The Psycho-philosophic Melancholy in Bohumil Herabal's "Too Loud a Solitude"

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Abstract

Hanta, the main character In “Too Loud a Solitude” suffers from both depression and melancholy—with very blurred borders between them—and cannot break free from the built-up bonds of melancholy he feels in terminating books as if they have feelings and blood within them. His unconscious melancholy instigated by subjectivity to language and how he is subject to think, dictates his behaviour. In addition, the society seems to reflect a process of “Complexification” as defined by Lyotard. Conflicts within and without create an invisible prison where the destiny of a man/the men is finally determined. He is, however, received and introduced as an intellectual who bereaves and mourns the unfair destruction of the books that he adores infinitely, which for thirty-five years he has destroyed in his pressing machine. His melancholy displays how he, as an informed person of history, literature, and philosophy, is engrossed in the traps of his own mind that take him lower in the abyss of self-destruction, leading to his death by suicide. Further, the kind of postmodern social culture is analysed, in the light of Lyotard’s definition of Postmodern, which seems responsible for men’s final death drive.