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Stendhal’s Syndrome

Before the 19th , there were that turned into a horrendous saga of Hans Holbein in Basle (and made his travellers. There were even rich Englishmen frostbite and starvation. He visited London pregnant wife fear he was going to have one doing the Grand Tour. But then, somewhere three times, and even contributed articles to of his epileptic fits). 1 The German poet Rainer around the time of the (or English-language journals on the cultural life Maria Rilke wrote in his first Duino Elegy : perhaps a little before it) feelings were let of . liked to pepper his French ‘beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, loose on the world. Back in 1761, readers with anglicisms, and was one of the first which we are still just able to endure, and we had swooned when they encountered the writers to popularise the use of the word are so awed because it serenely disdains to ‘true voice of feeling’ in Jean-Jacques ‘tourist’ in French. annihilate us.’ Philosophers were getting in Rousseau’s novel La Nouvelle Héloïse ; by It was on one of his visits to Italy in 1817 on the act too. Immanuel Kant, in his Critique the end of the decade, all of was that Stendhal described an experience that of Judgement , hypothesised that the being sentimental in the manner made brought the literary swoon into tourism. contemplation of aesthetically stimulating fashionable a few later by Laurence Visiting the Basilica of Santa Croce, he found objects induces ‘a rapidly alternating Sterne in his A Sentimental Journey . Then a monk to let him into the chapel where he repulsion and attraction produced by one there was Goethe’s novella, The Sorrows of could sit on a genuflecting stool, tilt his head and the same object. The point of excess for Young Werther (1774), which made its back and take in the prospect of Volterrano’s the imagination ... is like an abyss in which it author a celebrity and a visit to Weimar — fresco of the Sibyls without interruption. The fears to lose itself.’ Kant’s ideas were further where Goethe eventually ended up working pleasure was keen. ‘I was already in a kind of developed in the 19th-century, when as a civil servant (and bitterly regretted his ecstasy,’ he writes, ‘by the idea of being in aesthetics abandoned the classical idea of youthful work) — a must for anybody with Florence, and the proximity of the great men imitation and took on the idea that cultural pretensions. Everybody came to whose tombs I had just seen. Absorbed in contemplating an object might be a self- visit, including , who reputedly contemplating sublime beauty, I saw it activity experienced as an attribute of the carried a copy of the novel with him on his close-up — I touched it, so to speak. I had object. This kind of involuntary emotional military campaign. reached that point of emotion where the projection was called Einfühlung : it is the And it was in Napoleon’s entourage that a heavenly sensations of the fine arts meet German word that was brought into English young man from Grenoble, Marie-Henri passionate feeling. As I emerged from Santa as ‘empathy’. Beyle, known through his writing as Croce, I had palpitations (what they call an Stendhal’s syndrome isn’t one of the Stendhal, earned his spurs. He made his first attack of the nerves in Berlin); the life went disorders in the latest version of the acquaintance with Italy in 1800, when he out of me, and I walked in fear of falling.’ It Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental crossed as a dragoon with the army of was something he had observed about Disorders , but with the nosological liberation over the Grand Saint-Bernard pass himself: ‘when a thought takes too strong a inventiveness that the manual has shown in to fight the Austrians, and it was to remain hold of me,’ he writes in his autobiography, ‘I recent years, it is probably just a matter of his country of predilection. And he ‘fell’, as fall down.’ 1 time. In 1989, an Italian psychiatrist at the he put it, with Napoleon in 1814. After the There were to be many cases resembling Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence Treaty of Fontainebleau, he settled for a Stendhal’s The Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, Italy. while in Milan, and later in life was to be experience in the French consul at Trieste (then run by Austria) 19th-century — and Civitavecchia. Many of his greatest the hypersensitive books are set in Italy, including his Marcel Proust had autobiography The Life of Henry Brulard constant attacks (Brulard was one of his many aliases), which of the vapours opens with the writer looking out from the (and asthma) Janiculum Hill with ‘the whole of … writing his novel In from the ancient Appian Way with the ruins Search of Lost of its tombs and aqueducts to the Time, and magnificent garden of the Pincio, built by the Dostoevsky is French, spread out before [him].’ He known to have travelled widely, briefly visited , spent become terribly 2 years as a quartermaster in northern agitated when he (whence his pen-name) and of saw the famous course was in with the Grande painting of the Armée, on a journey to Moscow and back dead Christ by

