Burn in rehearsal. Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
NOTES FROM THE ACADEMICS The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley. We start with the same words that Alan and Steven quote but with a very different focus. As is often the case with Burns, there’s a multi-layered reading of these famous lines. Yes, they are a profound reflection on the realities of life with which we can all relate, but they’re also a hint of that darker aspect of Burns’s psyche, of the periods of pervasive pessimism that marked the episodes of melancholy that punctuated his life. Long considered to be evidence of Burns drinking excessively, more recent work has begun to consider his melancholy as a condition in its own right. With this reexamination, comes the question of the impact of these disordered moods on his life. And, as Alan and Steven discovered, it is Burns’ letters that offer the best evidence for this, giving us the experiences in his own words. What becomes clear is that Burns fears his lows. He confides only in a small number of friends he can trust, most notably Frances Dunlop, but is heart-wrenchingly honest when he does so. Through these confidences, we begin to understand why he dreaded their onset — at their most severe, they will render him bed-ridden, unable to ‘read, write or think’; the mental disorder will manifest itself physically as headaches or stomach upsets; at times, the darkness is so pervasive that he admits he ‘could contentedly & gladly resign’ life. Even milder episodes will leave him ‘in a compleat [sic] Decemberish humour, gloomy, sullen, stupid.’ Consistent across all episodes, regardless of severity, is a dullness of thought, a dampening of activity, and a muffling of the voice of his poetic muse. What we also find, however, is that these episodes are directly related to his creativity. In the closing months of 1781, Burns suffers his first major depression; as it resolves, he produces works with titles such as To Ruin’ and ‘A Prayer, Under the Pressure of