«For beauty is nothing but the terrible beginning, which we are still enduring,» wrote Rainer Maria Rilke. Perhaps he was a little too optimistic, since again and again people seem to find beauty – especially in excess – difficult to bear: at the sight of it, they suffer a breakdown. In science and popular culture, this phenomenon circulates as Stendhal syndrome, named after the writer who impressively described it in 1817 — about a century before Rilke’s Duino Elegy — during a stay in Florence.It is presented in a medical history about the French novelist. [1]
The Stendhal or Florence syndrome was born by the psychoanalyst Dr. Graziella Magherini, explain the neurologist Prof. Dr. Julien Bogousslavskya from the Clinique Valmont in Montreux and Gil Assalb from Lausanne. The long-time head of the psychiatric department at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in the historic center of Florence had repeatedly looked after tourists who were deeply affected by Renaissance paintings and architecture.
In love with the Sybills of Santa Croce
Such psychosomatic crises reminded Magherini of a pass legend from the book «Rome, Naples and Florence» by Marie-Henri Beyle, who had adopted the pseudonym «Stendhal»: In the most magnificent Florentine church he suddenly lost his composure in love:
«I was thinking that to be in Florence, and by the proximity of the great men [note: Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo)] whose tombs I had just seen, in a kind of ecstasy … The Sybills of Volterrano [note: the ceiling painting «Coronation of the Virgin Mary» in the dome of the Capella Niccolini with an oracle serine in each of the four spandrels] gave me the most precious pleasure I have ever felt in painting …I was dead tired, had swollen feet that hurt in the tight shoes; though an insignificant sensation, it would have prevented me from admiring God in all his glory — but before this image I forgot all the grievances. My heavens, how beautiful is that! … I fell into a grip in which the heavenly sensations of the visual arts meet passionate feelings. When I left Santa Croce, I had palpitations, which in Berlin is called a nervous attack; life was exhausted in me, I was afraid to fall.»
Inspired by this, Magherini christened such incidents «Stendhal syndrome» in 1979. In 1989 she published 106 examples in her book «La Sindrome di Stendhal» and made the term internationally public.
Magherini’s book resonated worldwide
In this first scientific description, she outlines a profile of the patients: They are mostly between 26 and 40 years old, slightly more men than women.With good – even classical or religious – education in the background, they have chosen their itinerary according to artistic interests. More than half had previously been in psychological treatment. All of them come from abroad, especially from the USA and Europe north of the Alps, often from areas where traditional art is rather scarce. Japanese maintain their composure, presumably because they are usually under the protection of a group, while solo travelers without sympathetic companions are at risk. Locals also seem immune, probably because they have been «bathing» in this aura since childhood.
Magherini groups the symptoms into three categories:
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Panic attacks with tachycardia, dizziness, increased blood pressure, fainting, abdominal pain and cramps
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affective disorders: depression, accompanied by crying, sleep problems, homesickness, or vice versa euphoria and overconfidence
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Disturbances of consciousness: loss of orientation, delusions, Feelings of guilt, and fear of persecution up to hallucinations and psychosis.
Panic attacks with tachycardia, dizziness, increased blood pressure, fainting, abdominal pain and cramps
affective disorders: depression, accompanied by crying, sleep problems, homesickness, or vice versa euphoria and overconfidence
Disturbances of consciousness: loss of orientation, delusions, Feelings of guilt, and fear of persecution up to hallucinations and psychosis.
Case reports show: Art can frighten
For example, Inge, an Italian teacher from Scandinavia, is unhappily married.Her trip to Florence is the first in years, yet she feels guilty for leaving her father, who is in need of care, alone. When they arrive, the impression immediately came: I’m out of place here. In front of the painting of the Last Supper, she gets heart palpitations, sees flashes of light and thinks she is one of the women carrying a basket of fruit to Jesus’ table. Her acute paranoia worsens to such an extent that she needs medical attention. [2]
Or Kamil, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. After several days of sightseeing, he feels unwell in a church, he is afraid of fainting or suffocating, so that he has to rush outside and lie down on a staircase. He believes he is losing his identity and breaking apart. Only months of therapy allow him to return to his former life. [3]
According to Magherini, such attacks represent the violent pendulum swing of an artistic-aesthetic sense.They attack sensitive minds who engage in dialogue with a work. Surprised, even agitated, by its splendor, preciousness and significance, they perceive what is depicted in an extraordinarily vivid way.
An almost numbing mass of sights
What could be called «hyperculturalism» has an amplifying effect: Florence attracts with dozens of museums, more than 200 palaces and towers, a good 150 churches and monasteries, all filled to the roof with Giottos, Botticellis, Michelangelos, Raphaels … It is no coincidence that the 1982 UNESCO World Heritage List application boasts that «any justification for this [is] ridiculous and blatant» because it is home to the «world’s largest collection of universally known works of art». It is also no coincidence that Forbes Magazine has named Florence one of the most beautiful cities in the world. [4]
Seduced by this concentrated offer or even taken into account, tourists rattle off hundreds of masterpieces in a short time and thus expect an overdose of emotions, often unable to incorporate the vast amount of impressions into their everyday existence.
Renaissance art invites identification
That’s why exaltation à la Stendhal probably occurs most frequently in Florence, says Magherini, especially since the Renaissance dominates here like nowhere else, an art movement that appeals to everyone, even those who know little about it.On the other hand, she has not yet experienced that people are fundamentally touched by the rather brittle conceptual art, because its message is rarely spontaneous, but only revealed through rational thinking. [5]
However, the Italian Renaissance is not only cheerful, but also subtly pushes oppressive things into all the harmony, as in Botticelli’s «Spring» or «Birth of Venus» the ugly wind god Zephyr, who attacks a nymph.
