Nostalgia

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The term nostalgia describes a longing for the past, often in idealized form.

The word is made up of two Greek roots (νόστος nostos "returning home", and άλγος algos "pain"), to refer to "the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native land, and fears never to see it again". It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, in the Early Modern period, and came to be an important topos in Romanticism.

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[edit] As a medical condition

Main article: Homesickness
 It has been suggested that Homesickness be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The term was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer (1669-1752) in his Basel dissertation. Hofer introduced nostalgia or mal du pays "homesickness" for the condition also known as mal du Suisse "Swiss illness" or Schweizerheimweh "Swiss homesickness", because of its frequent occurrence in Swiss mercenaries who in the plains of lowlands of France or Italy were pining for their native mountain landscapes. English homesickness is a loan translation of nostalgia.

Cases resulting in death were known and soldiers were sometimes successfully treated by being discharged and sent home. Receiving a diagnosis was, however, generally regarded as an insult. In 1787, Robert Hamilton (1749-1830) described a case of a soldier suffering from nostalgia, who received sensitive and successful treatment:

"In the year 1781, while I lay in barracks at Tin mouth in the north of England, a recruit who had lately joined the regiment,...was returned in sick list, with a message from his captain, requesting I would take him into the hospital. He had only been a few months a soldier; was young, handsome, and well-made for the service; but a melancholy hung over his countenance, and wanness preyed on his cheeks. He complained of a universal weakness, but no fixed pain; a noise in his ears, and giddiness of his head....As there were little obvious symptoms of fever, I did not well know what to make of the case...Some weeks passed with little alteration...excepting that he was evidently become more meager. He scarcely took any nourishment...became indolent...He was put on a course of strengthening medicines; wine was allowed him. All proved ineffectual. He had now been in the hospital three months, and was quite emaciated, and like one in the last stage of consumption... On making my morning visit, and inquiring, as usual, of his rest at the nurse, she happened to mention the strong notions he had got in his head, she said, of home, and of his friends. What he was able to speak was constantly on this topic. This I had never heard of before...He had talked in the same style, it seems, less or more, ever since he came into the hospital. I went immediately up to him, and introduced the subject; and from the alacrity with which he resumed it.. I found it a theme which much affected him. He asked me, with earnestness, if I would let him go home. I pointed out to him how unfit he was, from his weakness to undertake such a journey [he was a Welchman] till once he was better; but promised him, assuredly, without farther hesitation, that as soon as he was able he should have six weeks to go home. He revived at the very thought of it... His apeitite soon mended; and I saw in less than a week, evident signs of recovery."[citation needed]

By the 1850s, nostalgia was losing its status as a disease and coming to be seen as a symptom or stage of a pathological process. It was considered as a form of melancholia and a predisposing condition among suicides. By the 1870s, interest in nostalgia as a medical category had all but vanished.

[edit] Romanticism

Swiss nostalgia was strongly linked to the singing of Kuhreihen. The claim that these songs were forbidden on pain of death to Swiss mercenaries because their causing violent nostalgia to the point of desertion, illness or death in their compatriots was widely repeated in the 18th century, and appears in the 1767 Dictionnaire de Musique by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It became somewhat of a topos in Romantic literature, and figures in the poem Der Schweizer by Achim von Arnim (1805) and in Clemens Brentano's Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1809) as well as in the opera Le Chalet by Adolphe Charles Adam (1834) which was performed for Queen Victoria under the title The Swiss Cottage. The Romantic connection of nostalgia, the Kuhreihen and the Swiss Alps was a significant factor in the enthusiasm for Switzerland, the development of early tourism in Switzerland and Alpinism that took hold of the European cultural elite in the 19th century.

German Romanticism coined an opposite to Heimweh, Fernweh "far-sickness", "longing to be far away", like Wanderlust expressing the Romantic desire to travel and explore.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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Nostalgia edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia