This course will explore artworks created in Europe in the cultural atmosphere after the Enlightenment. Its focus will be on one particular problem: the sense of homelessness, of alienation from society. Alienation is usually associated with 20th-century art but it permeates also Romanticism. The course is structured around a central piece: Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony in a-minor No. 3, Op. 56 "Scottish". This piece is extremely rich in its symbolism and associations, and therefore it will be analyzed in full and serve as the framework for the course. Around this work and provoked by this work, the course will discuss a variety of literary and musical pieces with extension to (1) social history (e.g. “Wagner versus Mendelssohn” debate), (2) folk music (traditional Ashkenazi folk song), (3) Romantic literature (e.g. Wackenroder), (4) 20th-century literature (Paul Celan) and (5) 20th-century music (György Ligeti).