Melancholia by Albrecht Durer, 1514

www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/durer-melencolia.html

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10800

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Dinesh ^club

Durer has always been especially admired for his engravings on copper: very difficult, precise painstaking work, and -- unlike wood-cuts -- carried out by the artist himself, working directly on the copper plate. Two of these engravings have long been regarded as supreme in execution and rich in meaning: the great allegorical figure of Melancholy, sitting surrounded by a range of objects and symbols; and the Knight riding bravely out on his horse, flanked by death and the Devil. Giulia Bartrum explains why they are so remarkable:

They have a similar degree of quiet astonishing technical accomplishment, and the subjects complement each other. We have the Knight riding through a rocky gorge with the Devil, his faithful dog running beside him. Behind the horse, on his right side, is Death. But he is brushing off Death. He is purposeful and active. The figure of Melancholy is slumped in a heavy draped costume. Her dog is sleep. She is surrounded by cold geometric objects and empty apocalyptic landscape fills the background. You sense that she is not oncontrol of her life, entirely consumed by th struggle to think and create. Either way, she is the complete opposite of the Knight, who rides purposefully forward, while she sits immobile. ~ Page 311

Interpretations of the prints and their significance have echoed down the centuries, playing a unique role in the history of German identity, according to Horst Bredekamp:

. . . . Melancholia is the opposite. This was taken as a symbol of a German soul which can be defined as the alternative to the Enlightenment as represented by Descartes. Melancholia is the romantic alternative to French rationalism. Here it is not the machine of body and mind that is determinant, but the soul which is the energizing factor for both, mind and body. This was how the German soul was defined -- deeper and more complex than in any other nation. And that also implies elements of self-destruction, of disablement from action, of self-reflection, so to speak, of the German soul in the nineteenth century, which nowhere can be seen with such clarity -- I say that ironically -- as in these two pieces. ~ Page 314

2 years ago. Edited 2 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

2 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

melancholia (n.)

"mental condition characterized by great depression, sluggishness, and aversion to mental action," 1690s, from Modern Latin melancholia (see melancholy).

Entries linking to melancholia
melancholy (n.)
c. 1300, melancolie, malencolie, "mental disorder characterized by sullenness, gloom, irritability, and propensity to causeless and violent anger," from Old French melancolie "black bile; ill disposition, anger, annoyance" (13c.), from Late Latin melancholia, from Greek melankholia "sadness," literally (excess of) "black bile," from melas (genitive melanos) "black" (see melano-) + khole "bile" (see cholera).

Old medicine attributed mental depression to unnatural or excess "black bile," a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four "humors," which help form and nourish the body unless altered or present in excessive amounts. The word also was used in Middle English for "sorrow, gloom" (brought on by love, disappointment, etc.), by mid-14c. As belief in the old physiology of humors faded out in the 18c. the word remained with a sense of "a gloomy state of mind," particularly when habitual or prolonged.

The Latin word also is the source of Spanish melancolia, Italian melancolia, German Melancholie, Danish melankoli, etc. Old French variant malencolie (also in Middle English) is by false association with mal "sickness."

When I go musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things fore-known,
When I build castles in the air,
Void of sorrow and void of fear,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy.
When I lie waking all alone,
Recounting what I have ill done,
My thoughts on me then tyrannise,
Fear and sorrow me surprise,
Whether I tarry still or go,
Methinks the time moves very slow.
All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so sad as melancholy.
[Robert Burton, from "Anatomy of Melancholy," 17c.]

2 years ago. Edited 2 years ago.

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