The Human Cell

17/10/07 The human cell

Here is Durer’s depiction if St. Jerome writing in his cell. I am struck by three aspects of this picture: the light coming in through the window, the skull, and the lion and the dog dozing.The previous engraving by Durer showed the melancholy of a self surrounded by a collage of signs. The light that illuminates that collage comes from a black sun. It is the light provided by the text. The only sign of melancholy is the skull, it suggests the sense of inevitable separation. But Jerome pays it no attention. He is aware neither of the light coming in at the window, nor the animals. His attention is monopolised by the text.

Unlike the figure in the picture of melancholia Jerome is unaware of any loss entailed by his exclusive attention. But does his abstraction indicate that loss has already occurred and that melancholy is inevitable?In the context of the previous picture Durer is surely pointing out how the light of the text, the black sun, is excluding nature. The black sun of the text is the foundation of exclusively human judgement.

Wittgenstein insisted that without a shared language there can be no communication or understanding, because these abilities rely upon the sense of shared concepts. Durer is suggesting another side to the linguistic coin; i.e. the mediation of sense entails a loss. When the perception of other subjects has been eclipsed by the mediation of the printing press, the immediate possibilities are intoxicating, but they are purchased on credit. Melancholy is the price eventually paid for this substitution.However I like to think that Durer’s melancholy figure will be able to stir his dog into life and discover that his loss is not total. He could find that in his unmediated relationship with the dog there is a place where the mute subject can still be found. But this place has no defence against the black sun of sense. Who has not experienced the melancholy look of a dog when its perceptions are overruled by a sense that is alien to it?