In the age of exile—modernity—we don’t have the option of resting in an enchanted landscape, and this helps reveal to us, again, that our deepest desire is not just to witness beauty but to hold it within. Without exile, we might have been contented with too little. Thus the sentiment of nostalgia we get from reading books from the past is not necessarily misplaced, provided we understand that they are merely symptoms of a greater longing for something that has not yet come.
