Inverted Sentimentality

“The idea that, after an event such as the Great War, an artistic celebration of the world is no longer possible is nonsense, compounded of strangely twisted romanticism and inverted sentimentality . . . But this is simply a pose: supposing an Adorno-like figure had said, ‘After the war, sexual pleasure is no longer possible,’ or ‘Good cuisine is no longer possible’—the humbug of it all would have stood immediately revealed” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 123).