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This is a thoughtful look at the history of melancholy, from the Middle Ages to the present day; an attempt to describe the meanings and nature that different eras have attributed to depression, its causes and effects, as they have not always been understood in the same way.

Despondency is not only melancholy, but also sadness, despair, anxiety, indifference, boredom, and above all, depression. The definition of despondency originally emerged as one of the deadly sins in the religious sense, but in the modern, secular vision, it has become a mental disorder. How was this state of mind described in different periods of Western European society? From the despondency of a medieval monk to the splendour of Baudelaire's dandy, from the romantic melancholy of Leopardi to the boredom and indifference to life of such Russian classical heroes as Oblomov or Chekhov's antiheroes, from the existential anxiety of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus to the dark, threatening emptiness of a depressed patient of our time who needs the help of psychoanalysts and psychotropic drugs. The book is a kind of imaginary journey between similar but not quite identical states of mind, connected by a single leading feature, including threat, lack, error, indifference to the world and neighbour, which humanity has experienced in different eras as a painful and destructive temptation.

The book will attract the attention of intellectual readers, even non-professional psychologists and psychoanalysts, as it explains complex philosophical theories (for example, the teachings of Schopergauer, Heidegger, Sartre) in a simple and easily understandable style, without resorting to stereotypical simplifications. An enjoyable read for a wide range of readers, which will not disappoint professionals interested in original and provocative ideas.