ABSTRACT
The life of an exile spans three roughly proportional phases. The early phase is defined by what Philip Larkin terms “habits of expectancy,” which for the exile focus on return to the homeland. The second stage is marked by a surge in nostalgia and a dip in expectancy. Return may still be possible, but it no longer appears imminent. As compensation, exile has come to seem normal: a way of life rather than a way station. The impossibility of return, on the one hand, and the exhaustion of nostalgia, on the other, introduce the last stage, with which this essay is principally concerned.
