55. Moderately wiseLike with the previous stanza, 54[LINK], it seems to imply that too much wisdom is a bad thing. Perhaps wisdom and happiness (gladness) are two ends of the same pole. You can either tend toward happiness at the expense of wisdom, or wisdom at the expense of happiness.
should each one be,
but never over-wise;
for a wise man’s heart
is seldom glad,
if he is all-wise who owns it.
(Source: http://heathengods.com/havamal/thorpe.htm)
[End.]
Perhaps wise men are seldom giddy.
ReplyDeleteThere are lines in Taoist literature which suggest that wise men are beyond emotion, and yet just about every kind of mysticism has "crazy wisdom" folks who often appear to be giddy lunatics at inconvenient times.
Perhaps the "crazy wise man" seldom appears to be glad, but when he does appear to be glad, the fools around him find him to be very inconvenient.
Another aspect of this is that people from cold climates simply seem to be gloomy! Scandinavians, Russians, Scots, Lithuanians - cold weather tends to bring out the melancholia! It would be interesting to see whether this tendency varied between Caucasoids and Mongoloids.
'Another aspect of this is that people from cold climates simply seem to be gloomy! Scandinavians, Russians, Scots, Lithuanians - cold weather tends to bring out the melancholia! It would be interesting to see whether this tendency varied between Caucasoids and Mongoloids.'
ReplyDeleteDefinitely; and the down-cast mentality seems to be present at both poles to some extent, and absent in the tropical region.
Just look at the down-cast heads of Penguins for instance (at Antarctica), and the pained howling of wolves (in the Arctic circle), and contrast this to the laughing hyenas in Africa. I'm not sure whether it's just the effect of the lack of sunlight experienced by the creatures at the poles (just think of SAD), or to do with something else (like the magnetosphere). It'd be interesting to know.
I wouldn't be suprised if the melancholia affected the different races, but it may effect them in different ways (i.e. provoke different parts of their character to grow or to retreat).
It might be some deep dualistic part of nature: either you can be exposed to sunlight and happy (but also mentally dim), or you can be exposed to the dark and unhappy (but also mentally bright).