The book is not long enough. To read it is to drink at the firehose of Burton's accumulated research. Reading about the book can scarcely convey the exThe book is not long enough. To read it is to drink at the firehose of Burton's accumulated research. Reading about the book can scarcely convey the experience. Many reviews of it quote from the first 50 pages, where Burton describes his own method and mentality, his madness and genius, the form and structure of his book. They might be the best parts of the book. His fountain overfloweth. His universe is infinitely rich, and much of it is encapsulated in the modest nutshell of this tome. Through the medium of pages flow the humors of the body, the venereal parasites of wisdom, folly, inconsequence, reaping infinite daydreams, jousting with devils and angels, contending with God the father and man the mighty bumble bee of philosophy, dipping his proboscis in every succulent source of wisdom, exhausting libraries without exhausting the reader's attention span.
Juggling every topic under the sun, turning over old stones, collapsing glass castles in the air. He is a magician, a mesmerist, a contortionist, sweeping up the dusty corners of Latin literature for the crusty bread crumbs of thought and subjecting his reader to the quipping post, flinging quip after quip at our naked flesh mercilessly until we must either bleed to death or surrender to the rhythm of quips and bathe in the glory of the tongue-lashing. A furious onslaught of relentlessly relayed concepts, designed to stimulate and pique. One sees the reflection of society in the mirror, both antiquated and timeless.
How can one man be so naïve and so wise? He wears both his heart and his brain on his sleeve. Burton burns with a passion for language, he seethes, he rabidly digests and excretes solid lumps of noisome philosophic nuggets that we might chew ceaselessly, until our jaws become unhinged. He squeezes out the pimples that we might lap up the turgid grit and oily byproduct and inhale the heady perfumes. We are intimately in concert with his well-textured brain, fondling every crevice, lit up by synapses like a Christmas tree.
I will read it and reread it. Underline and dogear it. I will smell the pages, run my fingers over them like a blind person, and suffer from more papercuts than I have fingers. One would not want to get in an argument with this man. He would bring to bear an entire ocean of unfathomable content, filched from the hallowed halls of forgotten and imponderable masterpieces, until you were lost in a quagmire of incorrigible references, grasping at the wreckage of your own mind.
He contains multitudes. A precursor to Whitman. An Everyman, clothed in vestal garbs, but wearing a mullet, with the skull of Yorick in one hand and a shotgun in the other. The book contains more strange and ticklish phrases than the average volume of Samuel Johnson. If we consider Dante and Shakespeare the most imaginative minds of their time Burton's was the most greedy.
he constantly invokes hellebore - it is his cure-all. But this panacea is also a poison. Contradictions abound in nature, as in man. Man is both of nature and apart from it. He has artificially separated himself from it, with his rules and his clothing and his buildings and society, but the inner beast often resurfaces in subtle ways. Burton marries science and divinity, while admitting in his introduction that divinity is the mother of science, that it is the superior pursuit.
very thorough, with few cliches, or if there were once cliches, they are now so obscure as to seem newly striking. bringing to bear as much imaginative and figurative language as possible, striving for the novel expression and impressive turn of phrase. To focus on uncanny precision and not stint on the details seems to be the method throughout. I've underlined something on every page.
In the hallowed corridors of literary antiquity, nestled amongst the musty literary donjons one cannot avoid the formidable "Anatomy of Melancholy." To embark upon this labyrinthine journey is to delve headlong into the profound recesses of the human psyche, an odyssey of introspection and intellectual acumen that traverses the darkest alleys of the human soul.
Much like the enigmatic melancholic humors that Burton meticulously dissects, his prose is inscrutably mazelike, an intricate tapestry woven with a masterful hand, each sentence a stitch binding the reader to the text. With an unparalleled erudition and a predilection for the arcane, Burton's writing unfurls like a Byzantine mosaic, each tile a carefully chosen word, phrase, or historical reference.
The anatomist spares no effort in his quest for comprehensive understanding. He plunges headlong into the abyss of human suffering, dissecting it layer by layer, akin to a surgeon dissecting a cadaver. He navigates the treacherous terrain of humoral theory with the precision of a cartographer mapping uncharted waters, revealing the intricate interplay between bodily fluids and emotional states.
Burton's intellectual prowess shines brightly in his encyclopedic understanding of literature and history. He invokes an array of classical and biblical allusions, blending them with his profound insights into the soup of the human condition. His pen danced nimbly across the pages, conjuring vivid imagery to transport the reader to the shadowy recesses of melancholic contemplation.
Yet, it is not merely the profundity of his ideas but the eloquence with which he conveys them that sets Burton apart. His sentences are symphonic, each note resonating with the melancholic cadences of profound contemplations. His prose, rich and ornate, offers a sanctuary for the bibliophile, a refuge where one can lose themselves, thrashing ecstatically through the tangles.
In the realm of the written word, "The Anatomy of Melancholy" stands as a testament to the boundless depths of human thought and emotion. It is a literary opus that beckons the bibliophile, the seeker of wisdom and enlightenment, to embark on a journey through the corridors of melancholic introspection. Burton's work is not a mere book; it is a almanac of the soul, a scintillating exploration of human life that continues to captivate and beguile readers across the ages.
The book references cross-pollinate one another. And you may find that cross pollination is what the brain naturally does. But you can choose the pathways....more
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