“If melancholy emerges from the depths of the creaturely realm to which the speculative thought of the age felt bound by the bonds of the church itself, then this explained its omnipotence. In fact it is the most genuinely creaturely of the contemplative impulses, and it has always been noticed that its power need be no less in the gaze of a dog than in the attitude of a pensive genius. ‘Sir, sorrow was not ordained for beasts but men, yet if men do exceed in it they become beasts’, says Sancho Panza to Don Quixote.”

– Walter Benjamin, from The Origin of German Tragic Drama