Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (review)

In this densely written and timely book the author announces in the introduction that he intends to "explore the discovery of history, the fragmentation of the past, and the articulation of historical identity amidst newly visualized ruins at the turn of the nineteenth century" (5). Fritzsche argues that the French Revolution in 1789, the Napoleonic wars that continued until 1815, and the Industrial Revolution altered the West's conception of time and history and that this disconnection with the past became a source of melancholy. The title, Stranded in the Present, refers to those witnesses of history—exiles, émigrés, and strangers—who experienced displacement physically and emotionally as they surveyed scenes of destruction and loss. Unable to return to their previous homes or lives, these people were left in an uncomfortable place and were nostalgic for what had been lost; they found themselves cut off from the past and "stranded in the present."

Employing primary sources both well known—Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël—and less so—Boisserée, Varnhagen, and Schlegel—the author provides first-hand accounts of daily life from the French Revolution to the subsequent upheavals of the nineteenth century. The sense of a definitive change, a sharp and irrevocable rupture, pervades the letters and diaries from this period, which express the profound disorientation experienced by their authors. Fritzsche suggests that a new worldview and concept of history as a process resulted from the disruptions of the nineteenth century, and he provides examples of the emerging historical consciousness.

The first chapter focuses on the French Revolution and emphasizes the state of uncertainty and lack of direction that it produced. The constant threats of arrest or execution, the necessity of exile, the fear of invasion, and the mobilization of troops "shattered lines of social continuity" and led to the concept of "contemporary history as dispossession" (30, 31). One of the products of such displacement is nostalgia for what was once or what might have been in the future. Memoirs of the French Revolution, especially from those who did not survive it, are filled with such declarations of loss, not only for persons and places but for ideals as well. As the fugitive Girondin in hiding François Buzot wrote, "All that remains for us is sadness. That which made our lives precious has preceded us to the tomb."¹

The second chapter deals with "strangers," or the effects of the French Revolution on personal perspectives. Those who had been living in exile and returned to France after the Terror had passed felt that they had become strangers in their own land. The republic to which they returned had been created in their absence; it no longer felt like home. These former exiles often recorded their impressions in memoirs, the large number of which has only been equaled by the survival literature of World War II. Contemporary readers could identify with the displacement described in the memoirs much as they could with nineteenth-century novels, which also dealt with societal change.

The third chapter considers ruins as representative of national tragedies and refugees as "stranded in the Revolutionary present" (93). The romantic conception of the past, which considered ruins as the work of nature, no longer applied for those who looked upon the manmade destruction produced by the Napoleonic wars. The author suggests that ruins came to be seen as products of political and religious displacement and placed in "historical" rather than "natural" time. Ruins became known as sites of particular historical events and served as reminders of national identity, thus opening the way for the age of nationalism. These ideas brought to mind Pierre Nora's recent series on the "realms of memory." Fritzsche cites the completion in 1880 of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne as evidence of the need for a national symbol that would evoke pride in its citizens.

In chapters 4 and 5 Fritzsche...