Melancholia (Art)

The year 2014 marks the 500th anniversary of Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I. This small engraving, measuring a mere 23.8 x 18.6 cm, is one of the most written about images in the history of art. Dürer’s dark angelic figure – the melancholic temperament personified – has contributed immeasurably to the association of melancholy with artistic creativity and genius. The complex array of objects that surround the angel have long pre-occupied viewers intent on deciphering the engraving’s meaning. Yet, in spite of the many interpretations of Melencolia I, the engraving seems destined to remain an enigma, its riddles never fully resolved.

This exhibition takes its cue from Dürer’s engraving in a visual exploration of five centuries of melancholy in art. In addition to examining Melencolia I in detail, works by a diverse range of artists are included in order to characterize the many guises of melancholy from the Renaissance to today. Melancholy is invoked as a condition or mood that inhabits various figures, objects and sites. Taking another cue from Dürer, who was and continues to be celebrated as a master printmaker and draughtsman, the exhibition features primarily drawings, prints, and photographs – small-scale works that invite close contemplation and scrutiny.

Understanding the ways historical images stake their claims in the present is an essential task for art historians and art galleries. This exhibition explores the iconic status and visual reception of Melencolia I, as well as the idea of melancholy in and of itself.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Cet article se propose de reconsidérer les relations complexes et parfois ambivalentes que l'image cinématographique entretient avec le monde globalisé et les flux (notamment d'images) qui le caractérisent. À cette fin, il examine différentes formes esthétiques que le cinéma contemporain peut donner à l'image-flux – en explorant les ressources du montage aussi bien que celles du cadrage –, à partir d'un corpus réunissant des blockbusters et des films d'auteur. L'analyse vise ensuite à dégager les effets poétiques et affectifs de ces mises en scène du flux. En particulier, l'article pose l'hypothèse que le cinéma contemporain représente un nouveau tragique du flux, qu'il relie à l'affect mélancolique ou dépressif.

This paper reconsiders the complex and somewhat ambivalent relationships between the cinematographic image and the globalized world as it is characterized by flows (of images, among other flows). For this purpose, the paper examines different aesthetic forms that contemporary cinema gives to the image-flow – taking into account the editing as well as the framing resources –, based on a multiple corpus of both blockbusters and author films. The analysis aims at bringing out the poetic and affective effects of these representations of the flow. In particular, the paper suggests that contemporary cinema offers a new tragic vision of the flow, which it links to the melancholic or depressive affect.

This paper examines artistic works that use “generative systems” such as copy machines as examples that can incite melancholic experience in the audience. The works of Stevlana Boym, Sonia Sheridan, and Timm Ulrichs are discussed in this context. The theoretical framework for this analysis draws from Svetlana Boym’s concept of “broken-tech arts” (2001), as well as Laura Marks’ model of “haptic visuality” (2002). With the proliferation of copy machines since the 1960s in the US and other parts of the world, artists began producing new work through inventive uses and creative manipulations of copiers. Copy machines allowed distinct effects such as stretching and degeneration in image-making and specifically resulted in the generation of haptic images. This paper argues that such images can trigger melancholia as an aesthetic experience in their viewers.

Esej venujúca sa téme melanchólie na vybraných umeleckéch príkladoch.
Melanchólia je zvláštnou formou nálady. Je smútkom, ktorý si sám seba uvedomuje. Alebo  inak: melancholik  si uvedomuje vlastnú náladu a projektuje ju do sveta mimo seba.  Ako upozornil Földényi, na rozdiel od emócie, nálada nemá objekt, ale objavujeme v nej charakter ľudského bytia. Melancholik prežíva hlboké prepojenie sveta  a vlastného Ja.  Vzťah melancholika k prítomnosti je plný vedomia zániku,. Budúcnosť sa stáva minulosťou a minulosť je totožná s prítomným okamihom.

Title: Representation of nostalgia and melancholy in contemporary artworks: Tacita Dean and Louise Bourgeois.
Conference: Memory, Nostalgia, Melancholy. Re-imagining home in a time of mobility. School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University. Rovinj, Croatia. September 2015.

