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The Idea of Nostalgia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jean Starobinski
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Extract

In tracing the history of emotions and of mentalities, one is immediately confronted with a question of method resulting from the interplay of emotions and language.

The emotions whose history we wish to retrace are accessible to us only from the time when they find expression, verbally or by other means. For the critic, for the historian, an emotion exists only beyond the point at which it attains a linguistic status. No facet of an emotion can be traced before it is named, before it is designated and expressed. It is not, then, the emotion itself which comes before us; only that part which has passed into a given form of expression can be of interest to the historian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 14 , Issue 54 , June 1966 , pp. 81 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Fritz Ernst has written the most complete history of the idea of nostalgia (Vom Heimweh, Zurich, 1949); the thesis of Fortunata Rammings-Thön (Das Heimweh, Zurich, 1958) contains some important developments.

2 Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, Basel, 1688. An English translation is given in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Baltimore, II (1934), p. 379.

3 This conviction persisted in the nineteenth century. Balzac wrote from Milan to Madame Hanska: "Dear, I suffer homesickness… I come and go without any spirit, without being able to say what I have, and if I remained this way for two weeks, I should die" (May 23, 1838). In 1868, Madame Aupick related the circumstances of a voyage which Charles Baudelaire took in 1841 to the South Seas: "Fearing that he might be attacked by this merciless disease, nostalgia, whose effects are, at times, so deadly, the captain urged him to accom pany him to Saint-Denis (Bourbon)." W.T. Bandy and Claude Pichois, Baude laire devant ses contemporains, Monaco, 1957, p. 51.

4 Cf. Richard Feller, "Alliances et service mercenaire" in Histoire militaire de la Suisse, Bern, 1916, Vol. II, Part III.

5 Cf. J.G. Zimmermann, Von der Erfahrung in der Arzneykunst, revised edition, Zurich, 1787, p. 556.

6 In his Zoonomia, Erasmus Darwin gives calenture as a synonym for nos talgia. This emotion figures among the "diseases of volition," between amor sui and spes religiosa.

7 J.J. Scheuchzer, Naturgeschichte des Schweizerlandes, 1705, and re-edited several times during the century. The work of Ernst Fritz contains some extracts.

8 J.P. Marat, De l'homme ou des principes et des lois de l'influence de l'âme sur le corps, et du corps sur l'âme, Amsterdam, 1775.

9 P.J.G. Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, Paris, 1802.

10 J.B. Du Bos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture, revised edition, Utrecht, 1732, pp. 137-39.

11 A. von Haller, Relation d'un voyage de Albert de Haller dans l'Oberland Bernois, ed. H. Pettrier (1906). Quoted by Ernst.

12 W. Cullen, First Lines of the Practice of Physic, London, 1791. This work contains a broad definition of neurosis.

13 "De Pothopatridalgia," in Fasciculus dissertationum medicarum selectiorum, Basel, 1710. Extracts given by Ernst.

14 B. Ramazzini, De morbis artificum diatriba, Mantua, 1700.

15 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690.

16 F. Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, London, 1728, IV. 93.

17 D. Hartley, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty and his Expectations, London, 1749, 1.11.12 (cor. 7), III.I.80 (cor. 5).

18 J. Gregory, A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World, London, 1777 (7th ed.), pp. 164-66.

19 J.-J. Rousseau, Dictionary of Music, trans. W. Waring and J. French, London, n.d. (c. 1778), p. 267.

20 Article on Nostalgia in the Supplément to the Encyclopedie

21 S. Rogers, "The Pleasures of Memory," 1792. Also, several lines from

"L'imagination" (1788) of Abbe Delille (Chant IV, "L'imagination des lieux").

Ainsi les souvenirs, les regrets et l'amour, Et la mélancolique et douce rêverie, Reviennent vers les lieux chers à l'âme attendrie, Où nous fûmes enfans, amans, aimés, heureux.

22 Senancour, Obermann, Letter XXXVIII, Third Fragment.

23 Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, 1798, I. XXXII.

24 Marcel Reinhard, "Nostalgie et service militaire pendant la Révolution," Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 1958, No. I.

25 Encyclopédie Méthodique, article on Nostalgie (by Boisseau and Pinel).

26 Ibid.

27 Article on Nostalgie, in Dictionnaire des sciences médicales, Paris, 1819, Vol. XXXVI.

28 Article on Nostalgie, in Dictionnaire de médicine et de chirurgie pratique, 1834, Vol. XII.

29 Leopold Auenbrugger, Inventum Novum, 1761. Quoted by Ernst.

30 Mémoires de l'Académie de Médecine, XXX, 1871-73.

31 F. Boissier de Sauvage, Nosologia methodica, Amsterdam, 1768, 2 Vols.

32 The terms hospitalism and anaclitic depression are to be found in René A. Spitz, "Hospitalism. An Inquiry into the Genesis of Phychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood," in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. I, New York, 1945. René A. Spitz and Katherine M. Wolf, "Anaclitic Depression. An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood," Ibid., Vol. II, 1946. J. Bowlby, Soins maternels et santé mentale, Geneva, OMS, 1951.