Melancholy is a state of being that is quite thematic in our novel Kokoro. But what exactly is it? Is it necessarily a bad thing?
Today you will be learning to sketchnote in a guided lesson. Sketchnoting is Visual Note-taking -an excellent strategy for personalizing the information you take in so that you might remember it better. It's a technique you can use in ANY class and is very helpful in your pre-writing or pre-presentation stages.
We will practice then use our new skills to sketchnote this video on Melancholy.
1. Upload your sketchnotes to a blog post.
2. Check out these "untranslatable words" for sadness and write about your personal experience with one of them. One of the most powerful is...
Тоска (tas-'ka)
While this Russian word roughly translates as emotional pain or melancholy, native speakers continue to claim Americans can't possibly understand its depth. Vladimir Nabokov, the famous Russian-American author of "Lolita," put it best:
No single word in English renders all the shades of "toska." At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
3. Check out these quotes on melancholy. Choose your favorite and illustrate it with an original photo (you have taken) or sketch.
4. The poet Keats wrote a poem called "Ode to Melancholy". Read it and check out the Sparknotes explaining it. What is your favorite line from the poem and why?
5. Contribute to a melancholy playlist on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/user/1238042010/playlist/3hB35HS8ALzXohhfLCNA8v?si=phdMTvXKQk6FtvG5SO8eMg (if possible).
