The word nomad comes from the Latin nomas, -ădis, which in turn comes from the Greek νομάς, -άδος. For some reason that only intuition can understand, nomad seems to be close to the root of nostalgia (νόστος, ‘returning home’, –algia); however, the ‘no’ in nomad is not a probable node in the nostalgic stem. Nevertheless, the omen of returning home is always looming in a nomad’s future, as if it were the shadow of the word’s meaning. For that reason, nomads tend towards an odd form of nostalgia.

A renowned biographer and professor of Biographical Writing at the Nova University of Lisbon, Maria Antónia Oliveira shares her experience as an author of literary and artistic biographies, reflecting on the relationship that arises between biographer and biographee. In this essay, which at times takes on an intentionally autobiographical tone, the questions of the link between life and work are understood from a historical perspective and examined with an astute clarity.

The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris probably does not need an introduction. The blaze that engulfed the church on 15 April 2019 and the ensuing debates about its reconstruction, which appeared on the front pages of much of the world’s printed press as well as on the internet and television news, thrust the monument onto centre stage, exponentially increasing its ‘celebrity status’, although perhaps not in an entirely approving way.

The Spanish theatre and opera director Rafael R. Villalobos is the most famous of the new generation. He is also a playwright, scenographer and wardrobe designer. He has enjoyed an expanding international career with projects in Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Hungary. Some of his productions have been broadcast by the BBC and OperaVision. His production designs include Richard Strauss’s Elektra. In this diary, he uses lively, everyday language and a critical and creative energy to think and write about his life and work as a director and attest to his artistic, cultural and political awareness.

The partial destruction of Notre-Dame by fire and Emmanuel Macron’s immediate response, promising that the cathedral would be rebuilt in record time, prompted a public discussion among experts on the forms of that reconstruction and the politics of heritage conservation (meaning also: the politicisation of heritage). This is the subject matter of the next three articles, written by Salvatore Settis, who signed an open letter to the French president demanding that the Heritage Code be respected; Carlo Pùlisci, an Italian art historian, who has published extensively on cathedrals, churches and the culture of restoration; and Pedro Levi Bismarck, an architect and researcher at the Porto University Faculty of Architecture. We are confronted with three different points of view, encompassing cultural memory and the heritage crisis (Settis), the history and culture of restoration (Pùlisci), and a political critique of conservationist logic and rhetoric (Bismarck).

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas liked to relate the views of his grandfather, a Lithuanian Jew, on the Dreyfus Affair: “A country that tears itself apart, that splits down the middle to save the honour of a little Jewish officer, that’s a country one should lose no time in going to.”¹

The Mexican writer Octavio Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. A great poet, essayist and critic, he is the author of a work that seems to have everything: literature and linguistics, philosophy and history, politics and geopolitics, psychology and sociology, anthropology and the visual arts. He believes that culture reveals this world and creates other worlds. Paz’s writings about art and artists are abundant and very original. The words in them seek images and the images find words. Juan Manuel Bonet analyses them in this essay written for Electra, conducting an inventory and proving himself to be ‘as precise as a geometrician and as lucid as a poet’. This is how he shows us a less-known side of Paz. Bonet is one of the most prominent Spanish intellectuals: poet, essayist, art critic, curator. He has been the director of Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderna (IVAM), Reina Sofía Museum and Instituto Cervantes. He has published well-known works, including the monumental Diccionario de las vanguardias en España (1907–1936).

Delhi, India’s fabled capital, has been built, destroyed and rebuilt many times over the centuries. It is a metropolis made up of many cities, but the most captivating is Old Delhi or the Walled City. It is described in this geographical guide, which is also a dictionary of love, with words and images crafted by Mayank Austen Soofi for this View of Delft. Soofi is a well- known Indian writer and photographer. He writes a daily column for the historical Hindustan Times, with a readership of over one million. He also boasts a highly influential presence on social media (website The Delhi Walla, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). He says, ‘Repeatedly bruised and battered by its violent past, the historic quarter is struggling to adapt itself to the chaos, conflicts, and conveniences of the modern world’.

Within the contemporary rogues gallery, the oligarch is a composite character. James Bond’s soviet adversary abandons the bureaucratic fervour and discovers the libidinal excess of commodities. Rasputin leaves behind the palatial intrigue to become a wise guy who bribes the president of the parish council. The Bolshevik who seized the tsar’s throne dies and is replaced by a small-time nightlife entrepreneur.

PASS. Apply, put, place, spread, cross, transpose, leave behind, exceed, employ, spend, transfer or sell, iron, filter, strain, transmit or be transmitted; publicise or be publicised (e.g.: radio reported the death, but television did not; this was reported in the news), propagate, put into circulation, dry in the sun or heat, omit, transcend, surpass, disappear, transmit, vanish, fleet, cross, evaporate, go on, give, move, flit, flow, transition, fugacious, fugitive