Miker--
Did I stomp too hard on your
foot? Sometimes when I hop around on my one good leg with my
own tongue in my cheek I tend to bounce too close to people
who aren't paying attention.
(While any dictionary may
indeed describe
"nostalgia" as simply a "longing for the past," a good
dictionary will describe it more exactly as a longing for an
idealized past--that is, one that didn't really exist as
such. Hence the commentary I offered up, which, if you really
didn't get it, said much the same thing but with a pun on
"coupled" that would no doubt bring a chuckle [or offer up a
"wink"] to Gunny Highway [who was no more a history professor
than the man I quoted, despite your assumption].)
Cheers!
--- Michael Robison <
miker_zspider@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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
combina-
> tion 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.
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