I'm not exaggerating the difficulties of maintaining focused thought on these sorts of odysseys. New respect for Adorno, Auerbach, Benjamin, et al.
And yet, things are slightly different. Those were the times in which the world divided into adversarial factions bound by solidarity and by loyalty to loyalty. If you were on the wrong side of the border, there was an--at least theoretically possible--escape to the right side of the border. Now, it's more of an omnes contra omnium proposition. A wandering Jedi from a galaxy far, far away could begin to lose his context. So, for that matter, could an itinerant Duke of Omnium.
And yet, as I write, I realize that being from the galaxy far far away is the essential constitution of the wanderer. The constitutive context is alienation. That's what keeps the game on. The strangeness of it all. Otherwise, you're just a local without a map.
Detachment. And yet preserving the human by that very detachment and conscious alienation. Onward.