DOI Heft:
II. Ostatnie prace Jana Białostockiego
DOI Artikel:Z książek
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19643#0250
thoughts are not turned to such speculations. This makes us uneąual in our humors,
inconstant in our passions, uncertain in our ends, and even in our desires"2.
Melancholie moods already make their appearance in English literaturę in the Late
Renaissance and Mannerist periods, and when Alexander Pope gives in his poetry a
description of the personification of Melancholy he seems to borrow his image from Diirer3:
But o'er the twilight groves, and dusty caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scenę,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.
Also Milton's Pensieroso has been thought to depend on Diirer's print, but the generał
character of the imagery and the deeply rooted tradition of Melancholism in England do not
allow us to be certairi about the possibility of influence from Diirer4.
At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries the vogue of the melancholy mood spread
widely in European culture, and was considered as the artistic and poetic mood par
excellence. The term "melancholy" was in that period more popular than "spleen" —
although the latter was to be revived powerfully by Baudelaire — and the German
Weltschmerz began to make its appearance. All those pessimistic attitudes favoured an
interest in Durer's print and when reading the following verses by Wordsworth we may see it
in our imagination5:
And not to leave the story of that time
Imperfect, with these habits must be joined
Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, that loved
A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,
The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring;
A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice
And inclination mainly, and the mere
Redundancy of youth's contentedness.
In their learned monograph of Melancholy in the history of art and ideas Klibansky,
Panofsky, and Saxl point out how the "new" Romantic Melancholy differed from the more
conventional one of the 18th century; Keats's Ode on Melancholy6 is ąuoted as the standard
statement of the Romantic attitude in the ąuestion of Melancholy:
But when the melancholy fit shall fali
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
246
inconstant in our passions, uncertain in our ends, and even in our desires"2.
Melancholie moods already make their appearance in English literaturę in the Late
Renaissance and Mannerist periods, and when Alexander Pope gives in his poetry a
description of the personification of Melancholy he seems to borrow his image from Diirer3:
But o'er the twilight groves, and dusty caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scenę,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.
Also Milton's Pensieroso has been thought to depend on Diirer's print, but the generał
character of the imagery and the deeply rooted tradition of Melancholism in England do not
allow us to be certairi about the possibility of influence from Diirer4.
At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries the vogue of the melancholy mood spread
widely in European culture, and was considered as the artistic and poetic mood par
excellence. The term "melancholy" was in that period more popular than "spleen" —
although the latter was to be revived powerfully by Baudelaire — and the German
Weltschmerz began to make its appearance. All those pessimistic attitudes favoured an
interest in Durer's print and when reading the following verses by Wordsworth we may see it
in our imagination5:
And not to leave the story of that time
Imperfect, with these habits must be joined
Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, that loved
A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,
The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring;
A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice
And inclination mainly, and the mere
Redundancy of youth's contentedness.
In their learned monograph of Melancholy in the history of art and ideas Klibansky,
Panofsky, and Saxl point out how the "new" Romantic Melancholy differed from the more
conventional one of the 18th century; Keats's Ode on Melancholy6 is ąuoted as the standard
statement of the Romantic attitude in the ąuestion of Melancholy:
But when the melancholy fit shall fali
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
246