'A Numb Soporifical Goodfornothingness'

“Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day mare—a whoreson lethargy, Falstaff calls it—an indisposition to do any thing, or to be any thing—a total deadness and distaste—a suspension of vitality—an indifference to locality—a numb soporifical goodfornothingness . . .”

No, I don’t. I’ve never known profound depression. I’ve lost friends to it. I know it has destroyed some fine writers. Through a happy serendipity of genetics, I suppose, I am immune – so far. Charles Lamb is writing to his Quaker friend Bernard Barton on Jan. 9, 1824, composing a five-hundred word tour de force in celebration of melancholia. He conflates two lines spoken by Falstaff in Act I,Scene 2 of Henry IV, Part II: “And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fall’n into same whoreson apoplexy,” he tells the Lord Chief Justice, and then adds: “This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a tingling.” Lamb continues:

“I am flatter than a denial or a pancake— . . .—duller than a country stage when the actors are off it—a cypher—an O—I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest—I am weary of the world—Life is weary of me—My day is gone into Twilight and I don’t think it worth the expence of candles—my wick hath a thief in it, but I can’t muster courage to snuff it—I inhale suffocation—I can’t distinguish veal from mutton—nothing interests me—”

A friend asks if the COVID-19 shutdown “depresses” me? Has it taken an emotional toll? Not at all. I’m grateful for good health, loved ones nearby, books to read and time to write. Complaining would seem indecent with so many sick and dying.