The Anatomy of Melancholy

So intolerable, unbearable, grievous and violent is their pain, so unspeakable and unceasing. One day of grief is a hundred years, as Cardan observes. It is “a torture chamber for human beings, anguish of mind,” as Aretaeus aptly says: a plague of the soul, the soul’s cramp and convulsion, a hell in miniature. If there is a hell on earth, it is to be found in a melancholy person’s heart.

For that deep torment may be called a hell When one feels more than words have power to tell.

Indeed, what mocking Lucian said of gout in jest, I may truthfully say of melancholy in earnest.

O sorrowful name, O hateful to the gods, Weeping Melancholy, daughter of Cocytus, You Fury born in Tartarus’ dark caverns, Whom Megaera bore within her womb And suckled at her breasts, and into whose infant mouth Alecto poured bitter milk: All the demons brought you, loathsome thing, Into the light, to the destruction of mortals.

And a little later.

Jupiter strikes with no such thunderbolt; No storm at sea rages so fiercely; No rushing whirlwind has such force. Am I enduring Cerberus’ savage bites? Is Echidna’s venom consuming my limbs? Or a tunic steeped in Nessus’ tainted blood? This evil is beyond tears and beyond cure.

O sad and hateful name, a name so fierce: Melancholy, hell’s own brat. Born there, it dwells in hellish darkness; The Furies raised it at Megaera’s breast; Alecto gave it bitter milk to drink. All conspired to be a bane to mortal men, Bringing this devil from that black den. Neither Jupiter’s thunderbolt, nor storm at sea, Nor whirlwind so dismays our hearts. What—am I bitten by fierce Cerberus, Or stung by a serpent so poisonous? Have I put on a shirt dipped in Nessus’ blood? My pain is past cure; medicine can do no good.

No bodily torture equals it: “The Sicilian tyrants invented no greater torment.” No strappados, hot irons or bulls of Phalaris.

Neither the gods’ anger, nor weapons, nor the enemy Harms so much as you alone, stealing into minds.

Neither Jove’s wrath nor devils can Do so much harm to the human soul.

All fears, griefs, suspicions, discontents, evils and unpleasantnesses are swallowed up and drowned in this Euripus, this Irish Sea, this ocean of misery, like so many small streams. It is “the concentrated mass of every hardship,” as Ammianus described his distressed Palladius. I say of our melancholy man that he is the cream of human adversity, its quintessence and final sum. All other diseases, whatever they may be, are mere flea bites beside melancholy in its extent. It is the essence of them all.

It is calamity’s lodging; what need is there for words? Whatever evil you seek, there you will find it.

What need for more words? It is calamity’s inn; Whatever mischief you seek is within.