Klibansky Raymond | Panofsky Erwin | Saxl Fritz: Saturn i Melankolija

Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl: Saturn and Melancholy

Studies in the History of Philosophy of Nature, Religion and Art

Just as in a good story the protagonist is often revealed only at the end, so the book "Saturn and Melancholy" was influential long before it first appeared in public in 1964. Its beginnings go back to the twenties of the 20th century, when a circle of scientists gathered around Aby Warburg's library came to life in Hamburg, Weimar Germany.

Tens of thousands of rare medieval and other manuscripts, works of art and documents, which this extraordinary bibliophile and scientist collected over forty years, attracted the elite, mostly Jewish intellectuals of that time to Warburg's great project of a new interpretation of the original materials in accordance with modernist worldviews.

That is how Dürer's wonderful copper engraving "Melencolia I" encouraged art historians Panofski and Saxl to unravel its mysterious content. The interpretation of that engraving, however, required the study of many other areas, primarily ancient astrology and medicine, religion and mythology, divine names and angelic hierarchies, up to the question of the soul and its relationship with heavenly and transcendent realities.

Indeed, do "heavenly things" influence man in some empirically demonstrable way, or are these influences only part of historically and psychologically changing human belief systems? Philosophical background and dialectical-humanistic direction Klibansky contributed significantly to these considerations, who in the end was the most responsible for the final form of the book "Saturn and Melancholy" and for its publication as a whole.

Although the comprehensive theme of the relationship between the soul and the cosmos was actually only indicated there in rough outlines, often at the cost of leaving aside the real historical environment in which, for example, certain anthropological and medical concepts changed in more or less deviation from tradition, and however the topic of ancient, Arabic and medieval astrology remained incomplete in a certain sense, mostly due to the untimely death of Fritz Saxel, the book "Saturn and Melancholy" rightfully received the title of one of the "most learned books of our time" (F. A. Yates), especially considering that it contains a broad and highly informed overview of the most important authors, works and anthropological ideas in a vast time span.

Whether they agreed with the authors, whether they disputed their individual interpretations of the "history of ideas", for contemporary researchers the book of Klibanski, Panofski and Saxl was and remains an indispensable point of reference, the true importance and weight of which can only be seen in the light of the fact that their works "pulled" behind them the widest range of not only individual scientific texts, magazine series and periodicals, but also the creation of a number of institutions in the USA and post-war Europe, among which perhaps the most important place is occupied by their mother Warburg Institute at To the University of London.

Thus, one could say, the book "Saturn and Melancholy" long before it was completed, triggered a strong interest in medieval and Renaissance studies, and this interest has not abated in the meantime, but in the last decade it is gaining more and more intensity.

While the natural sciences and humanities are rapidly approaching their final state of disintegration in terms of content and meaning, and real life shows a discrepancy with "technical solutions" in principle, the book "Saturn and Melancholy" indicates, even if beyond the original intention of its authors, the necessity of returning to the sources in questions about the origin and nature of the cosmos and man.