Lyrical Ekphrases and Intertextual Relations around Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia I

Abstract

Melencolia I (1514), an engraving made by the german painter Albrecht Dürer, is certainly one of the most widespread and analyzed engravings in the history of art until today. However, the pictorial field is not the only one in which this work has left its fertile seeds, also producing significant repercussions in the literary field, especially in poetry. In between the several lyrical ekphrasis that refer to this prolific renaissance engraving, we can find a trail of intertextual connections which begins with the sonnet “El desdichado” from Gérard de Nerval, followed by “The Waste Land” from T.S. Eliot, and then Jaime Gil de Biedma writes his poem “Príncipe de Aquitania, en su torre abolida”, influenced by the former; apart from other poetic references which also lead to this engraving, such as “Ciudades” by Enrique Lihn, and more recently the poem “Tres”, published by Rafael Ávila Domínguez in the sixteenth issue of the journal Apostasía, in indirect dialogue with the first two poems mentioned above. From these references, all interconnected around this picture, the materiality of Melencolia I has acomplished to expand from image to language, strunging on the pearls of an intertextual lineage that broadens the significance of the concept of melancholia around artistic creation, transmotivating the lyrical connotations from renaissance to the romantic and the modernist imagination, and from them to our present idea of melancholia.