In need of a hug and an oversized sweatshirt

The combination of another Parisian snow, my current class, and my B.A. are kind of bringing me down. Don't get me wrong - I think my current class (on language, identity, and politics) is amazing and I love my B.A. topics/the critical theory I need to get through, but talking about the Holocaust makes me depressed. Makes anyone depressed, really.

For class, I am reading a book called "The Language of the Third Reich" by Victor Klemperer, a philologist who survived the Holocaust and maintained a diary/academic work about how the Nazi language infiltrated every crevice of German language. I think it is one of the most beautiful and most melancholic things I have ever read; he reminds me a lot of Walter Benjamin (not surprising. Same time, same emotions, same hurt over a poisoned Europe).

I leave for Krakow at the end of next week, which I am looking forward to and absolutely dreading: we will be visiting Auschwitz on February 13 (day before Valentine's day. That's some dark, terrible humor for you), and I'm not really sure how my class will handle it. I feel like visiting sites of tragedy is an intensely personal thing; I'm not sure how traveling in a group will pan out.

My B.A. has turned into a study of how Benjamin's "Berlin Childhood Around 1900" is echoed/is not echoed by W.G. Sebald's "Austerlitz." They are both beautifully written and stained with the black bile of horror and broken dreams. Benjamin was forced to flee Berlin when Hitler came to power (before then, really). Austerlitz, the protagonist of "Austerlitz," is a man who slowly pieces together a scarred and terrible past; he survived the Holocaust because of the kindertransport, his parents did not.

I need to study for my French midterm now, but I can't shake the dull ache in my chest after reading so much depressing literature. What I need: a hug (a real, good hug) and a warm, oversized sweatshirt. Maybe some hot chocolate.