The Future Of NostalgiaCan one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka's grave to conversations with Hitler's impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes. |
Contents
PART 2 | 73 |
Moscow the Russian Rome | 91 |
Joseph Brodskys Room and a Half | 285 |
Copyright | |
3 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic American architecture artist beauty became become Benjamin Berlin border Brodsky Brodsky's Bronze Horseman building café carnival cathedral century commemoration culture dream East Eastern émigré estrangement European everyday exhibit exile facade film foreign friends future German global hero homecoming homeland human Ilya Kabakov imagined immigrants installation intimacy Jewish Joseph Brodsky Kabakov language Leningrad longing Love Parade Luzhkov Mandelstam memory Milan Kundera modern monument Moscow museum myth Nabokov native never nostalgia nostalgic Palace Palace of Soviets past perestroika Peter Petersburg Petersburgian photograph poem poet poetic political post-Soviet Prague present reconstruction reflective nostalgia restoration revolution ruins Russian Saigon Schloss Shklovsky souvenirs Soviet Union space Stalin story style Svetlana Boym symbol synagogue Tacheles tion toilet tourists tradition tsar turned University Press unofficial urban utopian Victor Shklovsky virtual Vladimir Vladimir Nabokov Walter Benjamin West Western word writer York