A first psychological evaluation of the perception of art as a «disturbing force» comes from Sigmund Freud himself: in 1936 he describes memory disorders and feelings of guilt when climbing the Acropolis in Athens. [6]
According to Magherini’s psychoanalytic interpretation, Stendhal syndrome arises from unconscious emotions or conflicts that break out again through the encounter with a work of art. Likewise, a repressed trauma can rise to the surface as the viewer reads what drives them out of the visual language.Reality recedes, the soul life with uncontrolled feelings comes close, but the liberating transformation into symbols or thoughts fails.
Mirror neurons provide an explanatory model
Neurobiologists also offer theories on how aesthetic stimuli produce affects. Mirror neurons are crucial for the understanding of other people — called social cognition — postulate an art historian and a neurologist in their publication: Anyone who witnesses how someone performs an action or that he is threatened with danger, the same brain areas become active as if he were acting himself or were in a delicate situation. [7] It does not matter whether the observed is real or only takes place on a picture. Possible feeling mirror neurons could then mediate empathy. This empathy does not arise from conceptual thinking, but from a phylogenetically older direct understanding.It would not be excluded that such nerve cells in some art lovers particularly intensively «fire» and thus trigger the Stendhal syndrome.
In any case, it is reassuring that dizziness, heart fluttering and visions usually disappear on their own within a few hours, often a clarifying conversation is sufficient, reports Margherini. Furthermore, she recommends: «Rest. Talking to compatriots. And go home quickly.» [6] Also: take your time. If the symptoms are more severe or do not resolve spontaneously, psychotherapy or psychotropic drugs could be useful. Only rarely does a pronounced psychiatric disorder develop.
Is the hoax of art just a fake?
Critics, however, deny the existence of Stendhal syndrome, but interpret it simply as a neurosis and accuse the eponym of having mixed psychopathological symptoms with anecdotal observations. Although travel physicians are more inclined to take the disorder seriously, it is by no means recognized as an independent clinical picture. [8]
Magherini does not dispute this: «I have not made any diagnostic or therapeutic discovery.I wanted to point out the psychoanalytic meaning of travel.» [9] She has even continued on this trail: In her new book «I fell in love with a statue. Beyond Stendhal Syndrome», she exemplifies what Michelangelo’s «David» does to the soul household of admirers.
Many differential diagnoses come into question
It is obvious that many influences can explain the collapse à la Stendhal: For years, one has saved for Florence, informed in advance about every detail of the fabulous art treasures. High expectations. Then you squeeze into crowds – over 4 million visitors annually – through the city of dreams. 40 degrees in the shade, the jet lag is still in the bones or the sleepless night on the worn hotel mattress. Standing in line, dehydrated, falling blood sugar levels, unfamiliar food, perhaps traveler’s diarrhea. In the Uffizi Claustrophobi and bad air.In any case, every journey is a state of emergency, an uprooting from the familiar environment. «These are certainly all factors,» Magherini admits, «but the core is something else. Art succeeds in making us feel something that we have never expressed and never known.» [6]
In this respect, it is not surprising that the idea of the power that art can emanate unfolds considerable fascination. Travel guides about Florence mention Stendhal’s syndrome, press articles have spread it to the public, writers and filmmakers have knitted their stories around the motif[8], leaflets in hotels in the Tuscan city warn against aesthetic oversaturation. [6]
Other cities emulate Florence
(According to popular) scientific reports, similar phenomena are now haunted by other tourist magnets: Pilgrims suffer from the Jerusalem syndrome with the delusion of being a saint from the Bible, Jesus, Mary or none other than God[10], Paris syndrome travelers especially from Japan, when they find themselves — instead of being ensnared by romance and love — in a big city juggernaut. [11] The diagnosis «Venice syndrome» goes back to a study according to which foreigners repeatedly commit suicide in the lagoon city — inspired by Thomas Mann’s novella «Death in Venice». [12]
The enthusiasm for the land where the lemons bloom and overwhelming feelings when educational travelers really stand in front of golden oranges, myrtle and marble images have tradition.At least since the novel «A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy» by the writer Laurence Sterne from 1768, intellectuals have embarked on a grand tour to search for the land of the Italians with their souls.
Goethe’s «Italian Journey» is legendary, although he sacrificed Florence only three hours on the way there out of impatience to finally reach Rome: On 23 October 1786 at 10 o’clock in the morning «we came out of the Apennines and saw Florence lying … The Boboli pleasure garden … I just went through, so the cathedral … das Baptisterium». Stendhal-worthy experiences only seize him in Rome: «In other places you have to seek out the important, here we are overpressed and overcrowded by it.» On the return journey, he dedicates a few days to the city on the Arno, but notes, for example, on 6 May 1788 only prosaically: «seen almost everything that Florence contains in terms of art». [13]
For a despiser, Rome is a «gigantic joke»
More than cool, however, remains the rebellious pop writer Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. [14] With «Rom, Blicke» he sets a counterpoint against all art smuggle in the 1970s: There «the impression of a dirty neglect was considerably prolonged …maybe I still had remnants of an old idea in me that a cosmopolitan city like Rome would be sparkling, bizarre, dazzling and also dangerous for the senses — ‘I too in Arcadia!’ wrote Göthe … Meanwhile, this Arcadia … has become a kind of limbo … You would have to do it like Göthe, the idiot … He admires every little cat and gets himself into the talk.»
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Source — https://www.univadis.de/viewarticle/das-stendhal-syndrom-wenn-sch%25C3%25B6nheit-2023a10005up