Posted by Steven
on 7/7/2009, 17:42:43, in reply to "Re: The Sea"
76.187.110.226
--Previous Message--
: Steven, why don't you share with us the earmarked
: passages so that we can discuss them.
Lale, I'm glad you're back safely. We've certainly missed you.
Every book I pick up lately seems to be about "memory and the power of language," and The Sea was certainly no exception, especially in the area of memory. That is what most of these passages speak to (my comments are in italics):
"I was, one might say, not so much anticipating the future as nostalic for it, since what in my imaginings was to come was in reality already gone. And suddenly now this strikes me as in some way significant. Was it actually the future I was looking forward to, or something beyond the future?" (p. 71)
This seems to me so true, that we often look forward not so much to our participation in something as to the nostalgia of looking back upon it.
"The room was much as I remembered it, or looked as if it was as I remembered, for memories are always eager to match themselves seamlessly to the things and places of a revisited past." (p. 110)
Like the taste of madeleines?
"I experienced a sense almost of panic as the real, the crassly complacent real, took hold of the things I thought I remembered and shook them into its own shape. Something precious was dissolving and pouring away between my fingers. Yet how easily, in the end, I let it go. The past, I mean the real past, matters less than we pretend." (pp. 116-17)
I'm not sure what to make of this passage. He easily lets his memories go in this instance, but the whole story is about how he can't do just that on the larger scale.
"Remarkable the clarity with which, when I concentrate, I can see us there [in the cafe as children]. Really, one might almost live one's life over, if only one could make a sufficient effort of recollection." (p. 119)
It's interesting that he says this in light of his earlier remarks about memories adapting to an imagined past. Would it be an effort of recollection, or of reconstruction?
"Really, Madam Memory, I take back all my priase, if it is Memory who is at work here and not some other, more fanciful muse." [p. 121 in the context of seeing a photo which contradicts his memory of an event]
Here again, emphasizing the imagined past.
"Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him. No, what I am looking forward to is a moment of earthly expression. That is it, that is it exactly: I shall be expressed totally. I shall be delivered, like a noble closing speech. I shall be, in a word, said." (p. 137)
Here's the "power of language" idea in a big way--our whole existence summed up, not as having lived, but as having been "said." And the juxtaposition with the idea of God reminds us of this famous verse: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
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I marked a couple more about his relationship with Anna, but those are better discussed separately.
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