Get to work! New non-fiction books: Cry movingly like Roger Federer

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When was the last time you were moved? When did you hear your child’s first words? In view of the old mother, who has not been seen for a long time? Hugging a friend? Or when tasting good wine? Ultimately, any sensory experience can lead to an internal emotion that suddenly brings you to tears. It’s easy to brush them off because it’s important to maintain composure—emotions have a hard time in our structured daily lives.

“Feeling little respect” is what Roger Fayette (57) calls the emotion in the subtitle of his recently published book. In it, the Zurich art historian and director of the Swiss Institute of Art History (SIK) conducts “research” (Fayet) that goes beyond his field of expertise and ends in poetry, music or philosophy. Bold steps into new territory, in which it is pleasant to accompany the curious and exploring Faye. Because the soil is theoretically well founded and practically productive.

Emotions have been running high since last year at the latest: thousands watched with emotion how Ukrainian soldiers were able to hug their families after returning from the front, hundreds of thousands sat with wet eyes in front of the TV and watched the farewell match of the Swiss tennis star Roger Federer (42 years old) and millions watched funeral of the British Queen (1926-2022). Faye also writes in his book about the “new sensibility.”

Like any basic feeling, emotion goes through ups and downs. At the end of the 20th century, moviegoers were indifferent to murder and even laughed, for example, when Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Marvin (Phil LaMarr) appeared in Tarantino’s Crime Affair. Fantastic” (1994).) was accidentally shot in the head, and the inside of the car turned red, as if after a tomato fight. “Even more (…) than other emotions, the feeling of emotion contradicts the ironic, serene attitude towards the world of postmodernism,” Faye writes about that time.

Emotion is always suspected of kitsch. But the director of SIK provides many powerful examples to show that great art can touch or evoke emotions – and not just recently. “Tears of emotion appear (…) already in the Odyssey,” writes Faye of his oldest example from ancient Greece, where Odysseus and Penelope meet again years later. Several passages tell how the hero, and then his wife, are overcome with tears of tenderness.

“Looking back at the history of the theoretical discussion of emotion, it is impossible not to notice,” continues Faye, “that a particularly intense concern with this feeling, its prerequisites and possible consequences takes place precisely in those eras that develop in a previously unknown direction. path “Dedicated to achieving emancipatory goals through the use of reason.” The brain seems to pave the way for the heart.

Source: Blick