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Abstract
This article presents an interpretation of nostalgia in which it is traced back to its original meaning as an emotion concerned not with time, but with place, the Alpine mountains of Switzerland, which in the early nineteenth century became associated with notions of the medieval past. With recourse to nineteenth-century anthropological theories of cultural evolution, an attempt is made to explain the term’s shift in meaning. Nostalgia, as an emotion glorifying authenticity, was and still is propelled by imagery created in a wide variety of media. It found early and long-lasting expression in the international popularity of the Swiss chalet.
Notes
1 The Oxford English Dictionary presents the shifts of meaning of nostalgia in reverse order: 1. sentimental yearning for a period of the past, 2. regretful or wistful memory of an earlier time, 3. severe homesickness.
2 Johannes Hofer, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” trans. Carolyn Kiser Anspach, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine no. 2 (1934): 376–391.
3 Annika Lems, “Ambiguous Longings: Nostalgia as the Interplay among Self, Time and World,” Critique of Anthropology 36, no. 4 (2016): 423; Susan J. Matt, Homesickness: An American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 25–27.
4 Auguste Jansen, Considérations sus la nostalgie [sic] (Gand: Hebbelynck, 1869), 12–13.
5 Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (London: Academy Editions, 1972).
6 In English there is no simple translation for Fernweh. In Southern European languages the word “nostalgia” is used often in combination with “far-away countries” (Spanish: nostalgia de lo lejanos; Italian: nostalgia di paesi lontani; Portugese: saudades de longes terras).
7 Michael Kraus and Vera Kraus, Family Album for Americans: A Nostalgic Return to the Venturesome Life of America’s Yesterdays (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1961), is to my knowledge the first publication to refer in its title to the time-bound interpretation of nostalgia. See also Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press, 1979), and Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley, “The Modalities of Nostalgia,” Current Sociology 54 no. 6 (2006): 922.
8 Irene Cieraad, “Memory and Nostalgia at Home,” in The International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, ed. Susan Smyth (Oxford, Elsevier, 2012), 4: 262–267.
9 Davis, Yearning for Yesterday; David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4–13; David Lowenthal, “Nostalgia Tells It Like It Wasn’t,” in Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, eds. Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 18–32; Chase and Shaw, Imagined Past, 6–8.
10 Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 63–67.
11 I owe much of the information on the Swiss chalet to Christina Horisberger, Das Schweizer Chalet und seine Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert. Ein eidgenössischer Beitrag zur Weltarchitektur? Thesis, Lizentiatsarbeit der Philosophischen Fakultät I der Universität Zürich, 1999. She was so kind to send me a copy of her work.
12 Annemarie de Waal Malefijt, Images of Man: A History of Anthropological Thought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 116–180.
13 Helmut Illbruck, Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 31–35; Clive H. Church and Randolph C. Head, A Concise History of Switzerland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 37, 63, 68.
14 Lems, “Ambiguous longings,” 423–425; Fritz Frauchiger, “The Swiss Kühreihen,” Journal of American Folklore 54, nos. 213–214 (1941): 121–131.
15 Hofer, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia.”
16 Ibid., 381.
17 Ibid., 389.
18 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de Musique (Paris: La Veuve Duchesne, 1764), 317, 405.
19 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps [1761], trans. and annotated Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997).
20 Stewart and Vaché, translators of the most recent English edition of Julie, claim that the novel introduced the word “chalet” into French; ibid., 631. However, according to architectural historian Pérouse de Montclos, the word was already in French use in 1723 to mean a primitive lodging in the mountains where dairy farmers stayed for the summer to milk their cows and make cheese; Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, “Le chalet à la Suisse. Fortune d’un modèle vernaculaire,” Architectura 17, no. 1 (1987): 76.
21 Rousseau, Julie, 92 (emphasis added).
22 In due course, thatched roofing became rare as it was replaced by less flammable materials. In an overview of twenty-one regional Swiss house types in Switzerland in the 1950s, Richard Weiss noted only one with a thatched roof in the canton of Aargau; Richard Weiss, Häuser und Landschaften der Schweiz. (Erlenbach-Zurich: Eugen Rentsch, 1959), pls I–II.
23 Rousseau, Julie, 63–65 (emphasis added).
24 Ibid., Julie, 23, 63–65. Donald Geoffrey. Charlton, New Images of the Natural in France: A Study in European Cultural History 1750–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 32–40, 59.
25 Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses [1850] (New York: Da Capo, 1968); Margaret Hayford O’Leary, Culture and Customs of Norway (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010); Dane Keith Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
26 Felicity Rash, “Early British Travelers to Switzerland 1611–1860,” in Exercises in Translation: Swiss–British Cultural Interchange, eds. Joy Charnley and Malcolm Pender (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 109–138; Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet; Church and Read, Concise History of Switzerland.
