PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE MELANCHOLY...



There is a text of mine, but I find very interesting post it here so we can understand a bit more than that is what is called melancholy... Enjoy it to you...

The term comes from Greek melancholia, but today is the affective state most associated with writers, painters, philosophers and intellectuals.Charles François Zourabichvili Feitosa To (in memoriam).I came to Berlin recently and what struck me most on my first night and the cold still tight for the month of April, was the sepulchral silence of around the building where I am staying. There was no television on, tuned no radio, no singing at the corner bar, no cry of a child. I felt a little lack the bustle of the city of Rio de Janeiro and I ended up with a little headache so quiet. I wonder if the entire population of the city was abducted or was a neutron bomb that fell, but already the next morning I realize that the neighbors are alive and well, because the resident came downstairs to complain early in the noise I made during the overnight.Respect the silence is a major feature of German culture. This tranquility can be both an invitation to reflection as to the melancholy, all depends on attitude. By coincidence, I discovered a major exhibition on melancholy in art in the New National Gallery in Berlin. Nothing more appropriate for this atmosphere of cold and silence.

The month of April is an intermediate time in the winter is not completely gone and spring has not yet established itself. In April it rains, snows and sun is in the range of one hour. I take the time to go to the instability of exposure that began in February and is in its final weeks. After facing a queue that went around the building, I spent the next three hours on a grand tour historical and aesthetic. The exhibition begins with a question attributed to Aristotle: "Why all those who excel in philosophy, politics, poetry or the arts are melancholic?" (Problemata XXX). The diagnosis of an Aristotelian necessary relationship between creativity and sadness is not discussed, unfortunately, during exposure, but it is evident the number of images inspired by the themes in the history of Western art.The Greek warrior who feels ashamed for not having recognized his heroic deeds and commits suicide.The term comes from the Greek melankholia melancholy. It is formed by association of the words Khole [bile] and melas [black]. Melancholy literally means black bile, one of many substances in the human body according to ancient medicine, but which in excess cause a disorder whose main symptom was sinking in his own thoughts and loss of interest in the outside world.

It is assumed that the existence of black bile has been deduced from observation of vomiting of dark color, but the ancient texts do not provide evidence of an empirical observation. The bile seems to have a dark character immaterial and a great symbolic force. Also according to Aristotle, one of the main features of melancholy would be likely to get carried away by imagination. Melancholy would therefore have an ambiguous character in Greek culture: it was both a dangerous disease, which could lead to suicide, as a state of fermentation of the soul, a moment of calm before the explosion of new ideas and forms.Over time, melancholy was renamed more symptoms of the crisis and not its physiological causes, but from Aristotle to Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) remains the affective state most often associated with writers, painters, philosophers and intellectuals. It was interesting to note, on display in Berlin, as the body position that expresses the melancholy seems to have been changed for more than two thousand years of Western history.

From antiquity to the 21st century, it is seen repeatedly hanging his head on his hand, staring, his body bent under the weight of existence.The Christian culture also gave an important contribution to the history of melancholy in Western art. The exhibition in Berlin shows various images associated with acedia, also called "evil monks and hermits," ie, those who sought isolation, usually in the wilderness as a form of protest against the moral decay of society in which they lived . The word comes from Greek acedia akaedia, which literally means absence of care, sadness, indifference, neglect. The Christian literature from the third century d. C. gives the acedia, however, a predominantly negative character, as a condition that leads to destruction, often caused by demons and overcome only through the exercise of a holy life.

The acedia, as melancholy, unleashes the powers of imagination, but their images will be interpreted in the Middle Ages primarily as representations of evil, sin and vice.Only from the Renaissance resumed the Aristotelian tradition according to which the melancholic is also a brilliant and creative man. This change in perspective is represented by the famous engraving by Durer entitled Melancholia I, central work of the exhibition in Berlin. The melancholic temperament seems personified in the figure of a winged woman, surrounded by instruments of art and science, in a moment of solitude at night, staring concentrated to a horizon where we see a rainbow and a comet. The scene seems to indicate that melancholy can be a profound experience of internalization and fertile, an affective state that is conducive to the whole project has to understand and change the world. Dürer's work emphasizes the superior views, which can lead us to the melancholy, but not hidden weight and immobility that inflicts the body simultaneously.Modernity will oscillate between a certain cult of melancholy and isolated attempts to dissociate it from creativity. Romantic and Expressionist artists will focus on the individual sensitive to the margins of society, through an exaltation of loneliness, despair, madness. Influenced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who saw the mark of a melancholy temperament sensitivity of genius, many writers and painters, among them Goya (1746-1828) and Baudelaire (1821-1867), will create his works under the sign Saturn, the god / planet that rules the time, the destruction and causes restlessness in the soul. Is increasingly strengthened the belief that human beings are fundamentally melancholic, dominated by a sense of inner emptiness.

The silence of Füssli Johann Heinrich, 1799-1802Although it can be seen on display a portrait of Nietzsche (1844-1900) with melancholic face (Karl Bauer, 1902) it is just an initiative of resistance stylish melancholy. Nietzsche will develop a theory of creativity associated with joy and the will to live. The cult of the weight and gloom seems to him before one of the symptoms of European nihilism. His project of a "Gay Science" chooses not the hermit or the monk as a model, but the child who plays the man who dances, the woman who sings. The exhibition, unfortunately, ignores these philosophical discussions and ends with contemporary works that show current images of melancholy, boredom associated with this time of the citizen of the metropolis.German newspapers take advantage of the pretext and promote an unusual debate: melancholy is a feeling typically German? I look out the window and see the first signs of spring in the trees and gardens. I think it is a melancholy feeling attached to the nation, but the climate, much more linked to the shadows of the winter than the supposed characteristics of a people. The exhibition ended the first week of May, just the first week of warmer temperatures and pleasant. The approaching summer and the sun, people seem better mood on the street, then come melancholy, now it's time for joy!

Charles Feitosa is Professor of Philosophy at UNIRIO and is currently conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Potsdam / Germany with DAAD-CAPES scholarship.* Feature: Cult Magazine