(published in “Avrupa” newspaper)

When someone hears the name Styron, one immediately thinks of Sophie’s Choice and what a talented writer he is, and most certainly in the same league as William Faulkner, they don’t think about his troubled soul. When one thinks of depressive writers and memoirs, most of us think of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s confessional Prozac Nation, or Plath’s The Bell Jar, but here we have an account of depression from a male perspective. Through time, we have been aware of the artist and madness which Styron touches upon in his memoir, such as Van Gogh, Camus, Virginia Woolf, Diane Arbus, Mark Rothko, to name a few. When one picks up Styron’s Darkness Visible(1989) , they already know that this is a rare read, one in which a man outwardly proclaims that he had been gripped in the cycle of madness and needed help. Styron’s illness lead him to a sanitarium which he swears saved his life, even though his psychiatrist who he calls Dr.Gold, steered him away from the hospital due to the stigma which it’s attached to.

Through a very confidant and sure voice, Styron shares his beliefs and experience with this dehibilitating disease which he believes not to have an appropriate name, he believes that the more older word melancholia justifies the severity of it better than the mere word depression. Styron paints a very accurate picture through language, using words and phrases such as “excruciating near – paralysis.” One of his first descriptions of depression can be found in the first chapter where he states, “Depression is a disorder of mood so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self- to the meditating intellect- as to verge close to being beyond description.” Through much of Styron’s “unfocused stirrings” he does make it out the other end, hence the ability to tell his story.

The subject is one of much anguish, frustration and question of mortality, which is why one of the strongest elements of his writing is his awareness. Through much of his depression and final breakdown which was when he was in his sixties, he was terribly aware of his mood and was somehow able to note each phase of his decline into the dark murky fog. His account is not highly charged in the sense that he does not purge his soul in an “out of control” manner, yet his emotions and pain are heavily present, weighing down the pages with hefty words that mirror the illness itself. It is his ability to successfully separate his present, healthier self, from the severely depressed, and near suicidal self which allows him to tell us his story in a very matter of fact manner without being cold and medical. He discusses the taboo of suicide and its effect on families and friends, although it is a morbid subject, it needs to be discussed nevertheless, and Styron is aware of the urgency to do so. Styron’s account is refreshing, it started off as a lecture and later turned into a very short memoir which could reach a greater audience, Darkness Visible is certainly a helpful read to those who want a more personal account of the illness or for those who know someone who suffers from it and do not quite understand it. I shall leave you with an extract from Milton’s Paradise Lost Book 1, lines 63-69 which is a description of hell and an influence on Styron’s choice of title;

“No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.”