British Journal of General Practice, December 2010 945 wrote up her observations on the 106 visitors average, about 100 patients a , 40 of delight in lampooning the grandiose travel who had been treated as emergencies and whom require admission. They identified accounts of his contemporaries, also even hospitalised in her department in the three types of patients: those with pre- suggests that when he saw Leonardo’s Last previous decade. Most of them had been existing problems, usually pathological Supper in the dilapidated monastery of stretchered straight to the hospital from the identification with a character or idea, those Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, his first city’s art galleries and museums. Their with borderline personality disorders, and thought was that the copies he had seen symptoms included dizzy spells, previously normal persons experiencing a back home were so much better than the palpitations, hallucinations, disorientation, short-lived acute psychotic episode, similar original. (He was right of course; the painting loss of identity, and physical exhaustion. in many ways to Stendhal’s syndrome but was in a terrible state until very recently.) Precipitating factors were ‘an manifested by a desire to sing psalms out But doesn’t have to be impressionable personality, the stress of loud, wrap themselves in hotel bed-linen, or pressed into service as our fall-guy. In travel and the encounter with a city like deliver sermons in one of the city’s holy Nothing to be Frightened Of , his book of Florence haunted by ghosts of the great, places. These otherwise normal patients, musings on his mortal coil, Julian Barnes death and the perspective of history.’ they found, tended to have ‘an idealistic mentions Stendhal’s experience in Florence. Treatment? Getting out of Italy as soon as subconscious image of ’. Intrigued, he did some research on the possible and back to mundane reality. In Recovery was invariably spontaneous on original diary entries on the trip to Italy which honour of Stendhal’s visit to the city she leaving Jerusalem. made Stendhal the ‘modern art-lover’s dubbed this phenomenon ‘Stendhal’s In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, progenitor and justification’, and found no syndrome’. 2,3 Reflections Carl Gustav Jung describes how mention of the arty faint. There was little But is Stendhal’s syndrome anything in 1949, by then an old man, he decided to mention of superlative artworks either. new? In religious times, pilgrims had felt a go to Rome, something he had wished to do Stendhal’s feet were swollen and pinched sense of exaltation on arriving in Rome, the all his life but had put off, fearing the from his new boots and he wanted to get on caput mundi : the experience of feeling a little emotional impact of encountering the heart the coach to Rome as soon as he could. So bit lighter (in all senses) once they get to their of Europe’s ancient imperial structure. there we have it: Stendhal never appears to destination is an experience common to Pompeii, which he had visited earlier in his have had the experience he wrote up in his pilgrims across the world, from to life, had exerted an effect which ‘had very travelogue. Or at least he had it as Beyle, Santiago de Compostela. A prolonged nearly exceeded [his] powers of receptivity’. and wrote it up as Stendhal. journey is an archetypal experience: we But on entering a travel agent in Zurich to It hasn’t stopped hundreds of people enjoy reading travel literature because it buy his ticket, he fainted. ‘After that, the reacting to great art in the hope that subject allows us to share vicariously the author’s plans for a trip to Rome were once and for all and object will merge in a true fellowship of conviction of being on a quest. Goethe’s laid aside’. Jung was never to see the Eternal feeling. That idea is as old as Plato, who still famous Italian journey of 1786 was one City because of his idealistic subconscious had some qualms about the ritualistic nature such, and he thought he would have been ‘a image. Even Freud, who always seemed to of aesthetic objects and the violence of lost man’ if he hadn’t been able to see Italy me to be quite level-headed (compared to inspiration (as when we talk about being when he did. And there is nothing new about Jung), had a similar thing about . Of ‘struck’ by a work of art). Art can be so the urge to sightsee: the Greeks were doing course one way to avoid an experience is powerful that we forget its unpredictability, it in antiquity, and Herodotus and not to have it at all. and faint like Mary at the cross. All those Callimachus had already tried to meet the It’s perplexing when so many people you scenes were familiar too to Stendhal, who demand for tourist attractions (‘mirabilia’) by take to be sensible turn out to be histrionic at made a cult of spontaneity but whose novels listing the Seven Wonders around the shores heart. The journalist Louis Inturissi, in a know that in the world of desire a little water of the Mediterranean. Even in those days hilarious piece for the New York Times , is always enough to prime a pump. travellers came back with useless souvenirs. suggested that part of the problem with It is among religious travellers that Americans who come down with Stendhal’s Iain Bamforth Stendhal’s syndrome seems to have found Syndrome is that they overdose on art. 5 They its most florid expression. Ten years ago a have to ‘do’ Florence, Rome, and Naples in REFERENCES team of psychiatrists at the Kfer Shaul 2 days, and it almost kills them. And many of 1. Amâncio EJ. Dostoevsky and Stendhal’s Syndrome. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2005; 63(4): 1099 –1103. Mental Health Centre in Jerusalem reported them really just want to be back home with 2. Magherini G. La Sindrome di Stendhal. Firenze, Ponte Alle an acute psychotic state they called the the telly on. At the other end of the spectrum Grazie, 1989 [in Italian]. ‘Jerusalem syndrome’. 4 Jerusalem, as they from the art attack described by Stendhal is 3. Barnas M. Confrontations: an interview with Florentine psychiatrist Graziella Magherini. write, is a city regarded in terms of ‘the holy, another kind of syndrome. Inturissi calls it http://www.metropolism.com/magazine/2008- the historical, and the heavenly’ by the Mark Twain Malaise, a cynical mood no4/confrontaties/english (accessed 12 Nov 2010). adherents of three of the world’s religions, which overcomes travellers and leaves them 4. Bar-el Y, Durst R, Katz G, et al . Jerusalem syndrome. Br J 2000; 176: 86 –90. who often overlook the politically divided, totally unimpressed with anything UNESCO 5. Inturrisi L. Going to pieces over masterpieces. noisy, and bustling modern city. Tourists has on its universal heritage list. In his The http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/06/travel/going-to- suffering from psychotic decompensation in Innocents Abroad , one of the best-selling pieces-over-masterpieces.html (accessed 12 Nov 20 Jerusalem are all referred to their facility: on travel books ever, Twain, who takes some DOI: 10.3399/bjgp10X544780

946 British Journal of General Practice, December 2010