PhD Dropout / Master sounds better than Doctor anyhow, right? / Comics / Illustrated Read-alongs / Currently The Anatomy of Melancholy
“They do persecute beasts so long, till in the end they themselves degenerate into beasts.” Once again, I was about to move on from this section and make some goddamned progress, but then I didn’t because I drew another goddamned picture. Maybe “immoderate desire of hawking and hunting” is an archaic source of melancholic debauchery, […]
For commonly they that, like Sisyphus, roll this restless stone of ambition, are in a perpetual agony, still perplexed, semper taciti, tritesque recedunt [they fall back continually, silent and sorrowful] (Lucretius), doubtful, timorous, suspicious, loath to offend in word or deed, still cogging and colloguing, embracing, capping, cringing, applauding, flattering, fleering, visiting, waiting at men’s doors, with all affability, counterfeit honesty and humility.
“Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emmets.”
“Vice, when successful, is called virtue.”
Oops I just realized that I did two drawings for Part I, Section 2, Member III Subsection 2, but none for Part I, Section 2, Member III Subsection 1. I guess I should backtrack a bit. I just really wanted to draw a bugbear: “What will not a fearful man conceive in the dark? […]
I almost missed a subsection! God forbid. It was short (relatively speaking) so I forgot it until today: Thus in brief, to our imagination cometh by the outward sense or memory, some object to be known (residing in the foremost part of the brain), which he misconceiving or amplifying presently communicates to the heart, the […]
Work in progress… Well no progress really. I started this one before Covid-19 hit the US, and for a month now I haven’t managed to force myself to return to it. I finally realized that the poor thing reminded me so viscerally of normalcy that I just couldn’t handle working on it for now. […]
I can’t articulate exactly why, but this is one of my favorite quotes so far: “Some cannot endure cheese, out of a secret antipathy.” (233) And then there is this: Milk, and all that comes of milk, as butter and cheese, curds, &c., increase melancholy (whey only excepted, which is most wholesome): some except asses’ […]
Hey look, I’m back at work on the read-along! I picked up where I left off: reading the parts of The Anatomy of Melancholy that have not been read in approximately four hundred years. It has been a rough reentry. Today, I read about fruits and vegetables, also known as vegetals. All classical, Medieval, and […]
Subterranean devils are as common as the rest, and do as much harm. Olaus Magnus, lib. 6, cap. 19, makes six kinds of them; some bigger, some less. These (saith Munster) are commonly seen about mines of metals, and are some of them noxious; some again do no harm. This post is part of a […]
Yup, I am still hung up on the devils section: And yet for all this Thomas, Albertus, and most, hold that there be far more angels than devils. I was at a party recently where everyone knew each other very well, and I knew only two people and not very well. Also I was grumpy. It […]
Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken, may rejoice.
Have you ever wondered how ghosts are shaped? Like, really thought about it. What shape are ghosts? Squares? Circles? Rhombi? Well apparently four hundred years ago Jean Bodin thought about that question a lot: Bodine goes farther yet, and will have these animae separatae [abstract souls], genii, spirits, angels, devils, and so likewise souls of […]
When the matter is diverse and confused, how should it otherwise be but that the species should be diverse and confused? This post is part of a long, tedious, and very illustrated read-along of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. More info here and follow along on Facebook here. Illustrations posted via devon_isadevon on Instagram.
What is melancholy made of made of? What is melancholy made of? Snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. That’s what melancholy is made of: If the humour be cold, it is, saith Faventinus, “a cause of dotage, and produceth milder symptoms: if hot, they are rash, raving mad, or inclining to it.” If the […]
What, is this not how you pictured your immortal soul? A pink glob with two more pink globs inside of it, that it may or may not have eaten? Well, today’s reading was about souls, and I didn’t really have much time to think about what souls might look like before I drew this masterpiece. […]
See? This is me reading. I am really doing it. But I am also so terribly sleepy, and that makes me bad at art. I have both kids home for the summer, and it has been tiring. But not tiresome, that’s for sure. So, I am going to take a few weeks off. After that […]
Choler is hot and dry, bitter, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus, and gathered to the gall: it helps the natural heat and senses, and serves to the expelling of excrements. Hm… that quote reminds me of… someone… who might be president right now. Can’t place it. I guess I will just […]
Pituita, or phlegm, is a cold and moist humour, begotten of the colder part of the chylus (or white juice coming out of meat digested in the stomach), in the liver; his office is to nourish and moisten the members of the body which, as the tongue, are moved, that they be not over-dry. So […]
Yup, I am still stuck on page 147. There is a lot going on on page 147, really. I have terrible handwriting. I probably should not write on my drawings. Fixed it! Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour, prepared in the mesaraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the […]
Of the parts of the body there may be many divisions: the most approved is that of Laurentius, out of Hippocrates: which is, into parts contained, or containing. Contained, are either humours or spirits. A humour is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is […]
This section is for people who have a hard time telling the difference between dogs and people. Also, I apologize from the dank, dark bottom of my heart for my dog drawings. I am not very good at drawing dogs, but apparently that is not going to stop me from trying. It is possible that I […]
This little section is about sinking into a transient melancholy due to, say, a fleabite versus the “continuate disease” of melancholy. Burton does not have much patience for “errant,” or transient, melancholy, and he would prefer people stop calling “oops I stubbed my toe and it sucks” melancholy at all: Melancholy in this sense is the character […]
Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. Aetius and Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. […]
The diseases of the mind, forasmuch as they have their chief seat in the organs of the head, are commonly repeated amongst the diseases of the head, which are divers, and vary much according to their size. (138) Some days you just can’t shake the frogs off your brain. This post is part of […]
What a disease is, almost every physician defines. Fernelius calleth it an “affection of the body contrary to nature.” Fuschius and Crato, “an hindrance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it.” Tholosanus, “a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a perturbation of it; as […]
Unfortunately, the pernicious fishes aren’t the real problem: To descend to more particulars, how many creatures are at deadly feud with men? Lions, wolves, bears, etc. Some with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails: How many noxious serpents and venomous creatures, ready to offend us with stings, breath, sight, or quite kill us? How many pernicious […]
Ha! I thought I was finally going to begin the First Partition, but oh no no no no no, there is yet another piece of introductory material. In this short, third (fourth?) introduction, there is a poem. It is in Latin, so here is my editor’s translation: Weep, Heraclitus; here is food for tears In […]
At last we come to the end of “Democritus Junior to the Reader.” After over one hundred pages of introduction, what parting thoughts does Burton have for us before embarking on the real book? I have overshot myself, I have spoken foolishly, rashly, unadvisedly, absurdly, I have anatomized mine own folly. And now methinks upon a […]
So 118 pages into this diatribe against humanity, Burton unsurprisingly sums up his argument as follows: “They are all mad.” If you are “reading” along but have fallen 116-118 pages behind, all you really missed is: “They are all mad.” Or more specifically, somewhat, they are all “E fungis nati homines,” which roughly translated means men […]