ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a new perspective on the traditional notion of melancholy inspiration or genius, based on an analysis of the intensity of melancholic intentionality. Moreover, it proposes that this same intensity can also account for the traditional relation between melancholy and love. One of the central ambiguities in the tradition of melancholy, is that it appears to be both depressing and inspiring. How is it possible, that the black bile can both inspire and depress? How does it generate both darkness and light? This chapter answers these questions with an innovative reading of the Problemata XXX.1, the ultimate source of the tradition on melancholy inspiration. It further develops the idea of melancholic intensity through readings of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, Marsilio Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Symposium, and Vincent van Gogh’s letters. Melancholic intensity, so it argues, is not the possession of a privileged few, as the classic notion of the melancholy genius has it. Rather, it challenges us all to engage with the profundity of human experience.
