THE MANY FLAVOURS OF MELANCHOLY
Reds
Duende
Dark and full-bodied. Spanish.
Serenaded by Federico Garcia Lorca lauding its "shadowy and palpitating" qualities. And for Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in searching for words to describe Paganini's poignancy, "A mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains."
Whites
Weltschmerz
Slightly acidic. German.
Elusive sadness for places unknown, homesickness for places never visited. The insatiable, impossible, yearning to unite mind and body. A universal angst, or "Welt (world) schmerz (pain)."
Saki
Wabi Sabi
Well-aged, vintage. Japanese.
An aching simplicity borne of "Serene melancholy and spiritual longing" (Andrew Juniper, Wabi Sabi). The inexplicable beauty of the weathered and the withered.
Spirits
Kaiho and Apea
50% proof. Finnish.
"Medium misery," according to Vesa Honkonen, the project architect for Kiasma. A type of protective mechanism, since, "If you encounter happiness it is the worst thing that can happen since there is no other alternative than to lose that happiness, and to lose it fast." Best consumed while dancing the Finnish tango.
Ports
Saudade
Bitter sweet. Portugese
An intense longing, the very sense of which the English language struggles to comprehend. Nick Cave finds it in the love song, in that "desire to be transported from darkness into light, to be touched by the hand that is not of this world." Perhaps Walter Benjamin found it in his description of Baudelaire's À Une Passante ... "love at last sight".
Coffees
Hüzün
Strong aftertaste. Turkish.
Collective melancholy, the "black mood [felt] by millions of people together." (Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul). Hüzün is a "smoky window" through which to see the world - the melancholic's version of rose-tinted glasses.
Season's Greetings
