About the Poems - NM
About the Poems
submitted by Nicholas Manning"Europe has the reputation of a civilization based on reason. But one can say equally well that it is a civilization of sentiment; it created a human type whom I call sentimental man: homo sentimentalis . . . Homo sentimentalis cannot be defined as a man with feelings (for we all have feelings), but as a man who has raised feelings to a category of value . . . It is part of the definition of feeling that it is born in us without our will, often against our will. As soon as we want to feel (decide to feel, just as Don Quixote decided to love Dulcinea), feeling is no longer feeling but an imitation of feeling, a show of feeling. This is commonly called hysteria. That's why homo sentimentalis (a person who has raised feeling to a value) is in reality identical to homo hystericus." – Milan Kundera, "Immortality"
