Still from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia.
Walter Benjamin writes:
The theory of melancholy has a very close connection with the doctrine of stellar influences. And of such influences only the most baleful, that of Saturn, could rule over the melancholy disposition. However obvious the distinction between the astrological and medical systems in the theory of the melancholy temperament - Paracelsus, for instance, wanted to exclude melancholy entirely from the latter and place it in the former - however obvious it must seem that the harmonious speculations, which were concocted out of both, had only a coincidental relationship to empirical reality, all the more astonishing, all the more difficult to explain, is the wealth of anthropological insight to which the theory gives rise. Out-of-the-way details, such as the melancholic’s inclination for long journeys, crop up: hence the horizon of the sea in the background of Dürer’s Melencolia; but also the fanatical exoticism of Lohenstein’s dramas, and the delight of the age in the description of journeys. The astronomic explanation of this is obscure. But not if the distance of the planet from the earth and the consequently long duration of its orbit are no longer conceived in the negative sense of the Salerno doctors, but rather in a beneficent sense, with reference to the divine reason which assigns the menacing star to the remotest place, and if, on the other hand, the introspection of the melancholy man is understood with reference to Saturn which ‘as the highest planet and the one farthest from everyday life, the originator of all deep contemplation, calls the soul from externalities to the inner world, causes it to rise ever higher, finally endowing it with the utmost knowledge and with the gift of prophecy.’
