μελαγχολία

“I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.” - Edgar Allan Poe

[saturnsdaughter]

Jean-Antoine Watteau, Les deux cousines, 1617

[saturnsdaughter]

Hans Baldung Grien, Death and the Maiden, 1518-1520 

[saturnsdaughter]

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien: Mais l’amour infini me montera dans l’âme. — Arthur Rimbaud

[saturnsdaughter]

Hendrick Andriezsoon, Vanitas, c.1600-1650

[saturnsdaughter]

Rogier van der Weyden, Mary Magdalene (right panel of the Braque Triptych), c.1450

[saturnsdaughter]

Caravaggio, Medusa (2nd version), 1597-98

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy grew in my mind, which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes, as though my thoughts hissed and spat on my scalp. My bride’s breath soured, stank in the grey bags of my lungs. I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued, yellow fanged. There are bullet tears in my eyes. Are you terrified? Be terrified. It’s you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home. So better by far for me if you were stone. I glanced at a buzzing bee, a dull grey pebble fell to the ground. I glanced at a singing bird, a handful of dusty gravel spattered down. I looked at a ginger cat, a housebrick shattered a bowl of milk. I looked at a snuffling pig, a boulder rolled in a heap of shit. I stared in the mirror. Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon. I stared at a dragon. Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain. And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful? Wasn’t I fragrant and young? Look at me now.

Carol Ann Duffy, Medusa, 1999

[aceshoot]

[saturnsdaughter]

Hendrick ter Brugghen, Melancholia, 1627-1628 

[saturnsdaughter]

Eilif Petersen, Autumn Evening, 1878

[saturnsdaughter]

Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night

Sylvia Plath, Jacob’s Room, 1922

[saturnsdaughter]

Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1664

[saturnsdaughter]

Jacques Emile Blanche, Lady Victoria Majorie Harriet Manners, later Marchioness of Anglesey, 1909-12

[saturnsdaughter]

Various Storms & Saints - Florence + The Machine

I know you're bleeding, but you'll be okay Hold on to your heart, you'll keep it safe Hold on to your heart, don't give it away

[saturnsdaughter]

Alphonse Osbert (1957-1939), Deux femmes au bord de la mer 

[saturnsdaughter]

Il y a toujours quelque chose d’absent qui me tourmente. — Camille Claudel

[saturnsdaughter]

Andrea Vaccaro, The Penitent Magdalene, 1630-70

[saturnsdaughter]

John William Waterhouse, "I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott, 1915

[silenceformysoul]

Arnold Böcklin - Die Nacht (1870)