The Anatomy of Melancholy

Has anybody read it? From a glance, it seems to be essentially an entire goddamn encyclopedia, so much raw information I feel I won't know what make of all of it. It's on the exit-level chart. Are these 1400 pages worth powering through?

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  1. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I don’t think people read it straight through. I think most just a read a section, put it aside, pick it up again a few weeks or months later and read a little more. It’s not a narrative so it is manageable reading it this way

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      >exit level chart
      post chart, I'm starting a collection of IQfy charts
      >is it worth powering through?
      it's worth reading but as said don't power through it. read a few pages a day alongside other books. no more than ten or so in a sitting. it should take around a year, roughly. it's a book you read for its prose and its general outlook and its philosophy and its anecdotes, not really its narrative (it has none) so you won't miss out with this approach.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Finnegans Wake should be on here

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          what does it mean by "exit level"?

          sorry I'm not a native speaker

          • 10 months ago
            Anonymous

            Ascended. Pre-mortem

          • 10 months ago
            Anonymous

            like "once you've read/understood these books, you don't have to come back to IQfy again."

          • 10 months ago
            Anonymous

            >like
            opinion discarded

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          stoner? hmm?

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous
  2. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Literally no one has ever read this book. No idea how it got published when no one has ever read it

  3. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I’ve got a nice old copy from the 30s, sometimes read a few pages in bed. I think it’s great, but it’s like if a Renaissance alien felt sorry for mankind and wanted to cheer them up but had never actually encountered or talked to a human being ever, which might be kind of the case with Burton

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      Also I should mention that fussing about understanding the sources he uses is a lost cause, he’s citing some really obscure stuff. Just let the info dump wash over you

  4. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    What is it about?

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      It’s an extremely long systemization of all the things that might contribute to sadness, and the remedies that might be employed for such a condition

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        cool

  5. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I have a dozen copies including this vellum bound folio. It's pretty fun.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      that is cool anon, any other cools ones you have

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      post moar

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      I'm jelly. Please take care of it anon.

  6. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I started reading the Love-Melancholy section and there was a ten or so page preface in which Burton tries to justify his right to talk about the topic of love, since apparently it was taboo at that time. This preface was added on in a later edition after I assume the public disapproved of the section. He quotes a bazillion ancient authors like Plato and basically says, "If these respected authors can talk about love, why can't I?". It's a pretty tiring read because of the sheer amount of quotations and Latin, so when I was done the preface I stopped, and I am still yet to read the actual Love Melancholy section. Despite this, I thought it was a very interesting read, unlike anything I have ever read. I doubt there are many other texts like it.

    >And thus much I have thought good to say by way of preface, lest any man (which Godefridus feared in his book) should blame in me lightness, wantonness, rashness, in speaking of love's causes, enticements, symptoms, remedies, lawful and unlawful loves, and lust itself, I speak it only to tax and deter others from it, not to teach, but to show the vanities and fopperies of this heroical or Herculean love, and to apply remedies unto it. I will treat of this with like liberty as of the rest.

  7. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    proto-psychology. he basically try to classify and compartmentalize human experience.

  8. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I read it. Have the same NYRB edition. But at the time I was also a depressed autist who had a chip on his shoulder. I'm still on the spectrum but no longer depressed. Anons please give it a shot. Democritus Jr. is legit hilarious. Like Ignatius J. Reilly meets Bolano meets the American maximalists. I'm honestly surprised his name isn't brought up more around here. He repeats himself a lot but Burton was one of us.

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