Perfection’s Therapy Perfection’s Therapy An Essay on Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I Mitchell B. Merback Z O N E B O O K S • N E W Y O R K 2017 © 2017 Mitchell B. Merback zone books 633 Vanderbilt Street Brooklyn, NY 11218 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except for that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Merback, Mitchell B., author. Title: Perfection’s therapy : An Essay on Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I /Mitchell B. Merback. Description: New York : Zone Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2017013718 | isbn 9781942130000 (hardcover) Subjects: lcsh: Dürer, Albrecht, 1471–1528. Melencolia I. | Dürer, Albrecht, 1471–1528 — Criticism and interpretation. | Dürer, Albrecht, 1471–1528 — Psychology. | Personality and creative ability. Classification: lcc ne654.d9 a673 2017 | ddc 759.3 — dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013718 To my teachers Contents Introduction 9 i An “Allegory of Deep, Speculative Thought” 33 ii Restless Eye, Active Mind 53 iii Therapies of the Image in the Age of Dürer 77 iv The Narrative Quality of Melancholia 121 Prologue to Chapters Five and Six 163 v The Artist as Medicus, Part One: Practices of the Self 177 vi The Artist as Medicus, Part Two: Soul Service 213 Epilogue 255 Acknowledgments 263 Notes 267 Bibliography 325 Index 347 Figure I.1. Hans Schwarz, portrait medallion of Albrecht Dürer, 1519 – 20, bronze, 5.6 cm dia. (Hannover, Kestner-M useum). Introduction It may be difficult . . . for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct toward perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. . . . What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. — Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle “ Just as Miserable as Ever” Imagine an exclusive television interview with one of the luminaries of the European Renaissance — a Petrarch, a Pico della Mirandola, an Alberti, an Erasmus, or the subject of this book, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg (figure I.1) — and consider asking him how it felt to wake up on the threshold of modernity, to be alive amidst such a great flowering of civilization, to emerge into light after such a long dark. What was it like to participate in the revival of classical thought, lit- erature, science, and the fine arts, you might ask, to free the project of human perfectibility from its theological burdens, to exalt human dignity, and bring it to its realization? How glorious was it to experi- ence every day reason’s brilliant ascendance, the mastery of geome- tria, eruditio, and eloquentia, and the arts based upon them? Now that the spell of primitive superstition had been broken, the tyrannous fear of demons and pagan gods overcome, and a rational knowledge of the world embraced, what great happiness had settled upon human- ity? If you, starry-eyed as I would be to share in such great company, 9