Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

[Extollager]

"One of the major documents of modern European civilization," "the greatest work of prose of the greatest period of English prose writing." "A mine of interesting oddities."

"Even a summary sketch of Burton cannot fail to suggest his sanity of mind and largeness of heart, his love of life and of human beings, his capacity alike for robustious or bitter laughter and for sensitive exploration of the darker places of the soul. His matter is never dull, but more than half of our pleasure is in his manner, the revelation of himself." His writing is "conspicuous ... for colloquial naturalness, garrulous spontaneity, and juicy vigour."

The New York Review of Books series printed the paperback edition I propose to use, which looks to me like it is a photo-reprint of an old Everyman's Library three-volume edition.

 

[j d worthington]

Oddly, I've never got around to reading the entire thing, only excerpts from it, even though it has been an influence on any number of writers I admire. I hope to get to it sometime this year, though, in the course of my studies. The edition I'll be using is a printing of the eighth edition from 1857 (which reproduces the frontispiece to the original edition) which I picked up a few years ago for something like $5......

 

[Extollager]

The New York Review Books edition I'm using seems reader-friendly, with translations of Burton's many Latin quotations (when he doesn't translate them himself), and an editorial approach that doesn't swamp the book with notes. One type of note I could wish had been included would be identifications of passages that have been important to later authors, and quotations from them about the book. For example, yesterday I read the passage in which John Keats found the germ for his weird poem Lamia. It was easy to find it because I knew it should be there and because the book is indexed. But some readers who would be interested might overlook the connection. (In the Coleridge thread I have asserted that Coleridge is a/the founder of modern fantasy and weird fiction, but Keats in the next generation (barely...) from Coleridge has to be very important too.)

 

[Extollager]

Here's Burton:

---Philostratus in his fourth book de vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going between Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she being fair and lovely would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius, who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia, and that all her furniture was like Tantalus's gold described by Homer, no substance, but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant.---

I wonder if there isn't a line of descent from Burton's source to Burton to one or more writers drawing on Burton, that leads at last to Moore's "Shambleau" -- or other familiar examples of weird fiction.

 

[Extollager]

I wrote: "The New York Review Books edition I'm using seems reader-friendly, with translations of Burton's many Latin quotations (when he doesn't translate them himself)" -- It seems the NYRB reprint doesn't always translate; there's a long stretch on pp. 50 ff. of Partition 3 that is left untranslated in this one-volume edition. However the main meaning is clear enough to me. This edition should be fine for most readers. Those with deep pockets who require a scholarly edition can get the six-volume Oxford edition, which is reviewed in the 9 June 2005 issue of The New York Review of Books. Each of those volumes costs from $170 to $250 (or cost thus in 2005; perhaps the price has risen since then). I'm sure this is a noble effort, but I do wonder how many copies were printed, or sold. A few hundred printed, and of that run, some still in publishers' warehouses? I wonder if some scholarly editions have print runs that would make your Arkham books look like mass-market efforts.

......I see the Oxford edition is (now, anyway) described as a print-to-order affair; I suppose the original print run sold out.

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198124481.do

It seems three of the six Oxford volumes are Burton, and the other three volumes are commentary.

JD, who was publisher of your edition, if you have it to hand?

Here's more about the NYRB edition that I'm using:

http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-anatomy-of-melancholy/

It is indeed a paperback reprint of a 1932 Everyman's Library edition. Looks like one could assemble the three volumes in hardcover from various booksellers at a moderate price.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sea...&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=anatomy

Here's a review of Burton's book from The Guardian; the reviewer says The Anatomy is "the best book ever written."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/18/history.philosophy

For anyone interested but not able or not willing to buy the book -- you can read the Anatomy online at Project Gutenberg.

 

[j d worthington]

The publisher was J. W. Moore of Philadelphia. Incidentally, it, too, is indexed....

 

[Extollager]

Oddly, I've never got around to reading the entire thing, only excerpts from it, even though it has been an influence on any number of writers I admire.

Such as...?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Downloaded it from Gutenberg. Thanks.

 

[j d worthington]

Such as...?

Going on memory here, but as I recall, it was one of Heinlein's favorite books; Cabell also had a high regard for it; CAS, if memory serves, also held it in esteem. Then there are such writers as Swift, Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, etc., etc., etc. There is a passage concerning the influence of the Anatomy in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature which you ought to find interesting:

http://www.bartleby.com/214/1304.html

 

[Extollager]

Thanks for the link to those interesting paragraphs, J. D.

I would guess that Machen was acquainted with Burton, but I wouldn't be able to prove this. Surely Borges must have relished Burton.

 

[Extollager]

I'm skipping around, which I suppose is a good way to read this book.

Vol. I p. 141: Burton cites authorities on lycanthropia, which is a terrible condition that does not, however, involve physical transformation from man-form to wolf-form.

Vol. I p. 211: "That famous family of Aenobarbi were known of old, and so surnamed from their red beards." If you have lingered over the Latin title page for Tolkien's delectable Farmer Giles of Ham, you will make a connection with Burton here.

Vol. III p. 61: Helps one to see why Shakespeare was well-advised to set Rome and Juliet in a southern country (but Hamlet in a northern).

Vol. III p. 81: Then as now, gentlemen prefer blondes.

The Project Gutenberg edition omits a lament about schools admitting unfit young men to study (Vol. I p. 327), "What can we expect when we vie withone another every day in admitting to degrees any and every impecunious student drawn from the dregs of the people who applies for one? They need only to have learnt by heart one or two definitions and distinctions, and to have spent the usual number of years in chopping logic -- it matters not what progress they have made or of what character they are; they can be idiots, wasters, idlers, gamesters, boon companions, utterly worthless and abandoned, squanderers and profligates; let them only have spent so many years at the university in the capacity, real or supposed, of gownsmen, and they will find those who for the sake of profit or friendship will get them presented [at court], and, what is more, in many cases with splendid testimonials to their character and learning. ... Our annual university heads as a rule pray only for the greatest possible number of freshmen to squeeze money from, and do not care whether they are educated or not... Philosophasters innocent of the arts become Masters of Arts," etc.

 

[GOLLUM]

Interesting stuff. I have that NYRB edition but have not yet opened it up.

Your posts here have moved this up the TBR pile. Thanks for sharing...

 

[Extollager]

Hope to see some comments from you on this one soon.