An interesting understanding and personal approach of the adjective, quite original and debatable.

In our world, expressing feelings of tenderness or softness is often considered a weakness. Maybe the reason why sentimental is seen here as connected to a heavy charge of important personal memories, therefore more "acceptable".

Would "nostalgic" be a synomym to sentimental, in this expression of the word in Tennessee's perspective? I would then associate it to the idea of Romanticism in the way the genre developped at the end of the 18th century, with a touch of sadness.

Nothing is more difficult than to express the subtleties of nostalgia or melancholy, these intimate and often unspeakable states that are lived in the contemplation of what was, what has fled.

• Francoise