Shock of the old

Resignation? i got the feeling that you weren't looking for a word, but a physical manoevre involving lowering the eyelids disdainfully, sagging the shoulders, rolling over and going back to sleep.

Well, fortuitously, the Germans do have a word that pretty much describes this "feeling" and that word is weltschmerz. My BIG dictionary defines this as:
1) apathy caused by comparing the actual state of the world with an ideal state
2) a mood of sentimental sadness
The literal meaning is something like "world pain".
This is not to be confused with weltanschauung, which would be more like having a predisposed world view.

I suppose "anticlimax" wouldn't live up to the expectations raised by the question.

I propose adding to the genre of the Vu's:
presque vu, jamais vu, deja vu. All of these
have to do with the sudden shock of realization,
although in different forms.

I am thinking of something between the cross
of antique, archaic, and antidiluvian.

antiqua vu

Greg

On 1/6/99 2:08:48 PM, Barbara Wallraff wrote:
>Kevin Murray, of Melbourne,
>Australia, writes: "I am
>looking for a word that might
>describe the feeling of waking
>up on January 1, 2000, when
>the world won't have radically
>changed. 'Shock of the old' is
>a useful inversion of 'Shock
>of the new,' but I'd like to
>find something a little more
>clinical, perhaps in German.
>This feeling is a variety of
>the 'uncanny' when something
>that was assumed to be past
>persists in the present. This
>is different from 'memento
>mori,' such as finding that
>your hair has gone grey. It's
>more the distance between hype
>about the millennium and the
>reality of sameness."
>
>

"I propose adding to the genre of the Vu's:
presque vu, jamais vu, deja vu. All of these
have to do with the sudden shock of realization, although in different forms."

As an admirer of "the genre of the Vu's", I heartily approve of this notion; how about siecle vu (literally, century seen)?

"...something between the cross of..."

(Barbara, is there a word for this particular type of pleonasm? ;-)

It's so easy to type two versions of something and to forget to delete one or the other before posting that I think the word you're looking for, Michael, is "typo." Or do we need yet another new word? E-typo? Eonasm?

Perhaps "shock of the old" is more a French than German kind of experience. I guess Germans are likely to get more sentimental about returning to what is familiar, in a "Heimat" kind of sense. Whereas "siecle vu" seems to express better the almost mystical nature of "shock of the old". Like Baudelaire says: "all modernism is worthy of becoming antiquity some day". What's missing from this nostalgia is a resigned realism about millennial disappointment. Which makes me wonder whether there is a particularly American strain as well, perhaps in writers like Richard Ford.

I like it. Do we have a consensus?

On 1/14/99 5:05:32 PM, Kevin Murray wrote:
>Perhaps "shock of the old" is
>more a French than German kind
>of experience. I guess Germans
>are likely to get more
>sentimental about returning to
>what is familiar, in a
>"Heimat" kind of sense.
>Whereas "siecle vu" seems to
>express better the almost
>mystical nature of "shock of
>the old". Like Baudelaire
>says: "all modernism is worthy
>of becoming antiquity some
>day". What's missing from this
>nostalgia is a resigned
>realism about millennial
>disappointment. Which makes me
>wonder whether there is a
>particularly American strain
>as well, perhaps in writers
>like Richard Ford.
>