27 Weiss, Häuser und Landschaften der Schweiz, 11.
28 The allegation warrants archival research; see Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet, 74.
29 Stewart and Vaché in Rousseau, Julie, 649.
30 Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 432; Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 72; Stewart, “Introduction,” in Rousseau, Julie, ix–xxi.
31 Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet, 34–38, figs. 5, 6.
32 Stewart and Vaché in Rousseau, Julie, 649–650.
33 Béatrix Saule and Daniel Meyer, Versailles: A Guide for Visitors (Versailles: Art Lys, 2000), 92–93.
34 William Gifford, William Macpherson et al., “French Patriotic Songs,” The Quarterly Review 130–131 (1871): 109.
35 Rousseau, Julie, 67.
36 Michel Vernes, “Le chalet infidèle ou les dérives d’une architecture vertueuse et de son paysage de rêve,” Revue d’histoire du XIX siècle 32, no. 1 (2006): 122. See also Núria Perpinyà, “European Romantic Perception of the Middle Ages: Nationalism and the Picturesque,” Imago Temporis, Medium Aevum 6 (2012): 23–47, and Pierre André Lablaude, The Gardens of Versailles (Paris: Scala, 2005).
37 Constance D. H. Moes, Architectuur als sieraad van de natuur (Rotterdam: Nederlands Architectuurinstituut, 1991), 111.
38 The pastoralism pertained only to the exterior; the illusion created in the interior of the buildings was far from pastoral.
39 Pérouse de Montclos, “Chalet à la Suisse,” mentions Jacob-Samuel Wyttenbach, Vues remarquables des montagnes de la Suisse (Bern: Wagner, 1776), Baron de Zurlauben, Tableaux de la Suisse ou voyage pittoresque fait dans les treize cantons et états alliés du corps helvétique (Paris: Lamy, 1780–86) and Wilhelm Gottlich Becker, Taschenbuch fuer Gartenfreunde (Leipzig: Voss und Compagnie, 1797).
40 Nelly Jap-Tjong, “Een ‘Arcadiër’ in Amsterdam en Kennemerland: Adriaan van der Hoop (1778–1854),” in Beelden van de Buitenplaats: elitevorming en notabelencultuur in Nederland in de negentiende eeuw, ed. Rob van der Laarse and Yme Kuiper (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2005), 71–88.
41 Jap-Tjong, “Een ‘Arcadiër’ in Amsterdam en Kennemerland,” 84–87; Moes, Architectuur als sieraad van de natuur, 110.
42 Moes, Architectuur als sieraad van de natuur, 112.
43 Rash, “Early British Travelers.”
44 Pérouse de Montclos, “Chalet à la Suisse;” Vernes, “Chalet infidèle;” Perpinyà, “European Romantic Perception.”
45 John Ruskin, “The Poetry of Architecture” or “The Architecture of the Nations of Europe Considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character” [1837], in The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Vol. I (New York: National Library Association e-book, 2006).
46 Ibid., 39 (emphasis added).
47 Ibid. (emphasis added).
48 Ruskin is mistaken in adding a circumflex to the “a” of “chalet.” Following Ruskin, this hypercorrection is often made as foreigners assume a relation between the words “château” (castle) and “chalet” (emphasis added).
49 Ibid., 40–41 (emphasis added).
50 Ibid., 43. Wilhelm Tell was Switzerland’s medieval patriotic hero, a peasant who fought against the tyranny of his foreign overlords (emphasis added).
51 Ibid., 46, 105 (emphasis added).
52 Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet, 4–6.
53 Eugen Gugel, Architectonische vormleer. Vierde deel: Hout- en vakwerkbouw (The Hague: De Gebroeders van Cleef, 1888), pl. 34; Ireen Montijn, Naar buiten! Het verlangen naar landelijkheid in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam: SUN, 2002), 109–121; Vernes, “Chalet infidèle,” 128–129.
54 Hayford O’Leary, Culture and Customs of Norway, 165–202.
55 According to Kennedy, Magic Mountains, 105, the hill stations’ architecture “looked like a cross between a Victorian garden villa and a Swiss chalet;” it was “a miserable attempt to unite the Swiss cottage with the suburban gothic.” Thanks to Christian Brunner of ETH Zurich for alerting me to the Indian hill stations.
56 Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet, 7; Gugel, Architectonische vormleer, pl. 21; Johannes De Haan, Villaparken in Nederland. Een onderzoek een onderzoek aan de hand van het villapark Duin en Daal te Bloemendaal 1897–1940 (Haarlem: Schuyt, 1986). In North America, the Swiss chalet style, together with the Italian or Tuscan style, in the nineteenth century was not associated with tourism and leisure but recommended for its rural simplicity as best suited for cottages and farmhouses; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses.
57 Church and Head, Concise History of Switzerland, 162–192.
58 Pérouse de Montclos, “Chalet à la Suisse,” 95; Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet, 48–51; Stanislaus Von Moos, Nicht Disneyland und andere Aufsätze über Modernität und Nostalgie (Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2004), 21–22.
