Too much emphasis on happiness has led to a dangerous misconception that unhappiness is a sign of failure. In one experiment, participants were asked to solve anagrams with or without

Modern society’s mania is to emphasize buoyancy and cheerfulness. It wishes either to medicalize melancholy states – and therefore ‘solve’ them – or to deny their legitimacy altogether. Yet melancholy springs from a rightful awareness of the tragic structure of every life. We can, in melancholy states, understand without fury or sentimentality that