Abstract:
This paper is situated in the context of Contemporary Art practice and its links with Cultural memory. In it I will explain the way in which Contemporary Art has become a medium within which to hold current discussions and debates surrounding issues related to memory, paying particular attention to the relevance and role of nostalgia and melancholy.
In recent decades, memory and the reappraisal of the past have become essential tools to denounce human rights abuses and uncover victims’ experiences of traumatic events in history. Visual Art, oral testimonies, nostalgia, melancholia and acts of commemoration have been fused together in many contemporary artworks across a wide range of western countries. Artists working in this field and addressing these issues include Christian Boltanski, Miroslaw Balka, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Tacita Dean, Louise Bourgeois, Rachel Whiteread, Jane & Louise Wilson or Kara Walker.
This paper will focus on the different ways in which nostalgia and melancholia has been used for creating contemporary artworks dealing with memory. I will identify a range of common patterns employed by artists in their works, such as the ways in which the ‘absent’ and ‘void’ is represented, be that by way of the reappropiation of discarded objects or their collection, such as historical amateur photographs. This paper will consider the work of British artist Tacita Dean, in particular her collection of old family photograph albums purchased in flea markets, her use of audio visual technology and how these encourage an engagement with the analogue past, the subjects’ personalities and events, which are no longer present in our digital era.
This paper will also address the melancholic approach of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, who confronts traumatic events of the past, in particular her memories of humiliation inflicted upon Bourgeois by her chauvinist father. Bourgeois recounts her memories repeatedly; her aim to control her fears in the present and find its restatement. Bourgeois’ artworks are abstract objects inspired by body shapes and domestic items that work as both a reality and a metaphor of the unnamed and melancholy.
Contemporary artworks dealing with memory assert that memory keeps us in contact with the past through affect, melancholy, sensations and nostalgia. The representation of memory in art reinforces itself as a continuous and necessary activity in human life and behaviour. Therefore, it allows us to place ourselves in a specific time and place. That is, it enables individuals with no real sense of home or belonging to situate themselves in a particular time and place.

The Cold War’s end infused electronic music in Berlin after 1989 with an ecstatic intensity. Enthused communities came together to live out that energy and experiment in conditions informed by past suffering and hope for the future. This techno-scene became an ‘intimate public’ (Berlant) within an emergent ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams). Techno parties held out a promise of freedom while Germany’s re-unification quickly broke into disputes and mutual suspicion. Tracing the historical movement during the first years of re-unified Germany, this article adds to accounts of ecstasy by considering it in conjunction with melancholy, arguing for an ambivalent description of ecstatic experience – and of emotional life more broadly.

This essay presents the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the light of Dürer’s engraving "Melencolia
I". In the first part we discuss the occurrence of the engraving in three Agamben’s books: "The Man Without
Content" (1970), "Stanzas" (1977), and "Nudities" (2009). In the second, we attempt to interpret his use of Melencolia
I as a figure of the concept of inoperativity. Inoperativity is seen by the philosopher as the essential feature of
humanity, and its characterization takes advantage of the axiological overturning of the Aristotelian couple
energeia/dynamis in favour of the second. From there follows what can be called an anthropology of (im)potentiality
which shaped not only Agamben’s most known work in political philosophy but also his view of the artistic
creation: both these research paths are therefore to be seen as the result of ontological interrogations. The footnotes
of the essay retrace key passages in Agamben’s bibliography that help to follow the development and refinements of
the concept of inoperativity.