59 Horisberger, Schweizer Chalet, 101–102. For the sake of the argument, I have simplified Horisberger’s more subtle analysis.
60 The roof shape of Villa Jaquemet, Chemin de Pouillerei 8, resembles the chalet type of the canton of Fribourg; that of Villa Stotzer at number 6, together with its rough stone base, echoes the chalet of the Italian-speaking Ticino region; Weiss, Häuser und Landschaften der Schweiz, I–II (and shown here as Figure 3).
61 Johanna Spyri, Heidi. Lehr- und Wander Jahre: eine Geschichte für Kinder und solche, die Kinder liebhaben [1880] (Zurich: Werd, 2001).
62 Susan Barton, Healthy Living in the Alps: The Origins of Winter Tourism in Switzerland, 1860–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).
63 Irene Cieraad, “Traditional Folk and Industrial Masses,” in Alterity, Identity, Image: Selves and Others in Society and Scholarship, ed. Raymond Corbey and Joep T. Leerssen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), 17–36.
64 Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine depuis les temps préhistorique jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: J. Herzel & Cie, 1875). Another example of such architectural writing might be Gugel’s Architectonische Vormleer. In echoing Ruskin on the ancient origins of the Swiss chalet, Gugel traced the history of the Alpine regions of Switzerland back to ancient times; the chalet’s shape resembled, in his view, the ancient architecture of Roman dwellings and temples. See also William S. B. Dana, The Swiss Chalet Book: A Minute Analysis and Reproduction of the Châlets of Switzerland, Obtained by a Special Visit to that Country, Its Architects, and Its Châlet Homes (New York: William T. Comstock Co., 1913), 13–17.
65 De Waal Malefijt, Images of Man, 116–180.
66 Pérouse de Montclos, “Chalet à la Suisse,” 82.
67 Maria Nikolajeva, “Tamed Imagination: A Re-reading of Heidi,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 25 no. 2 (2000): 68–75.
68 Rafael Matos-Wasem, “The Good Alpine Air in Tourism Today and Tomorrow: Symbolic Capital to Enhance and Preserve,” Journal of Alpine Research 93 no. 1 (2005): 105–113.
69 Johanna Spyri, Heidi (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein, 1882).
70 Switzerland also attracts increasing numbers of Indian tourists, no doubt because most of Bollywood’s romantic scenes are shot in the country. In a way, Bollywood movies replicate Rousseau’s eighteenth-century link between mountains and secret romantic love.
71 In the United States, the chalet blended with the bungalow; Bruno Giberti, “The Chalet as Archetype: The Bungalow, the Picturesque Tradition and Vernacular Form,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 111, no. 1 (1991): 54–64.
72 I am struck by the omnipresence of the chalet in the Basque Country of northern Spain. Its popularity seems to have political roots and to be associated with that of Friedrich von Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell (1804). In Schiller’s portrayal, Tell personified the struggle for freedom of the Swiss regions. His story seems to have resonated with Basque separatist ideals and it continues to lead to a proliferation of chalets.
73 John Towner, “The Grand Tour: A Key Phase in the History of Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 12 (1985): 297–333, esp. 303, 314–315, 318.
74 Vernes, “Chalet infidèle,” 114–116; Giberti, “Chalet as Archetype,” 57.
75 Charlton, New Images of the Natural in France.
76 Ibid., 92–105; see also Illbruck, Nostalgia, 19–20.
77 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Cieraad, “Traditional Folk and Industrial Masses.”
78 Perpinyà, “European Romantic Perception,” 35.
79 For Zocher’s German contemporary, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Swiss chalet was an evolved, medieval expression of a Greek temple, as exemplified in Schinkel’s Swiss Cottage on Pfaueninsel, an island in the River Havel near Berlin; Horisberger, Schweitzer Chalet, 61–70.
80 The title of Lowenthal’s book, The Past is a Foreign Country, implies a similar idea. However, Lowenthal’s focus is on a critique of nostalgia’s profitability, whether in promoting visits to vulnerable heritage sites representing the past or in the merchandizing of the surrogate past, and not on the role of these attitudes towards the past in shaping our emotions. “If the past is a foreign country […] it has the healthiest tourist trade of all;” ibid., 4.
81 Ibid., 102.
82 The Ranz de Vaches, or Kühreihen, was an integral part of a number of operas on the topic of the chalet and romantic love, such as Adolphe Adams’s Le Châlet (1834) and Gaetano Donizetti’s Betly, o La Capanna Svizzera (1836), which were mainly based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s song piece Jery und Bätely (1780). See also Frauchiger, “Swiss Kühreihen;” and Lems, “Ambiguous Longings,” 423.
83 Jansen, Considérations sus la nostalgie; Matt, Homesickness, 28.
84 Matt, Homesickness, 8.
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Irene Cieraad
Irene Cieraad is a cultural anthropologist and senior researcher in the Department of Architecture (Chair of Interiors), Delft University of Technology. She is editor of At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space (Syracuse University Press, 2006).