An underexplored reason why nostalgic art is worthwhile is that it influences the way the past is remembered.
Writings survive the years; it is by writings that you know Agamemnon, and those who fought for or against him. [Lat., Scripta ferunt annos; scriptis Agamemnona nosti, Et quisquis contra vel simul arma tulit.]
The rediscovered path, where were left the traces of childhood's lost steps.
I once saw, on a flower pot in my own living room, the efforts of a field mouse to build a remembered field. I have lived to see this episode repeated in a thousand guises, and since I have spent a large portion of my life in the shade of a nonexistent tree I think I am entitled to speak for the field mouse.
Present-day nostalgia involves homesickness for a period of time or a way of life that is gone for good.
The only history that matters is the history we know.
O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!
No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is.
