Robert Elkin wrote:
A former professor of mine described nostalgia as an
inability to face history coupled with an inability to
discard the past. What do you think?
************ I'd say that Mario was speaking lightly with
tongue- in-cheek. The "winks" he notes is satire, parody,
pastiche, an irony of style, or some combination thereof.
None of that equates to nostalgia. It's closer to a ridicule
of nostalgia.
Concerning your history professor's line, it's vague enough
to be close to useless. It's surely no improvement over
simply identifying nostalgia as a longing for the past, a
definition available in any dictionary. The bottom line is
that the past is supremely important, not only as record of
where we have been and how we got where we are, but also as a
pointer to where we are going.
miker
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