Between the medieval era and the Nineteenth Century, there were no Enids. A sort of narrowing or bottlenecking in our naming traditions, or the opposite, an expansive cloud of forgetting and dispersal, a perfect example of reversed nominative determinism in action, caused the very idea of the name Enid to disappear altogether from the world until Tennyson published the first volume of his Idylls of the King and then, as with the random driven frequency change of an existing gene variant present within some environmentally punctuated or radically isolated population when it suddenly erupts again, altered, on the other side of its bottleneck, so it was that everyone living ‘neath Tennyson’s stochastic shadow was destined to be named, Enid.
Lady Enid, the embodiment of the highest chivalric virtues, the she whose character could not be doubted, was discovered weeping one day by noble Sir Geraint, her devoted husband. Immediately, he suspected her of infidelity and as punishment dragged her along in the baggage train of his quest for peace of mind. Lady Enid obeyed his command not to speak to him, breaking her silence only to forewarn him of imminent dangers lying in wait on the road ahead. In this way, she demonstrated to her husband the indefatigability of her moral courage. And it was only after his wife had proved her faithfulness, by means of foretelling, that Sir Geraint learnt the true reason for her tears that had so perturbed him before, and now perturbed him to the furthest degree. Soon after their marriage, the Lady Enid became sorrowful because she saw that she had tamed her husband for whom married life had eclipsed the glory of holy war. The domesticated Geraint had lost all interest in venturing out into the Middle Ages and contesting the dragons of oppression. He desired nothing but to apply himself to the chores and responsibilities of their home life. Lady Enid deplored this newfound contentedness of the once great knight. And so it is that every wife finds reason for her unhappiness in the happiness that her husband finds with her. And so it also is that the zealot and the reformer are provoked into their discontent not by oppression and want but, above all, by the thin contentedness of the masses, who find no great fault with world but their portion of it.
But what is the term for this deep moral sorrow uncovered by the lady Enid which fixes upon, for its object, the contentedness of others? What should we call this inverted schadenfreude? No, don’t say envy, there is no resentment or jealousy in the Lady Enid. That is not it. She does not wish to take the place of the other in the acclamations of the world, at least, not in that sense. On the contrary, she is provoked to pity for the other’s readiness for limitation, and pity is a constant for her. And she does not pity them for ordinarily pitiable reasons but rather for the easiness of their ease, for the paltry form of their enjoyments. For some decades after her life, there ensued a theological dispersal of Enid’s ascetic energies along false turns towards false definitions, and it was this dispersal event that occasioned the nominative eclipse of the Enid question itself, that is until its late but intoxicating conceptual reemergence within the stanzas of Idylls of the King. It seems worthwhile now to consider the historically determined impossibility of the question of the Lady Enid, which precisely is the matter of the nature of the opposite to schadenfreude. Below, I include some desultory efforts of 11th Century monks to record this elusive opposite. It is evident from the exchanges that these brothers were already prey to the affliction of messageboardism and were unable to engage the question substantially. Nevertheless, we can make out certain recurring themes and alongside our own added commentary we can be satisfied that we have at least commenced the work of comprehension, if only negatively:
Who has set the puzzle, “in considering the object known as the sorrows of Lady Enid, what might then act as the antonym for Schadenfreude?" Is this a trap? It seems both a distraction and trivial, and yet also, I have to admit, strangely commanding of my attention. This may not be very imaginative of me, but I suggest, "Mitgefühl" (in German) or "compassion" (English). My reason is that I consider Schadenfreude to be the absence of compassion.
We could almost stop our enquiry here. The answer is, if prosaic and one dimensional, also seemingly adequate to the question if we wish only to formally dismiss it. However, such a dismissal negates the Lady Enid’s very particular innovation in affect, and does not engage the problematic of good works which as it is inherited from one generation to the next is always framed and driven by a complex of motivations, expediencies and rationalisations - we are always in a rush to disregard the knotty problem of ambivalence and take things at their basic value so that we might more easily employ them to our own purpose and thus move on to something else. The question here belongs to a slower contemplative practice which, in accord with its nature, engages the object in all its aspects. In particular, we should note in the above, the simplicity of the definition of Schadenfreude, which immediately impedes the conception of the nature of its opposite. As is the nature of an enquiry, even an enquiry conducted half heartedly, it begins by accumulating a midden of contributions:
Mitgefühl is defined as "the feeling of sadness provoked by the sadness of others". Whilst schadenfreude means "joy derived from the misfortune of others". I would suggest that Mudita or Mitfreude are more appropriate as these mean " a feeling of joy at the joy of others".
