When the dead pushed love aside

The shadow of death vs "a hundred shades of green".

Triumph of Death (1460s). Attributed to Girolamo da Cremona (active c. 1451-1483). Denver Art Museum.

When I began to think about the essay that became “Murmurs in the Cathedral”, I intended it to be a post about love.

I wanted it to celebrate first love, love at first sight, and the rush of feelings that assails us and much of the animal kingdom in the springtime.

I’d planned the post for May because it’s the month for love and flowers:

In May, that moder is of monthes glade,

That fresshe floures blew and white and rede

Ben quike agayn, that wynter dede made,

And ful of bawme is fletyng euery mede;

(In May, that mother is of months glad,

when fresh flowers, blue, and white, and red,

quicken again, that winter has made dead,

and with balm is every meadow full fed)

Troilus and Criseyde, by Geoffrey Chaucer. Book II Stanza 8 ¹

And:

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
O, and then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer's Queen.

Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632), The Meryy Month of May.

In Wendy Cope’s modernised version of the Dekker, she’s wistful but upbeat:

The month of May, the merry month of May,
So long awaited, and so quickly past.
The winter's over, and it's time to play.

I saw a hundred shades of green today
And everything that Man made was outclassed.
The month of May, the merry month of May.

I’d thought my essay would cleverly link the love story between Hero and Leander in Christopher Marlowe’s sumptuous verse to my own love story at university, where I first read the poem. I thought that bringing in the exploits of Byron (and Rupert Everett) would keep the essay light and bright and positive.

But that’s not how it turned out. I gradually found myself slipping into a kind of purgatory surrounded by the murmurs of the dead.

Apparently it’s common in Japan for feelings of fatigue and anxiety to increase following the holidays early in May. Was my post a victim of what’s known here as “May Blues”, or gogatsubyou (五月病)?