Abstract

A fluent essay in contemporary Kulturkritik, flexibly but not always happily strung to the interpretation of a fairy tale. The author submits, drawing extensively upon Marcel and Buber, that nostalgia, homesickness, is the characteristic moral sentiment of our time. As an index and reminder of man's want of a true present, and especially as a potential signpost to its recovery, nostalgia holds out promise. It is suggested--at odds with a Humanism such as Sartre's, and with Heideggerian "waiting"--that true presence, whether of Person or of Nature, must depend upon and serve the realization of Divine Presence.--A. F.