What is the relation between melancholy and nostalgia?
I am an artist who often times feel intense emotions toward certain moments or periods from my past. Even if during the time they seemed bad, I feel them in an indescribable way… I just don’t know how to explain it. I am a romantic, I guess?
Anyways, I am trying to understand why I feel what I feel and just have fun with it. I came upon nostalgia, which seems like a very simple way of describing how I am/feel.
Then, I came upon melancholy. When nostalgia and melancholy mixed together, it seems like how I feel.
Can you work with these two words, and maybe relate them in some way?
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Nostalgia is usually related to our past thoughts and memories where we recollect those memories, which we remember the most.It describes mostly our sentimental memories.Melancholy is a state where a person feels sad, unhappy or depressed about something.It is basically a mood disorder, wherein the mood keeps changing and there won’t be any past recollection of memories, it’s usually related to our present sad memories.
Nostalgia – a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time
Melancholy – a gloomy state of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged; depression, sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness
They are two distinctly different definitions and although I don’t feel they compliment or seem alike in any profound way, I do believe that they can both be used in conjuction with one another to demonstrate certain feelings or a state of mind.
Case in point would be when my father passed away from cancer. I was definitely melancholic for months after his death wondering numerous things from why it had to happen to him to how my mother would get along to how my life would be different without him in it. At the same time, I knew I had moments when I wanted to go back in time when my father was healthy and times were happier and life was more simple.
So, in essence, I would say that I was in a gloomy, thoughtful state, earnestly wishing to return to a better existence. Any frame of mind to relieve the pain and sadness of losing my father and wanting to feel better again in a different time period.
Melancholy is a general overbearing sense of sadness.
Nostalgia is remembering the past with a glad/sad feeling. The memories may be happy or sad but the remembrance is tinged with the sadness of those days being gone.
Melancholy means deep sadness or gloom while Nostalgia means a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Nostalgia may be accompanied by melancholy. Nostalgia includes (and requires) memories and requires some “process” mentally, melancholy is a less complicated feeling of usually not easy to define sadness. Eg you cannot feel nostalgic about a place you never visited but a certain happening at that place (say a war or a tragic event) may cause melancholic feelings.
That said having in mind the current use of the two words in modern Greek
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