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, December 17, 2008

From Giovanni Tiso:

I remember the first thing I wrote, when I was five years old. It was a letter to my parents, and it read as follows (I won't reproduce the typos in translation): "I'm tired of these injustices. I'm leaving. I'm going to the doctor's. I don't know if I'll be back. Giovanni." I left the letter on the dining room table and opened the door of the apartment. It was dark on the landing, so I didn't venture any further. My mother was so proud of my writing talent, she showed the letter to everybody she knew and quite a few people she didn't know. She seemed to take the fact that I wanted to leave the family entirely in her stride.

posted by william 6:53 PM
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