L'expérience mélancolique au regard de la critique, an afterword by Fernando Vidal

Summary of the book

"Where does the deep sadness, the despair, the delirium, the fury, the suicide come from?

Against those who invoked a supernatural cause or a divine punishment, medical thought has made prevail, since antiquity, a natural cause, a mood of the body: the black bile, that is to say the melancholy. His darkness, often compared to that of coal or ink, was a sign of his evil power. This mood did not exist. But is it not with ink that poems are written?

For more than half a century themes related to melancholy have guided some of my work. Here they are, thanks to the friendship of Maurice Olender. This book hopes to show that the perspective of melancholy can give rise to a "gay knowledge".

Jean Starobinski is an honorary professor at the University of Geneva, a member of the Institut de France. He published, in the "The Bookshop of the 21st century", Action and reaction. Life and Adventures of a Couple (1999) and The Enchantress (2005)."

Afterword by Fernando Vidal.
Translated by Google.

See "L'Encre de la mélancolie" at Google Books