The Anatomy of Melancholy

The nearer he is to his mistress, The nearer he is to his ruin.

To tell the truth, then, as Castiglione describes it, love’s beginning, middle and end are nothing but sorrow, vexation, agony, torment, distress and weariness. To be unkempt, ugly, miserable, solitary, dissatisfied and dejected; to wish for death, complain, rave and be irritable—these are the unmistakable signs and usual actions of a lovesick person. This unending pain and torture makes them forget themselves. If they are deeply affected, doubtful or despairing of success, or intensely intent upon it, they neglect all ordinary business.

The interrupted works stand suspended, the great Threatening walls and the structure rising level with the sky.

Lovesick Dido left her work unfinished; so did Phaedra:

Pallas’s loom stands idle, And the wool slips between my very hands.

Faustus, in Mantuan, took no pleasure in anything he did:

No rest was sweet to me, no work to my sick Heart; my senses were numb and my mind buried in torpor; I had lost all interest in song.

And all of them tend to neglect their appearance and their affairs, like the shepherd in Theocritus: “This beard is untrimmed, and the hair unkempt.” Their beards hang loose; they no longer care about dressing themselves up or attending to any business. As the saying goes, they do not care which end goes forward.

Forgetting his flocks and his farm at home, he burns All through, and spends bitter nights in grief.

Forgetting flocks of sheep and country farms, The poor shepherd constantly mourns and burns.

When lovesick Chaerea came from Pamphila’s house and had not received the welcome he expected, he was utterly dispirited. Parmeno meets him: “Why are you sad?” Why are you so sad, man? “Where are you from?” Where have you come from? How are you? But he answers sorrowfully: “By Hercules, I do not know where I am coming from or where I am going; I have so completely forgotten myself.” I have so forgotten myself that I know neither where I am, where I have come from, where I am going nor what I am doing. Parmeno: “How so?” Chaerea: “I am in love.” “Aware and knowing”:

Alive and seeing, I perish, and do not know what to do.

As Philostratus of Lemnos describes this fiery passion in one of his letters: “A man whose thoughts were once free, who spent his time studying those delightful philosophical teachings, who wandered throughout the world with the sun and moon, ranged with the stars themselves and left no secret or small mystery in nature unexplored—since falling in love, he can do nothing but think and meditate on love. Day and night he arranges himself to please his mistress. All his study and effort go towards winning her approval and favour, attaining his desire and being counted her servant.”

When Peter Abelard, that great scholar of his age—

To whom alone lay open everything that could be known—