“Nicole Grimes, in her finely perceptive book “Brahms’s Elegies” (dedicated to her mother’s memory), cites the concept of reflective nostalgia, as defined by the late literary scholar Svetlana Boym. Unlike restorative nostalgia, which envisions a return to home, reflective nostalgia “delays the homecoming—wistfully, ironically, desperately,” in Boym’s words. “Reflective nostalgia dwells on the ambivalences of human longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradictions of modernity.” Restorative nostalgia tends toward the reactionary; reflective nostalgia can be fully modern.”
From: Grieving with Brahms