And regarding elegies, here’s a Deleuze interview I read recently that should be relevant (it’s a bit long, sorry, and only a summary of the actual interview):

Parnet says that Deleuze has been fortunate to escape infinite debt, so how is it that he complains from morning to night, and that he is the great defender of the complaint and the elegy? Smiling at this, Deleuze observes that this is a personal question. He then says that the elegy is a principal source of poetry, a great complaint. A history of the elegy should be done, it probably has already; the complaint of the prophet, he continues, is the opposite of the priest. The prophet wails, why did God choose me? and what’s happening to me is too much for me; if one accepts that this is what the complaint is, something we don’t see everyday. And it’s not ow ow ow, I’m in pain, although it could also be that, says Deleuze, but the person complaining doesn’t always know what he/she means. The elderly lady who complains about her rheumatism, she means, what force is taking hold of my leg that is too great for me to stand?

If we look at history, Deleuze says, the elegy is a source of poetry, Latin poets like Catullus or Tiberius. And what is the elegy? It’s the expression of he/she who, temporarily or not, no longer has any social status. To complain — a little old man, someone in prison — it’s not sadness at all, but something quite different, the demand, something in the complaint that is astonishing, an adoration, like a prayer. The complaint of prophets, or something Parnet is particularly interested in, the complaint of hypochondriacs. The intensity of their complaint is beautiful it’s sublime, Deleuze says. So, he continues, it’s the socially excluded who are in a situation of complaint. There is a Hungarian specialist, Tökei, who studied the Chinese elegy that is enlivened by those no longer bearing a social status, i.e. the freed slave. A slave, however unfortunate he or she might be, still has a social status. The freed slave, though, is outside everything, like at the liberation of American blacks with the abolition of slavery, or in Russia, when no statute had been foreseen. So they find themselves excluded from any community [Deleuze and Guattari refer to Tökei in this same context in A Thousand Plateaus (449, 569, note 9)]. Then the great complaint is born. However, the great complaint does not express the pain they have, Deleuze argues, but is a kind of chant/song. This is why the complaint is a great poetic source.

Deleuze says that if he hadn’t been a philosopher and if he had been a woman, he would have wanted to be a wailer , the complaint rises and it’s an art. And the complaint has this perfidious side as well, as if to say: don’t take on my complaint, don’t touch me, don’t feel sorry for me, I’m taking care of it. And in taking care of it for oneself, the complaint is transformed: what is happening is too overwhelming for me, because this is joy, joy in a pure state. But we are careful to hide it, Deleuze says, because there are people who aren’t very pleased with someone being joyous, so you have to hide it in a kind of complaint. But the complaint is not only joy, it’s also unease, because, in fact, realizing a force can require a price: one wonders, am I going to risk my skin/life ? As soon as one realizes a force, for example, a painter reaching for color, doesn’t he risk his skin/life? Literally, one should think of the way Van Gogh went toward color, then experienced joy, and this is more connected to his madness than all these psychoanalytical stories. Something risks getting broken, it’s too overwhelming for me, and that’s what the complaint is, something too great for me, in misfortune or in happiness, but usually misfortune.

TRiG.