This study is devoted to the emotional experience of the famous Renaissance sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), as it is portrayed in his life writing, the Vita. Providing the variety of arguments on the connection between the artist and contemporary intellectuals, who attended the Florentine Academy (1540–1583) together, I demonstrate that Cellini’s literary production can be examined productively against the background of Neoplatonic thought. In particular, Marsilio Ficino’s On Love, first published in the vernacular Italian in 1544, helps to establish an explanation of what Cellini meant when he decided to play the cornet while falling in love simultaneously with a young boy and girl, or  how he justified kicking or punching his servants, or why he did not kill his adversary, the artist Baccio Bandinelli, when he had the chance. These cases of radical affectivity are inscribed into Ficino’s concept of the “melancholy genius” manifesting melancholic madness. In Cellini’s Vita, the latter can not only turn humans almost into beast, literally (for example, in a bat); but, properly tempered by the means of music and poetry, as well as of individual and collective magic, it elevates one’s soul “on high,” which corresponds to the Neoplatonic concept of divine madness.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1.  Benvenuto Cellini and the Florentine Academy
1.1 Why did the Italian academies emerge?
1.2 Academic movement before the Florentine Academy
1.3 The Florentine Academy
1.4 Benvenuto Cellini’s writings in the context of the Florentine Academy
Chapter 2.  “Essendo io per natura malinconico”: Benvenuto Cellini and the Ficinian Legacy
2.1 “Grand theories” and “grounded” early-modern artists
2.2 Marsilio Ficino’s On Love
2.3 “Melancholy genius” concept
2.4 (Neo)Platonic love
Chapter 3.  “Tu ten sei gito a contemplar su ’n Cielo l’alto Fattore”: Benvenuto Cellini Ascending on High
3.1 Esoteric knowledge and censorship
3.2 “Furor divino” and “diabolico furore”
3.3 Different kinds of furor divino in the Vita
Conclusion

Este ensayo interroga el abordaje de conceptos abstractos a partir de obras de artistas de dos generaciones realizadas en fotografía analógica y video analizando características intrínsecas de los diferentes procesos de creación que atañen a los usos expandidos de la imagen y sobre la persistencia de las estructuras subyacentes que generan los patrones de nuestra cultura en la imagen.

The polyhedron that features so prominently in Melencolia I occupies a privileged place in the histories of both art and geometry. Art historians and mathematicians have puzzled over the precise shape, debating whether it is a truncated triangular trapezohedron or rhombohedron, and possibly a precursor to the study of quasicrystals. In these histories the polyhedron is elusive, withdrawn, and indifferent—it exudes melancholy. This chapter considers the evolution of the polyhedron as a melancholic object, and later appropriations by artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Anselm Kiefer, and, most recently, Fabien Mérelle.

An analysis of "These," one of Williams' greatest and most enigmatic poems.  Places it in the tradition of other poems about melancholy, including lyrics by Milton and Keats, and related works, including Dürer's etching Melencolia.  Originally published in _The William Carlos Williams Review_, 1983.

Concise, illustrated article on the subject of "Melancholia" [in the field of Aesthetics / Philosophy of Art] surveying the thoughts of leading philosophers, writers, artists, psychologists, and other scholars, from Classical times through to the Renaissance, and then focussing on the Romantic period. First published in "Udolpho" (the magazine of the Gothic Society), Vol. 35 (Winter, 1998), and issued by the Gargoyle's Head Press, from Chatham House, in Chislehurst, Kent, UK. [Final edition of "Udolpho".]

Little, J. D., 'Melancholia', Udolpho, Vol.35 (Winter, 1998), 8-13 [Chislehurst, Kent: Gargoyle's Head Press]. ISSN 1350-7796

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN TWO VERSIONS (AND THE EARLIER, CONCISE ILLUSTRATED VERSION, IS HERE ATTACHED).

The more abbreviated version of this article (part-illustrated) was first published as ‘Melancholia: Mental Illness or Vital Creative Humour?’, in Udolpho, Vol.35 (Winter, 1998), 8-13 [Chislehurst, Kent: Gargoyle's Head Press] ISSN 1350-7796.

