Melancholia
Melancholia (
Greek μελανχολια) is a
mood of non-specific
depression. It is characterised by low levels of enthusiasm and low levels of eagerness for activity. It was previously described as a distinct
disease as early as the
fifth and
fourth centuries BC in the
Hippocratic writings. It was characterized by "aversion to food, despondency, sleeplessness, irritability, restlessness," as well as the statement that "
Grief and
fear, when lingering, provoke melancholia". It is now generally believed that melancholia was the same phenomenon as what is now called
clinical depression.
The name melancholia comes from the old medical
theory of
the four humours: disease being caused by an imbalance in one or other of the four basic bodily fluids, or humours. Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humour in a particular person. Melancholia was caused by an excess of black
bile; hence the name, which means 'black bile' (
Greek μελας,
melas, "black", + χολη,
kholé, "bile"); a person whose constitution tended to have a preponderance of black bile had a
melancholic disposition.
See also: sanguine, phlegmatic, cholericDuring the early
17th century, a curious cultural and literary cult of melancholia arose in
England. It was believed that
religious uncertainties caused by the English
Reformation and a greater attention being paid to issues of
sin,
damnation, and
salvation, led to this effect.
In music, the post-Elizabethan cult of melancholia is associated with
John Dowland, whose motto was
Semper Dowland, semper dolens. ("Always Dowland, always mourning.") The melancholy man, known to contemporaries as a "malcontent," is epitomized by Shakespeare's
Prince Hamlet, the "Melancholy Dane." Another literary expression of this cultural mood comes from the death-obsessed later works of
John Donne. Other major melancholic authors include Sir
Thomas Browne, and
Jeremy Taylor, whose
Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and
Holy Living and Holy Dying, respectively, contain extensive meditations on death. But the most extended treatment of the cult of melancholia comes from
Robert Burton, whose
The Anatomy of Melancholy treats the subject from both a literary and a medical
perspective.
A famous
allegorical engraving by
Albrecht Dürer is entitled
Melancholia I; amongst other allegorical symbols, it includes a
magic square, and a
truncated cube. The image in turn inspired a sonnet by
Edward Dowden.
A similar phenomenon, though not under the same name, occurred during
Romanticism, with such works as
The Sorrows of Young Werther by
Goethe.
In the 20th century, much of the counterculture of
modernism was fueled by comparable
alienation and a sense of purposelessness called "
anomie."
*
Grunwald Center website: Durer's Melencolia and clinical depression, iconography and printmaking techniques*
"Dürer's Melancholia": sonnet by Edward Dowden*
Melancholy and abstraction, on the Berlin exhibition "Melancholy: Genius and Madness in Art"
