I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

I remember a story we heard in third grade (I think -- that is I think it was Miss Luberg who told it to us). It was in the context of The Merchant of Venice, and I think she (Miss Luberg) told it as a story about Portia. A poor man took his dry crust of bread and held it over the steam coming out of the cart that a rich food peddlar was cooking on. The peddlar demanded payment for the steam whose moisture softened the bread and whose smell gave it savor. The poor man didn't know what to do. But at his trial Portia defended him: just as the poor man had to content himself with the aroma from the rich man's food, the rich man would have to content himself with the sound of a coin clinking. I loved how clever this was.

posted by william 7:30 AM
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