ABSTRACT
The characteristically modern condition expressed by Max Weber’s concept of ‘disenchantment’ – the lack of coherence or meaning in modern Western society – has become a staple of describing the spirit of the times in modernity. The disenchantment of the world is one of the central descriptions of the transformation of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century world view. Enchantment is used in literature almost exclusively in a positive way, even if naive; disenchantment is seen as a loss, even if it opens the eyes to a world that can be more as-it-is, less seen through the lens of mythical thought. The universal sense of life and death, the degree of evil injuring defenceless people, the sense of being in an exceptional state where the known is strange even to local people, and the challenge of representing overwhelming loss while respecting the individuality of the victims.
