[HN Gopher] W.G. Sebald and the Politics of Melancholy
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       W.G. Sebald and the Politics of Melancholy
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2025-04-05 05:57 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
        
       | daveguy wrote:
       | Power is "parasitic rather than powerful"... what a beautiful
       | zeitgeist published 81 years earlier.
       | 
       | An excellent example in the article is Trump's desperate attempt
       | at legacy and power... "He let the water flow" is Trump's "the
       | trains run on time." Except Trump and his lackeys are vastly more
       | ignorant and incompetent.
        
       | zoogeny wrote:
       | The bias of the article is strong, and I appreciate that. I
       | actually despise performative unbiased reviews.
       | 
       | While that bias initially frustrated me, once again comparing
       | some contemporary thing a writer disagrees with to the rise of
       | the Nazis, the underlying topic is actually in line with a lot of
       | my own recent thinking.
       | 
       | I think a disease of the modern mind is the belief in and desire
       | for finality. A belief in the finality of contemporary models of
       | physics, the finality of political systems, the finality of
       | literature analysis. And seeing authoritarianism as an expression
       | of this desire for finality is an interesting take.
       | 
       | It reminds me of "Man's search for meaning" where Frankl reflects
       | on the the meaning of facing suffering with dignity. Or Camus'
       | story of Sisyphus where a man is forced to perform a pointless
       | repetitive task with no conclusion or meaning, and yet Camus
       | argues we must see Sisyphus as happy.
       | 
       | It is interesting how we associate this by comparing it to
       | emotions. Anxiety for Kierkegaard, Nausea for Sartre, Suffering
       | for Frankl (and Buddha) and apparently Melancholy for Sebald. It
       | is also interesting to see the different approaches each have for
       | dealing with it.
        
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