Showing results for "City of Dreadful Night" in All Categories

James Thomson was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, on the 23rd November 1834. Possessing a powerful and unique writing gift, unfortunately, his own demons curtailed him from leaving a larger literary legacy. Stories, essays and poems were submitted to various publications during his life and undoubtedly the creative high point of his life is ‘The City of Dreadful Night’. Within its bleak verse are the struggles of Thomson’s own chaotic tortures with depression, insomnia and alcoholism in the uncaring world that surrounded him.

First published in 1874, "The City of Dreadful Night" is an extended poetic meditation on melancholy, or what is generally termed today as depression. Thomson's "city" is the "città dolente" of Dante, the domain of souls trapped in a round of ceaseless misery. However, the inhabitants of Thomson's world endure a torment more subtle and more devastating than the acute and picturesque tortures of Dante's Inferno - a complete loss of purpose and a relentless draining of energy, a desperate and ever wakeful ennui.