It was subsequently published, in full, as an ‘Essay’ appended to the author’s Forms and Possibilities: Selected Verse (Wollongong, NSW, Australia: Wirripang, 2011) ISBN 978187682923  SEE:
https://www.academia.edu/38510040/An_Essay_on_Melancholia_The_Muse_of_Bile_-_Perspectives_through_Time_in_Forms_and_Possibilities._Wollongong_Wirripang_2011_

KEYWORDS: Anatomy of Melancholy, Melancholy, Melancholia, Dame Melancholy, Malincholia, Melancholia atra bilis, Galen, Four Temperaments, sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, Albrecht Durer, Melencolia I, Agrippa von Nettesheim, James Thomson, Sir Philip Sidney, Artist's Melancholy, Robert Burton, Samuel Johnson, H B Lee, Marcel Proust, Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, John Milton, Paradise Lost, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Charles Lamb, Denis Diderot, Plato, Aristotle, Marsilio Ficino, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hood, Francisco Goya, Saturn, Saturn and Melancholy, Saturn Devouring His Son, Kronos, Jean Cocteau, Aleister Crowley, Florentine Neo-Platonists, Thomas Gray, John Fletcher, William Shakespeare, William Collins, City of Dreadful Night, John Keats, John Fowles, artist's temperament, furor divinus, furor melancholicus, mental derangement, divine frenzy, defence of the artist, "Jonathan David Little"

This article focuses on Lars von Trier’s 2011film, Melancholia,described as ‘a beautiful film about the end of the world’ and interlock-ing personal and global tragedy. Drawing directly on her personal emotional response to the film, and referring to her profound incapacity to talk about it for many years after an initial encounter with it, the author turns to a range of object relations psychoanalytic thinkers to consider what such experience has to say about lived emotional relationships to cinema, and its role in shaping and articulating psychological, and affective states. The article touches on debates about the cinematic gaze, and the role of film as a psychological object, and considers whether film might be seen as offering a form of therapeutic encounter for viewers.

This article argues that "Melancholia" (Lars von Trier, 2011) can be a special occasion to think seriously about death in the terms proposed by Søren Kierkegaard in "At a Graveside", generating in the viewer the same effect that the discourse intends to produce to the reader, which is help us to live our lives more properly.

* “an impressive survey” - Yuriko Saito, Ph.D., Editor, Contemporary Aesthetics.

Revised and expanded 2011 version of an article on the subject of "Melancholia" [in the field of Aesthetics / Philosophy of Art] surveying the thoughts of leading philosophers, writers, artists, psychologists, and other scholars, from Classical times through to the Renaissance, and then focussing on the Romantic period.

Little, Jonathan D., 'An Essay on Melancholia: "The Muse of Bile" (Mental Illness or Vital Creative Humour?) - Perspectives through Time; An Appreciation and A Defence of the Artist’s Temperament' , in Forms and Possibilities: Selected Verse (Wollongong, NSW, Australia: Wirripang, 2011) ISBN 978187682923

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN TWO VERSIONS (AND THE LATER, EXPANDED VERSION, IS HERE ATTACHED).

The abbreviated version of this article (part-illustrated) was first published as ‘Melancholia: Mental Illness or Vital Creative Humour?’, in Udolpho, Vol.35 (Winter, 1998), 8-13 [Chislehurst, Kent: Gargoyle's Head Press] ISSN 1350-7796.

SEE ALSO: https://www.academia.edu/38455313/Melancholia_Mental_Illness_or_Vital_Creative_Humour_Udolpho_vol.35_Winter_1998_8-13

It was then subsequently published, in full, as an ‘Essay’ appended to the author’s Forms and Possibilities: Selected Verse (Wollongong, NSW, Australia: Wirripang, 2011) ISBN 978187682923

KEYWORDS: Anatomy of Melancholy, Melancholy, Melancholia, Dame Melancholy, Malincholia, Melancholia atra bilis, Galen, Four Temperaments, sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, Albrecht Durer, Melencolia I, Agrippa von Nettesheim, James Thomson, Sir Philip Sidney, Artist's Melancholy, Robert Burton, Samuel Johnson, H B Lee, Marcel Proust, Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, John Milton, Paradise Lost, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Charles Lamb, Denis Diderot, Plato, Aristotle, Marsilio Ficino, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hood, Francisco Goya, Saturn, Saturn and Melancholy, Saturn Devouring His Son, Kronos, Jean Cocteau, Aleister Crowley, Florentine Neo-Platonists, Thomas Gray, John Fletcher, William Shakespeare, William Collins, City of Dreadful Night, John Keats, John Fowles, artist's temperament, furor divinus, furor melancholicus, mental derangement, divine frenzy, defence of the artist, "Jonathan David Little"

