Excerpt from Confessions, X, VIII by Saint Augustine
[...] And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up, whatever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried. Read the rest of this article »
Excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s ‘Sketch of the Past’ (1939)
In certain favourable moods, memories –what one has forgotten– come to the top. Now if this is so, is it not possible –I often wonder– that things that we have felt with great intensity have an existence independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will it not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them? I see it –the past– as an avenue lying behind; a long ribbon of scenes, emotions. There at the end of the avenue still, are the garden and the nursery. Instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past. I shall turn up August 1890. I feel that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves again attached to it, so that we shall be able to live our lives through from the start.
Courtesy of The Society of Authors, literary representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf
www.societyofauthors.org
霞 【かすみ】 kasumi, (spring) mist [frequently translated as 'haze']
朝霞 【あさがすみ】 asagasumi, morning mist
夕霞 【ゆうがすみ】 yūgasumi, evening mist
遠霞 【とおがすみ】 tōgasumi, distant mist
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Excerpt from Miguel de Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’
(’El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha’) (1605-1615)
My judgment is now clear and free from the misty shadows of ignorance with which my ill-starred and continuous reading of those detestable books of chivalry had obscured it. Now I know their absurdities and their deceits, and the only thing that grieves me is that this discovery has come too late, and leaves me no time to make amends by reading other books, which might enlighten my soul. I feel, niece, that I am on the point of death, and I should like to meet it in such a manner as to convince the world that my life has not been so bad as to leave me the character of a madman; for though I have been one, I would not confirm the fact in my death.
Yo tengo juicio ya, libre y claro, sin las sombras caliginosas de la ignorancia, que sobre él me pusieron mi amarga y continua leyenda de los detestables libros de las caballerías. Ya conozco sus disparates y sus embelecos, y no me pesa sino que este desengaño ha llegado tan tarde, que no me deja tiempo para hacer alguna recompensa, leyendo otros que sean luz del alma. Yo me siento, sobrina, a punto de muerte; querría hacerla de tal modo, que diese a entender que no había sido mi vida tan mala, que dejase renombre de loco; que puesto que lo he sido, no querría confirmar esta verdad en mi muerte.
Excerpt from Miguel de Unamuno’s ‘Niebla’ (1914)
All of this that is happening to me, and happening to others about me, is it reality or is it fiction? May not all of it perhaps be a dream of God, or of whomever it may be, which will vanish as soon as He wakes?
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Excerpt from Borges’ ‘The maker’ (1960)
Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved. Left and right, absorbed in their shining dreams, the readers’ momentary profiles are sketched by the light of their officious lamps, to use Milton’s hypallage. I remember having remembered that figure before in this place, and afterwards that other epithet that also defines these environs, the arid camel of the Lunario, and then that hexameter from the Aeneid that uses the same artifice and surpasses artifice itself:
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Excerpt from Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a dream (1635)
Nor even now am I awake
Since such thoughts my memory fill,
That it seems I’m dreaming still:
Nor is this a great mistake;
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Excerpt from Franz Kafka’s Diary (1914)
I paced up and down my room from early morning until twilight. The window was open, it was a warm day. The noises of the narrow street beat in uninterruptedly. By now I knew every trifle in the room from having looked at it in the course of my pacing up and down. My eyes had traveled over every wall. I had pursued the pattern of the rug to its last convolution, noted every mark of age it bore. My fingers had spanned the table across the middle many times. I had already bared my teeth repeatedly at the picture of the landlady’s dead husband.
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