Though perhaps not thorough enough for one who may focus his or her studies on one of these cities or on architecture, the case studies nevertheless give a fascinating glimpse into the way that these places’ citizens view their own spot in history and how they deal with their collective and individual memories of the past. This second part of the book is particularly useful for a reader interested in art and architecture and could provide an interesting perspective and background knowledge for visiting any of the mentioned sites. The fourth city, Prague, city of Kafka, is a central figure in “Europa’s Eros,” a city in which every clock strikes at the same time and yet each suggests a different idea of time. Petersburg views cultural memory and nostalgia, to the open embodiment of the East-West dialectic in Berlin. According to Boym, “Places are contexts for remembrances and debates about the future, not symbols of memory or nostalgia,” and in her personal accounts of visiting each place, she discusses their unique ways of dealing with the traces of a Soviet past, from the megalomaniacal attempts by Moscow to eliminate all Soviet traces and rediscover a mythic past, to the humorous irony with which St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Prague–and explores various physical spaces within each. Part two takes the reader on a journey through four cities in their post-Soviet conditions–Moscow, St. Reflective nostalgia is about individual and cultural memory, and in cultivating shattered fragments of the past and in producing art and literature based on the algia, temporalizes space. Restorative nostalgia is about national past and future, and includes projects such as the Sistine Chapel restoration, which spatialize time. Modern nostalgia, however, is much more related to the mourning for an impossible mythical return, for the “loss of an enchanted world with clear borders and values.” Boym then goes on to distinguish between the two main types of nostalgia: reflective, which dwells in the algia, in the dreams of a different place and time and restorative, which, emphasizing the nostos and not recognizing itself as being nostalgic, attempts complete reconstructions of monuments of the past in the search for, or supposed recreation of, truth. This pseudo-Greek combination of nostos-the return home-and algia-longing-, was first coined by Swiss doctor Johannes Hofer in 1688 as a disease of wartime suffered by unhappy soldiers who longed to return home. At the very least, she has indicated useful places to look for anyone especially curious about, for example, the Royal Palace in Berlin, or about any of the case studies.īoym begins the study by tracing the history of the word nostalgia. Nonetheless, the sectioning of the study pertains to Boym’s interdisciplinary approach, providing the reader a glimpse into the subject through the mediums of art, architecture, literature, and even pop culture. While it allows one to focus on an individual section or chapter of interest without necessarily needing to refer to others, it also at times makes it a bit difficult to maintain the comparative thread and sort out the diverse types of nostalgia presented, unless perhaps through actually mapping these out. Splitting her work into three parts, each of which is then further subdivided into independent yet interrelated case studies, one could realistically review each part as a book within a book, and this structure is both a strength and a point of difficulty. Moreover, she has done so in an accessible way, building both a serious study and an engaging historical story that could attract more than just the standard academic reader. If the Russian exiles and immigrants who live or lived in the United States were reluctant to speak on their own behalf, then Boym has decided to present their case for them. In the study, Boym alternates between critical reflection and storytelling in the attempt to solve the riddles in which nostalgia speaks, and as a native of Russia, she is adamant about giving a voice to the Eastern European, who has suffered an unfair history of turbulence and who carries a tangible burden of nostalgia, but whose personal voice is too often overlooked.
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