Novelistic Nostalgia: The Pleasure and the Pain

This article explores nostalgia in its creative/utopian as well as negative/pathological aspects, as reflected in novels by two contemporary authors: Milan Kundera and Mircea Cărtărescu. While nostalgia mostly perceived as a highly positive value clearly permeates Cărtărescu’s novel, in Kundera’s writing we observe a gradually developing violent rejection of this sentiment. Both Cărtărescu and Kundera display a need to return to their childhood/adolescent origins, albeit for opposing reasons: what the first wishes to symbolically re-create (restorative nostalgia), the latter desires to demolish with a supremely anti-nostalgic gesture