The Anatomy of Melancholy

After I saw her, I did not love as sane Men usually do, but just as madmen do.

I did not love her calmly, as others do; I raged as a madman does.

So Musaeus says of Leander, “He never turns his gaze away from her”; and Chaucer says of Palamon,

He cast his eye upon Emilia, And at once he flinched and cried, “Ah, ah!” As though he had been struck through the heart.

If you wish to know more precisely what this beauty is, how it exerts its influence, how it bewitches—for everyone holds that love is a kind of bewitchment—here it is in brief. This loveliness or beauty arises from the proper proportions of the whole, or from each individual part.

For an exact description, I refer you to poets, historians and those writers on love: to Lucian’s Portraits and Charidemus; Xenophon’s description of Panthea; the collected poems of Petronius; Heliodorus’s Chariclea; Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe; Longus the Sophist’s Daphnis and Chloe; Theodorus Prodromus’s Rhodanthe; the letters of Aristaenetus and Philostratus; Baldassare Castiglione’s Courtier, book 4; Laurentius, chapter 10 on melancholy; Aeneas Sylvius’s Lucretia; and almost every poet. They have described perfect beauty and faultless form most precisely, in every part of both men and women.

Every part must contribute to that perfection. For, as Seneca says in Letter 33, book 4, “A woman is not beautiful whose leg and arm are praised, but one whose whole appearance together has lent distinction to each individual part.” A woman whose arm, thigh and so on are praised is not beautiful unless her face and all the other parts are in harmony.

The face, especially, gives lustre to the rest. It is the face that usually determines whether someone is called beautiful or ugly: “the face is beauty’s citadel.” The face is beauty’s tower; and although the other parts may be misshapen, a beautiful face wins the day—“it is the face, not the wife, that is loved.” That alone is usually admired and chiefly valued, “proud of its charms,” and able to captivate by itself.

Glycera’s radiance sets you on fire; Her pleasing boldness sets you on fire, And her face, too dangerous to gaze upon.

It was Glycera’s excessively beautiful face that set him on fire, too lovely to look at. When Chaerea saw the singing girl’s sweet looks, he was so captivated that he cried out, “Oh, what a beautiful face! From now on I banish all other women from my mind; I am tired of these everyday beauties!” Oh, beautiful face! I shall never love anyone but her, or look at anyone else again. I am tired of these ordinary beauties; away with them.

The more he sees her, the worse he becomes: “and burns at the sight.” Just as a burning glass gathers the sun’s rays into a single point, rays of love are cast from her eyes. It was Aeneas’s face that enraptured Queen Dido: “like a god in face and shoulders.” He had an angelic face.

Oh, sacred features worthy of Bacchus or Apollo, Which no man, no woman, can look upon safely!

——Oh, sacred looks befitting majesty, Which no mortal could ever behold safely!