Macerate

Use in the book

From his self-styled watchtower, Burton’s prefatory spectator sees people run, ride and macerate themselves at court and in the country. The imagined freedom of the observer gives the verb its contrast: exhausting activity is happening elsewhere, while he professes exemption from lawsuits, commercial losses and family provision.

In the moral account, people continually macerate their minds through cares and disturbances. Burton’s Actaeon comparison sharpens the reflexive agency: the passions they encourage destroy them like the hunter’s own dogs. Elsewhere hatred and revenge produce instruments and laws with which people macerate one another. The verb can therefore describe both self-consuming conduct and suffering inflicted by others.

The symptom account gives attrition a different emphasis. The sufferers remain absorbed in their thoughts, ‘still, still, still,’ even when seemingly occupied in conversation. Later a soul is macerated with cares and discontents after pleasurable solitary imaginings turn bitter. The preceding passage allows that a strong constitution or intervening business may keep him in this state for many years, but it then says that at last fear and sorrow replace the pleasure. These descriptions should retain their local clinical and narrative conditions rather than being reduced to the moral claim that every sufferer simply chooses distress.

Physical wasting appears in the marginal report attributed to Bernard of Gordon: neglect of food and drink wastes the lover’s whole body. Burton also accuses ascetic practices of making people consume their bodies under an appearance of virtue, within his explicitly hostile account of religious melancholy. The Latin catalogue of alleged aphrodisiacs has a different construction: cubebs are steeped in wine. Its following warning to avoid these dangers prevents a medicinal recipe from becoming the purpose of the example.

Related entries

Sorrow: The passion that wears the sufferer down.

Painful: Labour, diligence and the experience of suffering.

Corrosive: The related image of distress eating away.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 4–6The spectator’s distance from exhausting public life.
2. Subsection 3. Classification of the Passions · paragraphs 4–5Encouraged passions and the Actaeon comparison.
3. Subsection 8. Rivalry, Hatred, Faction and the Desire for Revenge as Causes · paragraphs 24–26Hatred, inflicted torment and the contrasting appeal to forgiveness.
4. Subsection 2. Symptoms or Signs in the Mind · paragraphs 32–34Persistent thoughts and apparent outward occupation.
5. Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our… · paragraphs 18–20The qualified transition from pleasurable solitude to wasting distress.
6. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraphs 55–57Latin steeping in a catalogue expressly followed by a warning.
7. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind… · paragraphs 43–45Lovesick bodily wasting, including the Bernard of Gordon margin.
8. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions… · paragraphs 1–3Bodily exhaustion in Burton’s religious polemic.

In this edition

The paired rendering gives ‘macerate themselves’ as ‘wear themselves out’, ‘macerate their mindes’ as ‘wear away their minds’, ‘macerating themselves’ as ‘wearing themselves away’, and ‘macerated with cares and discontents’ as ‘wasted by cares and discontents’. These related choices preserve attrition without introducing soaking into those English occurrences.

In ‘Cubebis in vino maceratis’, rendered ‘cubebs steeped in wine’, the participle supplies steeped, the noun cubebs, and the prepositional phrase in wine. This distinct Latin preparation sense is actually present in the work. In the marginal ‘maceratur inde totum corpus’, the whole body, the passive wasting and the consequence expressed by inde all remain in the supplied modern translation.

macerare · maceratis

Printed “maceratis” (Latin; family).

Steeped or soaked; the Latin participle agrees with cubebs.

Here: This is a distinct material-preparation sense, rather than bodily or mental exhaustion.

Context: Burton reports an alleged aphrodisiac practice and immediately presents the catalogue as a warning to avoid its dangers.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cubebis in vino maceratis

Modern rendering: cubebs steeped in wine

Word and construction: Maceratis means steeped; in vino supplies in wine and Cubebis supplies cubebs. The Latin ablative construction is redistributed into an English noun phrase.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

macerare · maceratur

Printed “maceratur” (Latin; family).

Is wasted or worn away.

Here: The body’s wasting follows the reported loss of food and drink in lovesickness.

Context: The marginal quotation is attributed to Bernard of Gordon; its medical source is reported, not independently collated.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: maceratur inde totum corpus

Modern rendering: the whole body is wasted as a result

Word and construction: Maceratur supplies is wasted; totum corpus supplies the whole body and inde the consequential as a result.

Modern container: note

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Macerate · macerate · local use 1

Printed “macerate” (English; family).

To wear down, waste or exhaust.

Here: Public pursuits consume the energy of the people watched from the narrator’s withdrawn vantage point.

Context: Burton’s prefatory persona describes others’ activity, in contrast with his own professed security.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: macerate themselves

Modern rendering: wear themselves out

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Macerate · macerate · local use 2

Printed “macerate” (English; family).

To exhaust or erode mentally.

Here: Cares and passions become instruments of the self-destruction represented by Actaeon’s dogs.

Context: Burton’s moral account makes people encourage passions that subsequently torment them.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: macerate their mindes

Modern rendering: wear away their minds

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Macerate · macerate · local use 3

Printed “macerate” (English; family).

To wear down or torment another person.

Here: The word extends to deliberate interpersonal violence through instruments, institutions and laws.

Context: Burton attributes these inventions to hatred and revenge, a moral causal claim.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to macerate and torment one another

Modern rendering: for wearing down and tormenting one another

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Macerate · macerating

Printed “macerating” (English; family).

Wasting or exhausting through prolonged strain.

Here: The repeated still gives the duration of thoughts that consume the sufferer.

Context: Burton describes reported mental symptoms through Avicenna and Rhazes; the imagined object need not be real.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: macerating themselves

Modern rendering: wearing themselves away

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Macerate · macerated

Printed “macerated” (English; family).

Worn down or wasted.

Here: The passive construction makes cares and discontents the agents of the soul’s attrition.

Context: Burton describes a progression from pleasurable solitary imaginings to distress, qualified by the preceding discussion of constitution and intervening business.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: macerated with cares and discontents

Modern rendering: wasted by cares and discontents

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Macerate · macerate · local use 4

Printed “macerate” (English; family).

To waste or wear down physically.

Here: Ascetic bodily exhaustion enters Burton’s polemic against supposed religious perfection.

Context: Burton accuses religious practices and their promoters of serving the Devil; this is his polemical construction, not a neutral judgement of the named religions.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: macerate and consume their bodies

Modern rendering: wear down and consume their bodies

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.