The Transfiguration of Memory

Jonathan Gray at The Junket:

Will direct and continuous access to the stuff of memory give us privileged insights into the nature and shape of our lives as a whole? Will it help to lift us up above the corridors of time, to reflect upon our whims, habits, decisions, or to give us insight into the texture of our existence? We hear that those on the brink of death see their whole lives flash before them in an instant, often accompanied by a feeling of ecstatic revelation. Jorge Luis Borges writes of the realisation that the paths that one has taken in life trace the contours of one’s face. In a Borgesian moment, W.G. Sebald recounts a dream in which he realises that the maze in which he has been wandering represents a cross-section of his brain. In these moments of revelation we are raised up above the accumulated sprawl of sense, the tangled morass of crossing paths, and we witness shape and meaning in the whole that it was not previously possible to perceive. In the fifteenth century, painters used a technique known as anamorphosis to create paintings which apparently depicted strange chaotic scenes or monstrous landscapes, but which, viewed from a specific spot, revealed saints, sacred visions or secrets. Being able to witness our whole lives spread out before us could well be an experience akin to that of seeing the earth from space for the first time: an unexpected, awe-inspiring apparition that, at least temporarily, transfigures our time spent in the thick of things.

You Might Also Like:

More from Conversational Reading:

1. On Time and Memory In wondering whether time is, in fact "a line," the narrator is also announcing the novel's preoccupation with the relationship of time and memory, whether...
2. You, or the Invention of Memory Impressively, the LAT runs a review of the new book from experimental writer Jonathan Baumbach. "You" is the 11th novel by Jonathan Baumbach, who...
3. Julian Barnes and Memory A solid essay on Julian Barnes at the Boston Review. For some reason, I get the idea Flaubert’s Parrot is underappreciated. Flaubert’s Parrot was the...
4. The Long Arm of Coincidence, the Involuntary Memory Andrew Seal gives me another excuse to talk about Alejo Carpentier by putting up a splendid quote from an essay on Carpentier by Paul...
5. Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Tyrant Memory Reviewed in NYT Somehow a compelling review of a great new translation managed to slip by the editorial watchdogs at the New York Times Book Review. The beneficiary...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.