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
(noun)
/kənˌfæbjuˈleɪʃən/
A fabricated memory believed to be true.
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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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Laura d'Ors, A kind of amnesia (2009)
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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Laura d'Ors, Die Verschwindung von Haus 8 (2007)
Laura d'Ors, Souvenir (2006)
Laura d'Ors, Een vage herinnering (2006)
