date was also meaningful: which is the anniversary of concurrent interventions to the hunger strikes protesting F-type prisons, by the soldiers and guardians in several prisons back in the year 2000. So in a way all the leftist riots are glorified; the movie was like a devotion to the mortalities of those riots.

While trying to achieve the political goal, the Director did not use any scene involving a suffering person; a suffering of neither a physical injury nor a psychological disorder. This paper does not claim any cause pertaining that. It is just a fact that the method of concrete exemplification was not preferred in Sonbahar. Rather it was all

49 Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, complete text, internet archive, Melencolia I, www.archieve.org

the images of abstractions of the concrete. The not-shown concrete consequences of F-type are the mental diseases. Rather those diseases are abstracted to match the ‘idea’ of Melancholia symbolized by ‘Melencolia I’. That is the concrete effects of F-type were idealized. There is a reason for that idealism, and whatever that reason is, within such an approach of film making, the scene of a suffering melancholic were not shown. Neither mentally suffering characters nor any insanity, severe disorders were not shown in this movie in accordance with the diagnosis made by the psychiatrists who inspected the F-type prisoners.

In addition to that, the Director wanted to underline the detachment of mania from Yusuf’s melancholia. By using apparent signs of melancholy and not denoting any manic-depression expressions -although any (may be limited number of) temperament of Yusuf could be tolerated in this movie of abstraction50, it seems the Director tried to ensure the understanding of nonexistence of any manic state of the socialists. The connotation that, no matter what happens, the dignity of socialists sustained, in the sense that they either work for the society, or detach themselves from the society and die, they never become harmful, insane, or disrespectable works very well. This essentialist, Platonic idealism of the movie is very much in accordance with the idealism of socialism. The main character is the myth of a dignified socialism. The melancholia of him is perfect just like the dreamed society of socialism.

So, for the Director, it would be best to refer to the ‘idea’ of Melancholia: Melencolia I of Albrecht Dürer - instead of its actuality. Complete adaptation of the idea worked perfectly for the method of abstraction. Because primarily, by putting the image of Melencolia I on, one also acquires the image of humanism, which is the representation of sympathy to a suffered, disordered person. Secondly the ‘idea’ of the melancholia of the main character contains a great deal of dignity.

Secondly, and more importantly, the latter’s melancholy resemblance of the vainness, not in a struggle for an ideal, for a supreme, transcendent, and an impossible goal, rather in the everyday of the ordinary people, which finds a place in the subjectivity of the watchers. By showing the everydayness, ordinariness of imprisonment, the Director might have also aimed to drag the watchers into a melancholic mood through invoking our own imprisonment(s). The story of the impossibility of being out of the exigencies that are considered as normal leads us to realize the impossibility of achieving any ideals of ours, which might be the basis of universal melancholy. Ultimately, all the elements of the movie, including the watchers show signs of some sort and degree of melancholy.

But above all, what this adaptation in this movie proves is, the 500 years old legend lives and this engraving of Albrecht Dürer is capable of being a means of making politics of the 21st century.

50 Kat Redfield Jameson’s writing on manic-depression and the artistic temperament, Radden, p. 16

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References:

Avila, Teresa of (16th cent.), “Melancholy Nuns”, Jennifer, Radden (Ed.) (2000), The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Burton, Robert (17th cent.). “Melancholy States”, Jennifer Radden (Ed.), The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva (2000), Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Bartrum, Giulia. Albrecht Durer and His Legacy, British Museum Highlights, www.biritishmuseum.org

Ficino, Marsilio (15th cent.). “Learned People and Melancholy”, Jennifer Radden, Ed. (2000), The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Freud, Sigmund (1917). “Loss”, Jennifer Radden, Ed. (2000), The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Gowlan, Angus (2006), The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy, Cambridge University Press, 2006

Klibansky, Raymond (1964) Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.

Kraeplin, Emil (2002). “Manic Depressive Insanity” Depressive States, Jennifer Radden, (Ed.), The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Panofsky, Erwin (2005) “The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer”, complete text, internet archive, www.archieve.org

Philippe Pinel (18th cent.), Melancholia, Jennifer Radden (Ed.), The Nature of Melancholy, The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Radden, Jennifer (Ed.) (2002), “Introduction”, The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Pres, Inc.

Strauss, Walter L. (Ed.) (1972), The Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Dry Points of Albrecht Dürer, Courier Dover Publications

Yates, Dame Frances (Text of a speech) (1980). University of Rochester, September 18 www.lib.rochester.edu