Nostalgia

“The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day” Thomas Hardy, 1914
 

In a world increasingly tilted in favour of nostalgia at the expense of confronting the intoxicating possibilities offered by the new, artistic works inspired by the past occupy a perilous position. Alice Thomson notes that the word nostalgia originates from ​nostos meaning 'home' and algos meaning 'pain'.

Although nostalgia serves an important purpose in reinforcing the intangible links between our past and present, one should often be wary of allowing this remembrance device to slide into a fog of distraction. At the same time, the benefits afforded by progress in historical recreation should not be disregarded. It is with this thought in mind that I attended a ‘Schubertiade’ evening at Kings Place, courtesy of the seventh edition of the London Piano Festival.
 
The explicit aim of a group of pianists was to evoke (in spirit and performance) was to evoke (in spirit and performance) the Viennese musical gatherings of Franz Schubert’s era. Placed on the stage, behind the piano, were two sofas, a warm-hued lamp, and several cushions. As each combination of pianists played a Schubert duet, the other musicians contributed to the sense of intimacy by observing in the manner of an interested audience. Although this had the potential of diminishing the seriousness of the music on offer, the sheer quality of Schubert’s compositions endured. In fact, as a member of the audience, one felt almost a kinship with each pianist during their individual moment of sofa-relaxing.
 
That said, we were not in a 19th-century salon of a grand apartment or aristocratic dwelling, but in a modern and elegant cube of sorts. Similarly, the furniture was harking after mid-century Swedish design – practical, efficient, certainly not imbued with Habsburg-esque decadence. This presented an interesting possibility: could one separate the visual and aural elements of nostalgia? The answer, I think, lies not solely in this concert, but relates to a series of other cultural experiences this week.
 
Christian Wolmar’s insightful and compelling book, Cathedrals of Steam, charts the development of London’s great railway terminuses from their genesis in the heady, raw capitalism of the Victorian era, through the uncertainty wielded by 1960s cuts through to the present day. In analysing the development of Kings Cross, Wolmar notes the 19th-century urge to clothe its railway stations in an often Italianate style, almost as if to assuage fears of excessive modernity amongst the early passengers of this then-radically new technology. Therefore, the railway architects relied on elements of nostalgia in order to better present modern qualities. Jumping ahead to the 21st-century, the mixed-use concert venue of Kings Place was developed as a result of the gentrification of previously unloved goods areas within the environs of Kings Cross station.
 
The preceding analysis begs the question: can nostalgia be formed of multiple layers? This question brings us to the third and final cultural interaction – the London premiere of Oliver Hermanus’s film Living, starring Bill Nighy as a bureaucrat coming to terms with a terminal illness. Its genesis is the ultimate form of artistic layering; the Nobel-prize winning author Sir Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the screenplay, adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, itself inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Although this extensive cultural ‘collaboration’ spanning nearly 150 years could result in a disjointed and excessively intellectual project, the result is spectacular in its thoughtfulness, jewel-like sadness, and dappled cinematography. Set in 1953, the deft employment of old newsreel and artistic interiors anchors the film firmly in its time. Yet its force of anguished personality transports the viewer away from its temporal setting. It has overcome a sense of stasis.
 
Living, by dint of its title, has managed to do, in this column’s opinion, what the Schubertiade and the great railway architects could not do: apply nostalgia to generate invention rather than revival. The latter application is at the heart of Hardy's aforementioned phrase. This cultural achievement makes it worthy of the highest praise whilst setting an example for future artistic projects.