Mal du siècle

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani places the mal du siècle within a rapid historical sequence: in less than a generation, one moves from the pursuit of happiness to the mal du siècle, then to spleen and modern anguish1. He sees in it the form of an unhappy consciousness, from Romantic melancholy to contemporary anguish, which we have perhaps not left behind2. He describes it as a restlessness, an unknown need that one feels without having its concept. It is a feeling of incompleteness that comes before any reflection3. He links it to Verlaine's "grief without cause"4. He also stresses its ambivalence: this melancholy has its own voluptuousness, man lives on his sorrows and still loves himself in the feeling of his ruin5. According to him, it is in Senancour that one finds its almost clinical analysis, carried as far as the kind of nothingness in which it ends6.

1. 1L'interview de Dominique Pagani : Introduction aux futurs ateliers23 Mar 2020 · 1:06:38
2. 2#5.9 Kafka Un message impérial29 Jul 2019 · 6:35
3. 3#5 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...19 Nov 2020 · 50:59
4. 4#3 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude4 Apr 2020 · 47:46
5. 5#3 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude4 Apr 2020 · 1:03:54
6. 6#5 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...19 Nov 2020 · 10:14

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.