Weltschmerz
Sign in to savealt=|thumb|upright=1.2|Engraving by Jusepe de Ribera depicting the melancholic and world-weary figure of a poet '''''' (; literally "world-pain") is a literary concept describing the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind, resulting in "a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering".
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- Further examples
- See also
- References
- External links
alt=|thumb|upright=1.2|Engraving by Jusepe de Ribera depicting the melancholic and world-weary figure of a poet '''' (; literally "world-pain") is a literary concept describing the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind, resulting in "a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering".
The term was coined by the German Romantic author Jean Paul in his 1827 novel Selina, and in its original definition in the by the Brothers Grimm, it denotes a deep sadness about the insufficiency of the world (). The translation can differ depending on context; in reference to the self it can mean "world-weariness", while in reference to the world it can mean "the pain of the world".
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Weltschmerz” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.