Melencolia I as Denkbild

Abstract: The starting point of this study is the question of why such an extensive amount of literature and attempts at interpretation could have been produced in connection with Albrecht Dürer’s enigmatic engraving, Melencolia I – a very important work of art for Walter Benjamin. In my own analysis, I take account of this and start from the hypothesis that the variety of interpretations may in itself indicate something about the mode of operation of the picture. To dissect this, the study draws on some recurring elements of the history of interpretation which focus on the compositional principles of the engraving. In addition I briefly review the historical context of the work in the light of contemporary understandings of the image. The main argument of this paper is that the pictorial operation evoked by Melancholia is most clearly interpreted in light of Walter Benjamin’s Denkbilder. This forms another link between Benjamin’s oeuvre and the visual arts, once again showing the diversity of Benjamin’s thought. This study compares the (de)structuring elements of the Dürerian concept of the image with the formation of meaning in the Thought-Image (as a form of dialectical image), examining them also through the issues of narrative and dream content, drawing on an essay by Theodor W. Adorno. The proposition of this paper is that the similarity between Benjamin’s Thought-Images and the engraving of Dürer lies in the way in which they themselves operate with certain non-rational forms of thought – digressions, detours, fragmentation – and these evoke the same forms of thought in our experience. Thus, the operation of both Melancholia and the Thought-Images is based on the production of sense rather than on the opposition of sense to itself.