Comments on: What do you call wanting something that can no longer happen?

Question: What do you call wanting something that can no longer happen?

sam and rufus — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 06:27:49 -0800

Is there a word for missing something that hasn't happened? Yearning for a future that can no longer come to fruition? Extra bonus points if there's something in another language (especially Ancient Greek!).

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:00:37 -0800

disappointment

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:01:29 -0800

forgot the link - disappointment, see the fourth entry.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:02:49 -0800

Not exactly what you want, but retrofuturism comes close, at least as applied to visual art and design. The Wikipedia entry on retro-futurism is comprehensive but seems over-broad.

By: Phred182

Phred182 — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:25:25 -0800

In one of the Travis McGee books, a character defiines this emotiion as "homesickness for a place that doesn't exist."

By: bluejayk

bluejayk — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:35:38 -0800

psuedo-nostalgia

By: ChasFile

ChasFile — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:48:51 -0800

Much of Baudelaire's poetry deals with this experience, especially "À une passante:"

A flash . . . then night!--O lovely fugitive,
I am suddenly reborn from your swift glance;
Shall I never see you till eternity?

Somewhere, far off! Too late! never, perchance!
Neither knows where the other goes or lives;
We might have loved, and you knew this might be!

In his much-cited critique of Baudelaire in his much-cited Illuminations, Walter Benjamin calls this "love at last sight:"

In a widow's veil, mysteriously and mutely borne along by the crowd, an unknown woman comes into the poet's field of vision. What this sonnet communicates is simply this: Far from experiencing the crowd as an opposed, antagonistic element, this very crowd brings to the city dweller the figure that fascinates. The delight of the urban poet is love--not at first sight, but at last sight. (169)

By: garfy3

garfy3 — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:56:31 -0800

in logic circles these scenarios are called "counterfactuals."

By: Rumple

Rumple — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:18:08 -0800

OED suggests "wistful" has the meaning of "mournfully expectant".

But really, here is your definition, via TS Eliot:

... the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging:
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death" - that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.

By: ellanea

ellanea — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 09:37:17 -0800

I've heard the Portuguese saudade, the 'blues' behind fado and morna, described as "a longing for what can never be."

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 09:39:21 -0800

Disillusion
Dashed hopes.

By: nasreddin

nasreddin — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 09:59:59 -0800

"We are all homesick for places we've never been."
Carson McCullers

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:08:36 -0800

Anticipatory grief is mourning for someone who hasn't died yet. If you're talking about out-and-out sadness, and not just nostalgia for an alternate future, it might be a relevant concept.

By: merocet

merocet — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:59:53 -0800

Might come across as a bit of a fan boy here but the English bamd St Etienne have made a 20 year career on trying to evoke that exact feeling. I feel a nostalgia for an age yet to come.

By: rob511

rob511 — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:45:47 -0800

regret (scroll down to American Heritage entry; see noun, 2nd def.)