I’ve always been a little intrigued by the concept of
Weltschmerz (the Germans always have a word for it) – perhaps as someone who
cultivates it a little, as others cultivate bonsai trees: there, I said it so
you don’t feel you have to - and today I’ve been thinking about that Merchant
Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster novel's Room
With A View (1985) in which Denholm Elliott says – a propos of
his son, who's a little given to hooting 'truth! beauty!' up trees; some would say he should get a job – “I don’t hold with this world-sorrow, do
you?”
In asking this – with a degree of implied spiritual enquiry, kind of an I-thou moment; he has a greater emotional range than the
average British character actor - D.E. expresses a degree of weariness with
world-weariness, sorrow about sorrow thereby intimating his commitment, albeit negatively expressed, to groundedness and joy. Meta-emotion is what makes you
human, of course, meta-emotion and opposable thumbs; your dog can feel happy or cross
but it can’t experience ennui or schadenfreude like it can’t operate the remote
control - which is probably a good thing on the both counts.
Meta-meta-emotion, on the other hand – let’s not even go
there, this just make you Henry James – and no-one wants that. (P.S. Your cat is also not intrigued by the concept of
Weltschmerz – it rejects the concept out-of-hand as bourgeois mystification and
existential bad faith, it demands that you feed it and stop reading this rubbish
on the internet).
