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"
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