This paper defends that "Melancholia" has a philosophical and artistic value which is founded on the use of cinematographic language to communicate, in an apocalyptic context, the experience of anxiety. And because of that, can help us to understand our ambivalent attitude towards death, which not only does it terrify us but it also attracts us. In other words, I believe that "Melancholia" not only makes us experience the fear that would be provoked by the certainty of imminent annihilation, but at the same time awakens our desire to look into the abyss.

Resumen:
Las obras de Byung-Chul Han — La sociedad del cansancio; La sociedad de la transparencia; La agonía de Eros; En el Enjambre y Psicopolítica: Neoliberalismo y nuevas técnicas de pode— recurren a varias metáforas y figuras emblemáticas de la historia cultural y literaria para explicar la figura del sujeto de rendimiento. Sometido a un exitismo patológico y una auto-explotación productiva que entre otras consecuencias ha producido un declinar del deseo sexual o la agonía del eros. Ni siquiera el ocio o la sexualidad pueden rehuir el imperativo del rendimiento. El hombre contemporáneo se ha convertido en una fábrica de sí, hiperactiva, hiperneurótica, que agota cada día su propio ser diluyéndolo en un afán competitivo, de allí que el síntoma de nuestra época es el cansancio. El sistema neoliberal ha sido internalizado hasta el punto de que ya no necesita coerción externa para existir. Asimismo La sociedad de la transparencia lleva a la información total, no permite lagunas de información ni de visión” y acelera el flujo de datos empíricos. El mundo es hoy un mercado en el que se exponen, venden y consumen intimidades.

- Byung-Chul Han: Transparency Society eloquent fatigue and psychopolitics; Of the viral-immune to neuronal-stressful.
Abstract
The works of Byung-Chul Han - Society of fatigue; Society of transparency; The agony of Eros; In the Swarm and psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new techniques pode- use many metaphors and symbolic figures of the cultural and literary figure to explain the performance of the subject of history. Exitismo subjected to a pathological self-exploitation and production among other consequences has been a decline in sexual desire or the agony of eros. Even the leisure or sexuality may shun the imperative of performance. Modern man has become a factory for themselves, hyperactive, Hyper-neurotic, exhausting day is its own be diluting it in a competitive effort, hence the symptom of our time is fatigue. The neoliberal system has been internalized to the point where you no longer need external coercion to exist. The society also leads to total transparency information does not allow information gaps or vision "and accelerates the flow of empirical data. The world today is a market in which they are displayed, sold and consumed intimacies.


Palabras Clave
Sociedad, productividad, rendimiento, cansancio, dominación, psicopolítica, transparencia, eros.

Keywords
Society, productivity, performance, fatigue, domination, psycho-political, transparency, eros.

One way to characterize melancholia is as a survivor. Of the four classical temperaments, only the melancholic persists, having long eclipsed the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the sanguine in contemporary culture. Albrecht Durer’s Melencolia I is amongst the most analyzed images in the history of art; to introduce it again can feel reductive. It is an image that is almost numbingly familiar—and five centuries after its creation, it continues to be debated and discussed, enabling new theories and much creative speculation, a lively reception that shows no signs of abating.

Masters Thesis, McGill University, History and Theory Program in Architecture, with Alberto Pérez-Gómez as Supervisor. George Hersey (Yale University) as External Reader. A preliminary look at the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice 1499). I consider this a junior work superseded by my Ph.D. dissertation, A Skeleton Key to Poliphilo’s Dream.

A study of the symbolism of love and melancholy in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, an architectural treatise of the ltalian Renaissance written as a dream, in which an alchemical narrative structures the shaping of an adept through the education of his cognitive faculties. This author has speculated on the representational strategies of this satyrical and literary architecture and translated ioto English several key passages from the hero’s rhythmythical journey througb a musaic architectural wonderland.

