fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2009-08-16 11:26 am
some_stars) wrote2009-08-16 11:26 am
(no subject)
some favorite quotes from The Anatomy of Melancholy (so far). all pagination from the nyrb paperback edition.
Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, amongst those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man; and when he had him at Athens, put him to extreme torture and torment, the better by his example to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint. I need not be so barbarous, inhuman, curious, or cruel, for this purpose to torture any poor melancholy man; their symptoms are plain, obvious and familiar, there needs no such accurate observation or far-fetched object, they delineate themselves, they voluntarily bewray themselves, they are too frequent in all places, I meet them still as I go, they cannot conceal it, their grievances are too well known, I need not seek far to describe them.
(page 382)
Carp is a fish of which I know not what to determine.
(220)
They [melancholics] cannot endure to see any terrible object, as a monster, a man executed, a carcase, hear the devil named, or any tragical relation seen, but they quake for fear...
(388)
Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, amongst those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man; and when he had him at Athens, put him to extreme torture and torment, the better by his example to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint. I need not be so barbarous, inhuman, curious, or cruel, for this purpose to torture any poor melancholy man; their symptoms are plain, obvious and familiar, there needs no such accurate observation or far-fetched object, they delineate themselves, they voluntarily bewray themselves, they are too frequent in all places, I meet them still as I go, they cannot conceal it, their grievances are too well known, I need not seek far to describe them.
(page 382)
Carp is a fish of which I know not what to determine.
(220)
They [melancholics] cannot endure to see any terrible object, as a monster, a man executed, a carcase, hear the devil named, or any tragical relation seen, but they quake for fear...
(388)