angst

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Edvard Munch tried to represent "an infinite scream passing through nature" in The Scream (1893)

Angst is a German, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch word for fear or anxiety. (Anguish is its Latinate equivalent.) It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of strife. The term Angst distinguishes itself from the word Furcht (German for "fear") in that Furcht usually refers to a material threat (arranged fear), while Angst is usually a nondirectional emotion. Angst normally means a feeling or fear towards anything strange coming up.

In other languages having the meaning of the Latin word pavor, the derived words differ in meaning, e.g. as in the French anxiété and peur. The word Angst has existed since the 8th century, from the Proto-Indo-European root *anghu-, "restraint" from which Old High German angust develops. It is pre-cognate with the Latin angustia, "tensity, tightness" and angor, "choking, clogging"; compare to the Greek "άγχος" (ankhos): stress.

Existentialism

Existentialist philosophers use the term "angst" with a different connotation. The use of the term was first attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). In The Concept of Anxiety (also known as The Concept of Dread, depending on the translation), Kierkegaard used the word Angest (in common Danish, angst, meaning "dread" or "anxiety") to describe a profound and deep-seeded spiritual condition of insecurity and fear in the free human being. Where the animal is a slave to its instincts but always conscious in its own actions, Kierkegaard believed that the freedom given to people leaves the human in a constant fear of failing his/her responsibilities to God. Kierkegaard's concept of angst is considered to be an important stepping stone for 20th-century existentialism. While Kierkegaard's feeling of angst is fear of actual responsibility to God, in modern use, angst was broadened by the later existentialists to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God). Martin Heidegger used the term in a slightly different way.

Classical music

Angst in serious musical composition has been a reflection of the times. Musical composition embodying angst as a primary theme have primarily come from European Jewish composers such as Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg, written during a period a great persecution of the Jewish people shortly before and during European Nazi rule. A notable exception is the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich whose symphonies use the theme of angst in post-World War II compositions depicting Russian strife during the war. However, it is the Jewish artists, Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka in music and literature that have embraced the theme of angst so highly in their work that they have become synonymous with the term to the point of popular joking and cartoons today.

Angst appears to be absent from important French music. Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie and Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, composed before World War II, reflect melancholy sentiment without angst in soft, quiet compositions. The effect of angst is achieved by Shostakovich, Mahler and Berg in compositions of wide dynamic range, at times seemingly spinning out of control (Mahler), and atonal music using the twelve-tone row method of composition (Berg and others) to create an angst ridden atmosphere of grotesque sound.

The theme of angst is vividly portrayed in Mahler's Symphony No. 6 (The Tragic) and in Alban Berg's poignant Violin Concerto, dedicated to "To the memory of an angel", for the death of friend Gustav Mahler’s daughter.

In popular music

Angst, in contemporary connotative use, most often describes the intense frustration and other related emotions of teenagers and the mood of the music and art with which they identify. Heavy metal, punk rock, grunge, nu metal, emo, and virtually any alternative rock dramatically combining elements of discord, melancholy and excitement may be said to express angst. Angst was probably first discussed in relation to popular music in the mid- to late 1950s that was popular amongst the nuclear disarmament and antiwar protester subculture. Folk rock songs like Bob Dylan's 1963 Masters of War and A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall articulated the dread caused by the threat of nuclear war. A key text is Jeff Nuttall's book Bomb Culture (1968) which traced this pervasive theme in popular culture back to Hiroshima.

In fiction and film

The term "angst" is now widely used as a theme by many great modern writers. Often, the expression is used as a common adolescent experience of malaise, as in J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye. It has become one of the central themes in modern fiction.

Franz Kafka is the writer whose work is most associated with the theme of angst. His novels The Trial and The Castle, and the short story "The Metamorphosis" all share this theme.

The musical Spring Awakening is about angsty teens.

The 90's cartoon Pinky and the Brain features a song by Brain called "My Angst"

See also

• Anguish
• Anxiety
• Anger
• Existentialism
• Alienation
• Byronic hero, an archetypal "rebel" in literature, described by Byron in 1812, with attitudes similar to those with angst in modernity.
• Kafkaesque
• Weltschmerz
• Fear of death
• Terror management theory
• Emo

v • d • e Søren Kierkegaard Major works On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates · Either/Or · Repetition · The Concept of Anxiety · Fear and Trembling · Philosophical Fragments · Stages on Life's Way · Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments · Works of Love · The Sickness Unto Death · Practice in Christianity · The Book on Adler · For Self-Examination · The Point of View of My Work as an Author · The Journals Ideas Philosophy · Theology · Angst · Anguish · Authenticity · Double-mindedness · Indirect communication · Infinite qualitative distinction · Knight of faith · Leap of faith · Ressentiment · Rotation method Schools influenced Absurdism · Danish Golden Age · Existential phenomenology · Existential psychology · Existentialism (Christian) · Gestalt therapy · Humanism (Christian · Existential · Psychology) · Kyoto School · Neo-orthodoxy · Postmodernism (Christian) · Poststructuralism Related topics List of works · Regine Olsen · Peter Kierkegaard · Danish Golden Age · Comparisons with Nietzsche · Søren Kierkegaard Research Center · Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library