The collection of works by the outstanding Swiss philologist and historian of ideas Jean Starobinsky (born 1920) is united by the theme of melancholy, considered as a fact of European culture. The author traces the history of melancholy from antiquity to the twentieth century, considering both the tradition of medical study and treatment of melancholic disorders, and literary practice based on the creative rethinking of melancholic experience. Among the writers and poets whose works are analyzed from this point of view are Virgil, Ovid, Charles d'Orléans, Miguel de Cervantes, Robert Burton, Carlo Gozzi, E.-T.-A. Hoffmann, Germaine de Staël, Søren Kierkegaard, Charles Baudelaire, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Roger Caillois, Osip Mandelstam and many others.