Dark Night of The Soul - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the famous line "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning" in The Crack-Up. Fitzgerald may have been thinking of Earnest Christopher Dowson, who used the phrase "obscure night of the soul" in his "Absinthe Taetra." Dowson would have appealed to Fitzgerald's melancholic side.

Author and humorist Douglas Adams satirized the phrase while commenting on the shallowness of modern spirituality in the title of his 1988 science fiction novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

Alternative rock band Sparklehorse along with producer Danger Mouse and director and visual artist David Lynch collaborated with a plethora of other artists including Vic Chesnutt, Jason Lytle and Wayne Coyne on an audio visual project entitled "Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul."

It has also been used as a song title by several other bands and music artists, including Steve Bell, The Get Up Kids, Mayhem, and by Shai Linne in The Solus Christus Project.

Canadian singer Loreena McKennitt set the poem to music on her album The Mask and Mirror.

American metal band Fear Factory used the term in the last track from their Obsolete album, called "Timelessness."

Composer Ola Gjeilo has written a 14-minute choral setting with piano and string quartet.

In the final episode of Father Ted, "Going to America," depressed priest Father Kevin explains to Ted that he is experiencing the "dark night of the soul."

In episode 5371 of US soap series The Bold and the Beautiful, Bridget Forrester (Ashley Jones) and Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang) discuss spirituality and the purpose of human existence through reference and direct quotation of "Dark Night of the Soul."