The Anatomy of Melancholy

Oh, happy day that will restore you to my sight! Meanwhile he raves about her. Her sweet face, eyes, actions, gestures, hands, feet and speech, her length, breadth, height, depth and every other dimension are so surveyed, measured and recorded by that astrolabe of imagination—sometimes with such intensity, earnestness, eagerness and persistence, with so powerful an imagination—that at last he thinks he truly sees her. He speaks with her and embraces her: like Ixion, he takes “a cloud for Juno,” as the saying goes. “I see nothing but Leucippe; Leucippe is always before my eyes and in my mind.” I see and contemplate nothing but Leucippe. Present or absent, it is all the same:

And although the presence of her gentle beauty was absent, The love that her beauty had inspired while present remained.

The impression of her beauty remains fixed in his mind:

Her features remain firmly imprinted in his heart.

Just as a person bitten by a mad dog thinks everything he sees is dogs—dogs in his food, dogs in his dish, dogs in his drink—so his mistress is in his eyes, ears and heart, in every sense. Valleriola had a merchant as a patient in the same condition. Ulrich Molitor, drawing on Augustine, tells of a man who, through the force of his passion, constantly thought he saw his mistress beside him, talking to him: “While awake, he seemed to have intercourse with her,” as she continually embraced him.

Now if love can produce such effects when its course is pleasant, what bitter torments must it breed when, as is usual, it is constantly accompanied by fear and unending sorrow, suspicion, anxiety and agony? What intolerable pain it must be!

Gargara bears no such multitude Of tall stalks as the cares in a sunken Heart, linked in a long, unbroken Chain, or the wounds that deep within Cruel love intermingles.

Mount Gargarus has fewer stalks Than a lover’s breast has grievous wounds And linked cares that love combines.

When the king of Babylon wished to punish one of his courtiers for loving a young woman of royal blood, far above his station, Apollonius, who was present, urged him by every means to leave the man alone. To love without fulfilment was an unspeakable torment; no tyrant could invent such a punishment. Like a gnat at a candle, he would soon consume himself.

For love is a perpetual flow, “anguish of mind,” a warfare: “every lover serves as a soldier.” Love is always a grievous wound, and a lover’s heart is Cupid’s quiver; it is a consuming fire—“approach this fire”—an unquenchable fire.

The evil is fed and grows, And burns within, like the heat That pours from Etna’s cavern.

As Etna rages, so does love—and more fiercely than Etna or any physical fire:

For love often kindles a flame Hotter than Vulcan’s fire at Lipara.