There is a particular space-time combination in which poetry is meant to find its perfect place, its perfect happening: it’s the meridian moment, the midday spent in a locus amoenus singing and playing along with fellow-poets. It seems to be what Bachtin defines as a cronotope. Anyway, in lyric poetry this time-space reveals itself to be more and more a foundational ideal. In the bucolic world a man has to renounce personal experience, because it is a place full of (re-told) stories but without Story. Lyric poetry, instead, needs existential experience. Even bucolic love is not suffered by the subject as much as elegiac love, it does not possess the same degree of reality. The bucolic midday could be desired and invoked as a utopia of eternal harmony, but it cannot be real in a lyric text. Even when the (young) subject finds himself in the middle of such locus amoenus – as Freud shows in his story – he has to reject the full situational enjoyment and think that behind all that vital splendour there is always the constant menace of time and death. The subject defines himself in the desiring position and he is too attracted and tied to the object to abandon it and turn his mind toward abstraction as a true philosopher would (platonically) do. Finally, the investigation of the topos will lead to a reconsideration of Lacan’s idea of artistic creativity as a sublimation.

La frequentazione dell’universo delle arti figurative da parte di Leonardo Sciascia è un aspetto per certi versi trascurato dalla critica. Oltre alla presenza continua di citazioni pittoriche nei romanzi, l’interesse dello scrittore siciliano nei confronti del linguaggio figurativo è segnalato da un ampio e variegato corpus di scritti d’arte, di cui solo una minima parte è stata riproposta nelle raccolte curate dall’autore. La Galleria n.1 di "Arabeschi" (Rivista di studi su letteratura e visualità) mostra, attraverso l’allestimento di un percorso alfabetico virtuale, il fecondo e complesso dialogo fra alcune pagine sciasciane, per lo più poco note, e le immagini a cui esse rimandano.

In considering the relationship between time and melancholy, this chapter offers a fascinating account of the temporal constitution of melancholia across a diverse variety of works, including by Albrecht Durer, Anselm Kiefer, and Hans Op de Beeck. Arguing for a positive understanding of the melancholic as a figure outside of time, it shows how the particular intensity of melancholia hinges on its capacity to bridge finitude and infinitude, with specific reference to motifs of suspension. The argument draws upon writings by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Georgio Agamben, providing key insights into melancholia as a form of radical temporal ambivalence.
Ebook at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429468469

"The Invisible Element in Art: Dürer, Shakespeare, Donne," in Vision and its Instruments: Art, Science, and Technology in Early Modern Europe, ed. Alina Payne (February, 2015), makes an argument for aesthetic innovation, self-reflection, and the production of affect at the limits of visual instrumentality. Here Mazzio connects Dürer's Melencolia I, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Donne's Devotions-- as she identifies air, the invisible element in art, as a mise-en-abîme of sight itself.

Los tres grabados de Durero conocidos como Estampas maestras son con frecuencia citados juntos pero han sido sistemáticamente abordados por separado a la hora de su estudio e interpretación, dándose así por hecho una y otra vez su total independencia temática. Como se mostrará en las próximas páginas, las tres estampas pueden ser leídas como un todo, en estrecha relación unas con otras, conformando de este modo una trilogía o tríptico, un texto único dividido en tres partes o capítulos, de profunda temática espiritual y con una densa simbología iniciática que abarca diversos niveles de análisis.

Lars von Trier's _Melancholia_ (2011) makes extensive use of music from the Prelude to _Tristan und Isolde_. The deployment of cues in this film is analyzed against the backdrop of the director's earlier output, in particular _Epidemic_, which has recourse to Wagner's Overture to _Tannhäuser_.

