Stefan Zweig built a brilliant literary work on nostalgia and stupor. Nostalgia for that old world that was lost in the Great War (1914-1918), stupor at the new nationalist and militarist world that emerged afterwards. It cannot be said that he had a bad life. His most fruitful years, from a creative point of view, were the “roaring 20s”, the unbridled decade that led to the crisis of 1929 and the horrors that came after.
Today many voices are heard that echo Zweig’s nostalgia and stupor. Current nostalgia refers to the post-war and Cold War West or, more intensely, to those years after 1989 when liberal democracies, globalization and the speculative economy seemed to have achieved definitive triumph. For those who believed, and believe, in certain democratic values, certain economic priorities and certain international rules, the evolution of history is becoming almost incomprehensible.
#stupor #world
