The black sun of melancholia

The narcissistic personality like Gérard de Nerval will ultimately grow into a melancholic when contemplating himself in a Fata Morgana. The past will come down upon him with as much intensity as the present moment, and the fragile ego which is, in Julia Kristeva’s terms, the shadow cast by the loss of the necessary other, will collapse. To his final dismay, he realizes he is ‘the other.’ pp. 65–70

Keywords: double, reverie, chimera, spleen