Sometimes the melancholic doesn't know what he's lost, Freud says. He has only a vague sense of deprivation, a general sense that something has gone missing. An indeterminate loss, as immense as a storm cloud; a sense of loss without contour: isn't it from this that W. suffers?
He needs to localise his loss, W. says. To find its source! And he needn't look further than the idiot beside him in his cagoule. It must be his fault, the idiot!, he thinks to himself as we walk through the heather. He wants to shake me, to grab me by the lapels and bellow, 'It's all your fault!' Because it is my fault, he's sure of it.
But what if he's wrong? What if I'm only a scapegoat for his problems? The Hebrews sent a goat into the wilderness, which was supposed to carry with it the sins of the people. And wasn't that why W. brought me up to the moor: to send me into the wilderness, carrying all his sins away?
There goes my loss, he'd say, watching me disappear into the distance. There go my sins. And he'd walk more lightly on his way back to the busstop. He'd sing to himself. The clouds would part …
But what if grief remained with him, and as heavily as before? What if melancholy never lifted itself from his shoulders? Horror: now he'd be alone with the storm cloud of his grief. Now he wouldn't have an idiot in a cagoule to blame for his melancholy.
Lars Iyer's Blog 