mal du siècle

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French mal du siècle (literally “disease of the century”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌmæl.duˈsjɛk.l(ə)/

Noun

mal du siècle (uncountable)

1. Apathy and world-weariness, involving pessimism towards the current state of the world, often along with nostalgia for the past, originally in the context of French Romanticism; Weltschmerz.
   • 1884 July, Harriet Waters Preston, “The Gospel of Defeat”, in The Atlantic‎^[1], →ISSN:

     A fashion prevailed in France, a generation or two ago, — originating, perhaps, in the vogue of Réné^{[sic – meaning René]}, — of calling this atrophy of the spirit by the special misnomer of the mal du siècle. In truth, it is a malady of all the ages, raging, like other plagues, with greater virulence in some, hut reappearing continually, — sporadic here, and epidemic there; […]

   • 1987 February 8, Richard Holmes, “Hot and Bothered in Paris and London”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Both are struggling hard with the mal du siècle, the Romantic disease of the imagination, that makes it so difficult to convert private dreams into sustained social realities.

   • 1991, Isabelle Hoog Naginski, George Sand: Writing for Her Life, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 57:

     Sand frames her characters in an atmosphere of mal du siècle, placing Indiana in the tradition of René, with its reference to the gloomy “paternal castle” in “a remote province,” home to the hero's sickly and hypersensitive soul.

   • 1996, Hillel Schwartz, Century's End: an orientation manual toward the year 2000, revised and abridged edition, New York: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 114:

     The mal du siècle was a motion sickness. The French Revolution had so jarred and jolted “nearly the whole of the universe” that time had been sped up.

   • 2016 February 24, Nadia Khomami, “The truth about Michael Gove on the EU (and his love of orange corduroys)”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     [Michael] Gove started carrying Eurosceptic books as a sign of his mal du siècle: […]

French

Etymology

Coined by French writer Alfred de Musset in 1836 in La Confession d'un enfant du siècle.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mal dy sjɛkl/

Noun

mal du siècle m (usually uncountable, plural maux du siècle)

1. mal du siècle: apathy and world-weariness, involving pessimism towards the current state of the world, often along with nostalgia for the past; Weltschmerz
   • 1919, Louis Dumur, Nach Paris !‎^[4]:

     C’était la tombe d’un jeune Allemand, disciple de Gœthe et de Rousseau qui, atteint du mal du siècle, était venu se suicider sous ces ombrages, en souvenir et en imitation de Werther.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

See also

• du siècle