We now observe a first registering amongst the brothers that the question of an antonym problematises what it is that is opposed within the ‘opposite’ - in this case, is it the affect of the one perceiving the other, or rather should we assume one’s own affect remains constant but it is the other’s affect that is inverted?
I agree, "Mitfreude" seems a good option in German, and "sympathetic joy" is a useful term in English but I cannot think of a single word for it. I notice"Mudita” has been suggested.
This contributor attempts a return to very simple concepts but it is like water running through his fingers. The well meaning purpose of his effort is to put his stone on the pile and leave as quickly as possible. There is only a narrow focus on the semantic exercise and no engagement with the environment in which the puzzle arises.
Mudita is the Buddhist concept of joy. It is especially sympathetic or vicarious joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being rather than begrudging it.
Now we see a roaming far and wide as if in a fairy tale where it is necessary to find a net to catch the net that might then catch the definition which, as in all searches, has become the entirety of the engagement with the matter - if this discussion has not degenerated into an endless substitution of placeholder terms, then there is still nothing living in it.
We are not particularly au fait with either the word or the concept of mudita, but I found an account which says it's the attained awareness of non-possessive joy. It’s not a word in common English usage and is not defined in the original conception as the sense of pleasure derived in the pleasure of another. Buddhism tends to avoid the question and role of the other, and presumes universalist states of being where individual affect is already superseded.
The trend of the discussion has taken a wrong turn into invocations of unselfish joy and the philosophical assertion of its certainty. Thus, the essence of what is at question here is forgotten.
I can’t think of a single word for it, but empathic joy and empathic pleasure are both familiar collocations, particularly in the psychology department.
As above, the brother’s enthusiasm both for the concept and for dramatically revealed affective symmetries between self and other has blinded him to the difficulty of the question which seems to have taken on a repelling quality, as if it has become impossible for the monks to perceive, let alone, contemplate it.
What about goodwill? Or graciousness?
Both fine sentiments when encountered along the wrong path.
Confelicity and compersion are both rarely used neologisms which seek to capture the contagious nature of joy by building compounds of prefixes and nouns, or sequences of syllables as one might invent spells.
There is something here. Is it possible to build a word enclosure around an as yet unformulated concept and, by containing it, as with a frame around a painting, or a plinth for a statue, thus bring it into the world? In any case, the joy makes joy thesis is not relevant.
Solidarity - reciprocated actions immediately embarked upon in recognition of commonality amongst individuals bound together in common cause.
The social aspect of the question is well made but the Lady Enid’s affective movement in relation to her husband is one of alienation not convergent solidarity - she is disturbed by his happiness in her.
Brothers! Is this preoccupation with affective symmetry missing the point? I do not have a word for it but I am sure the opposite of Schadenfreude has to name that ambivalent state where I encounter "my sadness before the other’s happiness."
Sadly, the discussion becomes circular after this amazing breakthrough (proof that all quality is a product of accumulated quantities) as his interlocutors insist he is only rediscovering envy. A true opposite to schadenfreude would invert all the terms not just substituting pleasure or joy for misfortune so as to institute another pleasing symmetry in the world that might then be consumed enthusiastically. Any inversion by which we might find the Lady Enid’s acute sensitisation should also include the positioning and role of self and other.
For some reason, by association I suddenly recall, and I do not suggest it has much relevance to the problematic found in the relations between Lady Enid and Sir Geraint but, in the early years of our present moment, there was a famous invocation of the court fool’s licence by the comedian Spike Milligan when he called Prince Charles, a grovelling little bastard (how I wish now that he had said, snivelling little shit). At the time, we all dutifully remembered that the role of fool functions as a regulatory social mechanism in contexts where only sanctioned utterances are permitted. Where the fool is absent, monks find pleasing but nutrient deficient symmetries, whilst ladies are discovered, by suspicious husbands, a-weeping in their bedchamber.
In the same era, although he was already dead at the time of Milligan’s insulting of the Prince of Wales, Derek Jarman wrote, ‘I have rediscovered the place of boredom, from where I can fight ‘what next?’ with nothing.’ The bachelardian site of boredom and of doing nothing is the locus of inverted schadenfreude, and is, if anything, always emptying. Whilst this evacuated space is not designated for boredom as such, it describes the placement of subjective separation from any and all excitations provoked by the antics of the other: one is bereft and thrown into another world even, and especially, within close proximity to one’s happy beloved who, to all intents and purposes, has become a mere jouissance drain upon the marriage project. The fool is absent, the lady weeps, the husband is forced by chance to act rightly but for the wrong motive. It turns out nice again at the end.