"Il saggio mira ad analizzare il graduale processo storico di parziale sovrapposizione, sostituzione ed ampliamento del paradigma teoretico della depressione rispetto a quello della melanconia. La prima parte è dedicata ad analizzare alcuni dei tratti nevralgici delle polivalenti tematizzazioni della malinconia avvenuti nel corso della modernità, anche in relazione allo spirito del capitalismo (nella sua accezione weberiana). Segue una panoramica sulla nascita della categoria moderna di depressione, e del processo che nel corso del XX secolo l’ha condotta alla sua trasformazione in un paradigma teoretico e nosologico che ha infine sostituito quello della melanconia. La seconda parte rappresenta il tentativo di elaborare una Zeitdiagnose: l’obiettivo è valutare l’impatto psicosociale di natura ‘depressiva’ esercitato da particolari meccanismi socioeconomici e tendenze culturali, con particolare riferimento a ciò che è stato definito il «nuovo spirito del capitalismo», nonché alle nuove forme dell’individualismo e alle loro dinamiche paradossali. In conclusione viene gettato un ponte tra la storia dei due suddetti paradigmi e le dinamiche psicosociali contemporanee correlate al fenomeno oggi interpretato quale «epidemia depressiva».

The essay aims to analyse the gradual historical process of the partial overlap, replacement and expansion of the theoretical paradigm of depression with respect to that of melancholy. The first part is devoted to analysing some of the central features of the multivalent thematizations of melancholy drawn up during modernity, also with relation to the spirit of capitalism (in its Weberian acceptation). This is followed by an overview of the birth of the modern category of depression, and the process that during the twentieth century led to its transformation into a theoretical and nosological paradigm which in the end replaced that of melancholy. The second part is the attempt to draw up a Zeitdiagnose: the aim is to assess the ‘depressive’ psychosocial impact exercised by particular socio-economic mechanisms and cultural trends, with particular reference to what has been defined as the ‘new spirit of capitalism’, as well as the new forms of individualism and their paradoxical dynamics. In conclusion, I will form a bridge between the history of the two aforesaid paradigms and the contemporary psychosocial dynamics correlated to the phenomenon today interpreted as a ‘depression epidemic’."

Little has been discussed in academia about the close relationship between the Renaissance of the 16th century and melancholy humor, and esoteric elements arising mainly from Florentine Neoplatonism. The link between melancholy and esotericism becomes very clear when we analyze the gravure "Melencolia I" by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), composed of a significant number of symbols that refer to an esoteric religious culture that then emerged. Renaissance melancholy gained several nuances. On the one hand, it was considered a sin, a despicable mood characteristic of witches; on the other hand, a deep sense of inspiration typical of men of "genius". This ambivalence also occurred in the firmament, as the melancholic people were guided by the dark planet Saturn, according to astrological belief. We also have the cultural scenario of the 16th century, especially in Dürer's Germany, which contributed to strengthening the melancholy issues.

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This article takes issue vigorously with what it argues are the disempowering effects of Judith Butler's more recent work, for transgendered people in particular and accordingly for the queer movement in general. In so doing it contests the way in which the reception of Butler's work in France has been mediated by a transphobic psychoanalytic establishment and attacks Butler for playing along with their self-interested political agenda by retelling, in Paris, for their ears, an anecdote of a savoury encounter with a transgendered interlocutor in a subcultural queer space in San Francisco."

Monumentalne studium pojęcia melancholii, które wchodzi w zakres „historii, filozofii, przyrody, medycyny, religii oraz sztuki” powinien przyjąć czytelnik w niemym zachwycie. Porażająco analityczne dzieło mówi – jak się zdaje – o historii jednego z najważniejszych pojęć opisujących kondycję ludzką niemal wszystko. Spróbuję zatem kaprysić tylko na końcu.

O tym, że legendarna, że wiekopomna, że legendarna i że jedna z najważniejszych to książek ostatniego stulecia mówić można w nieskończoność. Że tak niedawno przetłumaczono ją na język polski też wypada wspomnieć. Że Panofsky, że Klibansky, no i jeszcze Saxl to nazwiska-legendy nie powiedzieć – byłoby niestosownością. Nie sposób nie zaznaczyć, że erudycyjność tego studium może i zachwycać, i onieśmielać, i tremować. No cóż, czy możemy zatem uznać, bez krzty ironii, że koniecznej kurtuazji stało się zadość?