The word nostalgia derives from the ancient Greek word nostos, which meant ‘return home’, and algos meaning ‘pain’. The plural of nostos is nostoi (or, ‘returns’) and this word was used as the title of a poem included in a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems called The Epic Cycle, which detailed the fictional Trojan War. Following this collection came Homer’s epic poem Iliad and later Odyssey, where we meet Odysseus and learn about his 10-year journey home following the war. Nostalgia was used in post-classical Latin and appeared for the first time in English print in the mid-18th century with the early sense of ‘acute homesickness’; a feeling painfully real for Odysseus.
Speaking of nostalgia, there is something strangely comforting and deeply fascinating about listening to the nostalgic stories of elderly people. They describe a world we can barely imagine and have experienced events which we are, fortunately, too ignorant to understand. “I worked in a factory, you know”, an old man recounts; “We used women’s underwear to make parachutes for the boys!” The next week when you visit, you sit down and hold his hand gently as he gazes off into the distance, strikes a finger into the air and remarks with a great sense of nostalgia, “I worked in a factory, you know. We used women’s underwear to make parachutes for the boys!”
Some of his stories are so romantic. Lovers separated by the war; never daring to entertain the idea of a future together. He was an extremely charming and handsome officer and Penelope, later to be his wife, was the very picture of beauty. This is what he tells you and you can see it in the black and white photos hanging on the wall. But often, the people in these stories are long gone. The elderly man dribbles on his food as he tells you about his life in the war, but his eyes still shine from the nostalgia of a time when he was a hero and he loved deeply. He is homesick for a world that has moved on and which doesn’t notice him now.
You promise to go back the following week because you know there is no one else to make this promise and to listen to his stories. The man spends his days shuffling around an old house, watching TV game shows. His mother would be devastated to see her child alone like this in his armchair, you might find yourself thinking.
His life will pass on, and you will no longer hear his epic stories of the amazing and awful events that he saw. The nostalgia has ended. He lived a long life and, at least, he was one of the lucky ones to return home where his wife Penelope had always been waiting.
