Dürer's Signature

The Philosophic History
of Melancholy

Michael J. B. Allen, Professor of English and Renaissance Studies, UCLA

In his Problems 30.1, Aristotle saw a connection between melancholy - an excess in a person of black bile - and eminence in philosophy, politics, and poetry, instancing the mythic hero Hercules and the great philosophers Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato. According to Aristotle, the ancients called melancholy "the sacred disease." Before him Plato had linked trance-like raging or frenzy to the abilities to prophesy, to perform priestly functions, to compose divine poetry, and, even, to love truly.

During the Renaissance, the Florentine Platonist and magus, Marsilio Ficino 1433-1499), explored melancholy as the mind or mood set of the creative thinker, examining its pathology and linking it to the astrological notion of being born under, or being at critical moments influenced by, Saturn or his spirits - Saturn being the furthest and slowest of the seven known planets and the god of old age and contemplation. From this analysis of planetary influence emerged the idea of our possessing an inner "saturnian" spirit, "daemon," or genius, and eventually the romantic and modern notion of the mad, afflicted, or wounded genius and the poète maudit.

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