On the Clinical Picture of Nostalgia —and a Remote Literature. When speaking of nostalgia, it is Odysseus who comes to mind. Allegedly, he is the first great nostalgic, fated to press his return against insurmountable resistance. Later (after Ovid, after Cicero) the Divine Comedy speaks of the hour “that turns back desire in the sailors, and softens their hearts” (Dante 1978: 189). Homesickness, as it is known to the ancient and pre-modern world – a deep longing for that which is lost –, is fundamentally a spiritual orientation. It is primarily an emotional state. But sometimes, the metaphors pertaining to the body seem to presage the path of homesickness through the history of discourse. While Odysseus’ nostalgia is soothed by the smoke of Ithaca, transient and incorporeal, for Dante it is the heart of the sailor which seems to put homesickness into not just the material, but even the somatic realm. No longer a vague yearning, no scattered signs in the distant heavens, but an organ whose fibres and pulse are inscribed with emotion.

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