Melancholy, Love, and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature

1. Sorrow without Cause: Periodizing Melancholia and Depression

Sorrow without Cause Periodizing Melancholia and Depression Borage and Hellebore fill two scenes Sovereign plants to purge the veins Of melancholy, and cheer the heart Of those black fumes which make it smart . . . —robert burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy If we did not know that it was Orestes and had not noticed that he had a sword in his hand, then we would say that the male seated in the center of the representation in figure 1 was bored. That is the usual first reaction to the painting of Orestes by the Eumenides Painter on this fourth-century B.C.E. red-figure Apulian vase from the Louvre.1 It is the faces. Start with Orestes. Look at his heavy, half-closed eyes and at the dissatisfied, tired, even unhappy expression on his face.2 Notice the slight drooping forward of his head. Look, too, at the pensive and indecisive way that his right index finger seems to scratch at his chin, and notice how his body is slumped slightly in lassitude (and is supported, almost, by his left hand). Compare the other expressions, those on the faces of Apollo and Artemis (to Orestes ’ left). Apollo’s head droops at an angle comparable to that of Orestes; his eyes seem half-closed (with the same tired line beneath the eye as has Orestes). Most striking of all, his mouth is turned down in precisely the same doleful manner as is that of Orestes. Exactly the same points could be made of the expression of Apollo’s sister, Artemis, as she strides onto the scene carrying her hunting weapons. Her mouth mirrors those of Apollo and Orestes. Her head droops slightly. Boredom is out of the question. The rite being enacted in this picture would hardly allow that emotion. The rite is one of religious purification. It is explained to us by Aeschylus in the Eumenides at verses 42–43 and 448–52. There we learn that before the scene depicted on this pot takes place, Orestes has fled 15 1
 Argos. There he had killed his mother, Clytaemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus , for their parts in the murder of his father, Agamemnon. Orestes had fled north to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi, where the god would attempt to purify him of matricide. This is what we are about to witness, and this is how we should understand the scene. The blood of the piglet (once its throat has been cut, perhaps by the sword Orestes holds drawn) is intended to wash away the pollution of the matricide. Once this has been accomplished, the Furies, who rest traditionally asleep to Orestes’ right, will stop their hounding. Look at these Furies. Three of them are visible in this reproduction. One sleeps in what is almost a deathlike pose.3 The Fury supporting her, however, is awake and, most unexpectedly, exhibits a facial expression which closely resembles that of Orestes, Apollo, and Artemis.4 There is the same angle of droop of the head, the same half-closed eyes, and the same downturn of the mouth. The posture of the Fury in the bottom left of the picture is also note16
Melancholy, Love, and Time Fig. 1. “The Purification of Orestes” (first quarter of the fourth century B.C.E.). Attributed to the Eumenides Painter. Detail of a red-figure bell krater from Apulia. 48.5 cm. Inv: CP 710. (Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. Copyright Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y.) worthy.5 Observe that her right arm seems to support her head. It is positioned in a mode to match that of Orestes. Her face, almost fully turned to us, does not allow an easy registering of her emotional state. The posture of the arm suggests, however, that this Fury is subject to an emotion which matches those of Orestes, Apollo, and Artemis.6 What, then, is the emotion depicted on the faces of these individuals? Just as surely as it is not boredom, it is not a serious solemnity designed for a religious occasion. It is far too oppressive and oppressed for this. Depression or, to put it more formally, melancholia seems a better diagnosis. But it is a melancholia or depression of a seemingly unusual type. Nowadays we tend to associate this state with a general slowing down of bodily and mental processes, with what is usually termed a psychomotor retardation. It...