Peter the Great (1682-1725)

• End of Muscovite Russia• Founded St. Petersburg

1703 as “Window on the West,” became capital of Empire 1712

• Created “two Russias” : Westernized nobility and old Russian peasantry

• Put Russian Empire on the map– Defeat of the Swedes at

Poltava in 1709– Created standing army

and navy

Catherine the Great (1762-1796)

• Engendered Russian Intelligentsia

• Enserfed peasantry• Enlightened Russia

– Reform of local government– Reform of law courts– Free primary and secondary

education– Charter of the Nobility

• Released nobility from state service

• Representative bodies of the nobility in each town and province

The Nature of Melancholy

• The definitory symptoms: symptoms versus signs– Is melancholy and melancholia one and the same? Is melancholia

(melancholy) identical with depression?• Does melancholy have a “bright side?”• Who are the sufferers? Is there a demographic?• What are the forms of treatment?

Nikolai Karamzin and Sentimentalism

• Melancholia catch-all term that encompassed non-psychotic and less disabling mental disorders that we would now identify as obsessive-compulsive, schizophrenia, personality disorders, hypochondria (somatic disorders), depression, anxiety

• Also referred to passing moods and in-born dispositions

The gentle mocker of melancholy

• “I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud, nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic, nor the lady’s, which is nice, nor the lover’s, which is all of these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects.”

- As You Like It (iv. I)

Bliss of Melancholy

• But when the melancholy fit shall fallSudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.