Grass is always green here too @Simone_in_Wiltshire, but we get a lot of grey skies [all year round] and wet stuff/snow etc. so some extra colour through winter is very welcome to bridge the gap I couldn't live in a busy town/city either - for lots of reasons
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I don’t associate melancholy with depression at all. I think it as more a wistful, pensive yearning. A nostalgia for things lost, bittersweet memories but also a sign of change and renewal. Autumn sums it up for me. Much romantic poetry and music is melancholy but it doesn’t make it, or me, miserable.
The music of Jan Gaberek and the Hilliard Ensemble, Terry Callier, Beth Orton and my favorite Miles Davies ‘Sketches of Spain’ all have a melancholic atmosphere but some flamenco music is the ultimate expression of that feeling.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Hi @Simone_in_Wiltshire. Which part of Germany are you from? I live in Luxembourg and trees here are still quite beautiful in November, but I get your point about this time of year. (verdrësslech op Lëtzerbuergesch 😉) It can be very dark and damp. I happen to love Autumn. I find very interesting the link to history. In catholic countries of course November is month of the dead, but in Italy it is also the month of wine and olive oil harvest. I have studied a bit of German history and this painting was often my reference point when thinking of this complicated continent of ours.
The Chasseur in the Forest (1814) by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Despite it doesn’t look like very patriotic at first glance it’s eminently that. There is a French soldier (one of Napoleon’s occupants) lone and lost in a dark German forest. So the painting is suggesting that there are other powers than simple soldiers that will help to free Germany from her oppressors.
Do cheer yourself up with Vivaldi's autumn. Your compatriot Anne Sophie Mutter is an incredible interpreter:
Nollie, you might not associate melancholy with depression, the Oxford English dictionary in English says different. Melancholy is sadness at best, depression at worst
To me melancholy is a pleasant sadness, a yearning for times past and things gone that leave happy memories. Autumn is the perfect season for such feelings. I wouldn’t worry about a dictionary definition myself sometimes it’s lovely to just have a wallow in melancholy but unlike depression it’s not something you can drown in.
@coccinella I came from East Germany, where 90% are non-religious. It's true, the Christian impact is often underestimated. Since I live in England, I'm disconnected from those bank holidays. November starts with All Saints' Day and has got at least 2 other days to remember the dead. Thanks for the Friedrich painting.
@Nanny Beach The Oxford Dictionary describes the condition, but it can't describe when melancholy appears. There are certainly people who are melancholic all year round, but many more people can be melancholic on a occasion and that lasts only a short time.
Obviously a dictionary,an inanimate object cannot say when melancholy appears...why would it! Pleasant sadness, how can there be such a thing. Of course I know the difference between "sadness" and "depression,"you know I have 2 long term, disabled sons, suffering from various mental health issues.
Posts
I couldn't live in a busy town/city either - for lots of reasons
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
The music of Jan Gaberek and the Hilliard Ensemble, Terry Callier, Beth Orton and my favorite Miles Davies ‘Sketches of Spain’ all have a melancholic atmosphere but some flamenco music is the ultimate expression of that feeling.
The Chasseur in the Forest (1814) by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Despite it doesn’t look like very patriotic at first glance it’s eminently that. There is a French soldier (one of Napoleon’s occupants) lone and lost in a dark German forest. So the painting is suggesting that there are other powers than simple soldiers that will help to free Germany from her oppressors.
Do cheer yourself up with Vivaldi's autumn. Your compatriot Anne Sophie Mutter is an incredible interpreter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUWyupHoQA0&list=RDAUWyupHoQA0&start_radio=1
Luxembourg
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Emily Brönte
Luxembourg
Thanks for the Friedrich painting.
I ♥ my garden.
I ♥ my garden.