Nostalgia

Shakespeare understood it. (The Bus 3.10)

Welcome aboard The Bus!

The Stop

Nostalgia - the ‘pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again’ - was first formally identified by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer (1688 - 1752). Combining the Greek nostos (return) and algos (pain), he coined the term to describe the ‘adverse symptoms displayed by Swiss mercenaries in the service of European monarchs’ that in some cases would create a ‘psychological burden so great that they actually died as a result.’ Hofer believed nostalgia was a disease which prevented these soldiers from forgetting their lives before military service. Unable to rid themselves of these memories, sufferers would be consumed by a number of symptoms including ‘obsessive thinking of home, bouts of weeping, anxiety, palpitations, anorexia and insomnia.’¹

Han Solo, Boba Fett and R2D2 on my bookshelf (24 April 2023)/Photo: Bryan Padrick

Hofer’s view of nostalgia as a physical neurological disease remained consistent throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but in the early 19th century it was redefined as a non-physical ‘form of melancholia or depression’. This view of nostalgia would remain common well into the 20th century, with scholars describing it variously as an ‘immigrant psychosis,’ a ‘mentally repressive compulsive disorder,’ and a ‘regressive manifestation … related to … loss, grief, incomplete mourning, and, finally, depression.’

The early 21st century saw nostalgia reconsidered yet again, largely due to the work of an academic named Constantine Sedikides. After years of working at the University of North Carolina, in 1999 he moved to England to the University of Southampton to take up the position of professor of social and personality psychology. Soon after arriving, he noticed he had developed a ‘new, startling habit of mind’ in which a few times each week he would find himself ‘overwhelmed’ with sensations of his recent home in Chapel Hill. During these events, various memories - the ‘atmosphere of his old department, the memory of summer evenings with family and friends’ - would ‘flood his senses with sounds and smells.’ According to his own academic discipline, these memories should have - as nostalgia - made him unhappy, but for Sedikides the opposite was true. They made him ‘feel good about himself, helped to make sense of his journey,’ and he found them to be a ‘profoundly rooting experience.’ Rather than a malady, for Sedikides nostalgia was a ‘powerful stimulant’ which made him feel ‘optimistic about the future.’

Ironically, Sedikides’s recognition of this positive aspect of nostalgia is not new, but actually predates Hofer’s ‘discovery’ of it. Though the word did not yet exist, the qualities he later named nostalgia - both bad and good - had been recognised for centuries. Though many philosophers and poets had turned their attention to these qualities, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 is possibly the best portrayal of the ‘intricate web of relationships between these important aspects of nostalgia – human sociality, loss, redemption, and positive affectivity:’

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a full episode (21:05) of The Carol Burnett Show. If you’re an American Bus Rider of a certain age, you very well might have grown up watching this series during its 1967-1978 run on CBS. A multi-award winning² variety/sketch show considered one of the best shows ever, this sketch from series 10 - a parody of Gone With the Wind - is one of its most-loved.

Carol Burnett Show: Went with the Wind

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Star Wars: The Action Figure Archive.³ More than a collector's guide, this very detailed book traces the history of these toys - many of which, despite having a pretty good collection as a child, I had no idea existed.

From the back: First launched in 1978, the Hasbro/Kenner line of Star Wars action figures has been a runaway favourite for more than twenty years. Star Wars: The Action Figure Archive, a glorious and comprehensive collector’s guide and visual history, profiles every Star Wars action figure ever produced in the Hasbro/Kenner line. Detailed entries for each action figure include complete descriptions of the character’s attributes, special features, accessories, and weapons, as well as notes on the release date, original packaging, and variations. Including more than two thousand full-colour photographs and loads of fun Star Wars trivia and inside information, this is an invaluable tool for collectors and an entertaining read for trilogy fans.

Though there are more recent editions, this is the one I’m interested in and it’s no longer in print so you can’t buy it new from Amazon. However, it is available through various used book sellers, and you might be able to find it in a library or on a shelf in a charity shop. If you find it, pick it up.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks that always - without fail - remind me of playing with my Star Wars figures in the late 70s/early 80s:⁴ 'Night Fever' (The Bee Gees, 1977), 'Late in the Evening' (Paul Simon, 1980), 'Keep on Loving You' (REO Speedwagon, 1980), 'Kiss on My List' (Daryl Hall & John Oates, 1980) and 'Goodbye Stranger' (Supertramp, 1979). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from the French novelist Marcel Proust,⁵ and is certainly apropos for today's focus on nostalgia:

‘Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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Until the next Stop …

1. Nostalgia itself didn’t actually kill people, of course. Rather, the few deaths ‘related to the condition were often caused by suicide or by self-neglect. A dampened immune system brought on by depression, for example, sometimes left people more susceptible to fatal illnesses.’ Sources for today’s Stop include Nostalgia (British Psychological Society), Look Back in Joy (The Guardian), Nostalgia (Britannica), Death by Nostalgia (The Scientist)

2. It won 25 Emmys alone. To be fair, I don’t think I’ve seen it once since it went off air, but anytime the show - or her name - is mentioned it's this episode that pops into my head - and specifically the dress that appears around 15 minutes in. The reason it’s today’s Detour is not only because watching it might induce nostalgia, but Carol Burnett turned 90 on 26 April - and was the subject of a great issue of Brad Kyle’s

Front Row & Backstage

. His 24 April post was dedicated to all things Carol Burnett - and certainly worth a read.

3. Ed. Stephen J. Sansweet, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999.

4. My brother and I had quite a collection - Death Stars, X-wings, TIE-fighters, landspeeders, etc. and scores of figures, but we never played ‘Star Wars’ with them. Instead, we’d mix it all with wooden blocks and games and books to build cities, forts, Egyptian tombs, the Berlin Wall, etc. - our constructions were influenced by whatever I was reading about at the time - for the single purpose of destroying it all in a war. The radio was always on in my room and then, like now, some songs were on a heavier rotation than others. Which is why, evidently, my brother detests Billy Joel - especially ‘Big Shot.’ The three figures in today’s photo - Han Solo (the first-run figure with the little head - check out the collector’s guide, this is evidently a big deal), Boba Fett (for whom I’d sent away a number of proofs of purchases to receive him free in the post), and R2D2 - my second figure, purchased in the summer of 1977 at the same time as Darth Vader - are in pride of place on one of the bookcases in my study.

5. Proust (1871-1922) was the author of the massive seven volume novel In Search of Lost Time. He’s quite the character and is on the list for a later Bus Stop, but in the meantime more information can be found here: Marcel Proust (Britannica).