Childhood memories

The Persistence of Memory (1931), Salvador Dalí

I have the tendency to linger in the nostalgia of my childhood memories. Besides reading the diaries I have kept for years and gazing at photographs of me as a child, I often think about particular moments of my childhood. Those recollections puzzle me sometimes, I do get the feeling that those are memories of memories of memories and so on (like Martha did), still, I went through live hammering on a few memories without even knowing why I keep coming back to them.

Of these moments I have neither a photograph nor an account in any of my old diaries, and I always turn to my mother in order to validate them. I tell her of a childhood memory I have and wait for her confirmation that in fact it happened. I don’t even know why her confirmation is so important to me, I mean, it still could have happened without being an important memory for her to retain. And this brings me back to my puzzling question: Why did I retain them then, when there were important things that happened to my family of which I have no recollection at all? And why does it appear to be important to me to feel that they really happened?

Martha Cochrane says that she can’t remember her first memory. Being her definition of a first memory “a solid, seizable thing, which time, in its plodding, humorous way might decorate down the years with fanciful detail (…) but could never expunge” (Page 3), we can understand from this that even if we do claim to recall our first memories the actual event was probably a very different thing from the one we remember, like Martha’s memory of playing with the jigsaw on the kitchen floor, a memory that is described as “her first artfully, innocently arranged lie” (page 4)

We can thus think about this: Are all of our memories false memories? Are they all the product of the testimony of others, of fertile imagination or of just the urge to justify our present actions or present ideologies with some sort of root? If there is any truth to the statement: “Childhood was remembered in a succession of incidents which explained why you were the person you had turned out to be” (Page 242), then it is quite safe to agree that all of our memories are fallacious. And like Primo Levi avowed, “the memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features”.

And from this another question might arise: If a person can construct a false memory, can a whole nation do so as well? As an attempt to answer this question we may consider the episode of the divergence of opinion between Martha and her Spanish friend, Cristina, about Sir Francis Drake. Martha as an English girl believed Sir Francis Drake to be “an English hero” and a “Gentleman” (Page 7), although Cristina perceived him as a “pirate” (page 7). This episode alone speaks in favor of a construction of Historic memories based upon the way a country wishes to be kept in History and preserved in Time.

“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”

Percy Shelley

Bokononism, or how to invent happiness

"All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
Books of Bokonon, 1, 1

As Hobsbawn explains "Inventing traditions...is essentally a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if ony by imposing repetition." So, to invent a tradition what we need is repetition that refers to the past, invented or not.
This process, as Hobsbawn says, "It is presumably most clearly exemplified where a 'tradition' is deliberately invented and constructed by a single initiator, as for the Boy Scouts by Baden-Powell."

This exctracts reminds me to an interesting book by Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle", in wich the idea of inventing tradition by a single initiator is well explained. In this book one of the main theme is the religion of San Lorenzo, wich is called Bokononism, from the original creator, Bokonon, born Lionel Boyd Johnson. Bokonon washe way the natives pronounced his family name. With Earl McCabe, his partner in ruling the island, he estabilished Bokononism, as a means to help the poor islanders escape their miserable reality by practicing a simple religion.

The Bokononism has many interesting aspects:

-As Bokonon said, it is forbidden. In his idea, in fact, make religion illegal would make even more interesting and exciting practice. Arranging with McCabe that Bokononism be outlawed and eternally persecuted by the government, he went living into the jungle, supposedly hiding.

-All religion, including Bokononism and all its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, if you believe and adhere to these lies, you will at least have peace of mind, and perhaps live a good life.

-The Books of Bokonon are ever-growing, and Bokonon use the present history to adjust the religion.

-The olny thing sacred to Bokononists is man.

-The creation of a religious language, with many interesting terms that explains the main concepts of Bokononism. For example, the Bokononist says "Busy, busy, busy" to explain how interconneted everything is; "Now I will destroy the whole word..." what a Bokononist says before committing suicide; "Foma" that means harmless untruth, a lie that, if used correcty, can make one a better person. And many others.

The interesting thing is that Bokononism works. The people of San Lorenzo are happier than before, and everybody knows that Bokononism is a lie, but a good one, a foma, and they follow it.

"I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise."

Books of Bokonon, Calypsos, 58

Nottinghamshire will never come back

Just a little introduction. This topic is a real international topic, because the subject was suggested by Ana Romão Alves and the work made by Marta Mankowski and Filippo Bernardi with skyping.

In looking at childhood memories, it is interesting to start from Aleida Assmann’s claim that total recall is impossible: ‘Memory, including cultural memory, is always permeated and shot through with forgetting. In order to remember anything one has to forget; but what is forgotten need not necessarily be lost forever.’ (Aleida Assmann, Canon and Archive, pp.105-106). This quote is important in our investigation, as it highlights the significance of forgetting in the discourse of memory, and thus demonstrates the subjectivity of it. In connection to that the first chapter of Julian Barnes’ novel England, England presents an interesting picture: in Martha’s attachment to the England jigsaw puzzle, and in particular to the county of Nottinghamshire, which she associates with her father. In her memory the little game she played with her father, in which he first hid Nottinghamshire and than later gave it back to her, gains in importance after he leaves. The object of the puzzle becomes a symbol of their relationship and her memory of him. So much so, that when her mother warns her that women had to be strong and could not rely on anybody else, she embarks on what can be seen as a symbolical act of forgetting: each day she leaves one piece of the puzzle in the bus. ‘She did not know whether she was meant to remember or to forget the past.’ (Julian Barnes, England, England, p. 17)

The most significant moment of the Nottinghamshire plot line, however, occurs when she confronts her memory with her father’s. He does not recall their little ritual that played such an important role for her at all, which demonstrates what an important role the notions of perspective and perception play in the formation of memories. ‘While knowledge has no form and is endlessly progressive, memory involves forgetting. It is only by forgetting what lies outside the horizont of the relevant that it performs an identity function.’ ( Jan Assmann, Communicative and Cultural Memory, p. 113) Thus, by forming memories (remembering one thing and forgetting another) we establish our identities, but this mechanism also works in the other direction: because of who we are, one moment is more important to us than to others, and, therefore, this moment will become incorporated in our memory, while forgotten by others. This is exemplified in her father not being able to recall the connection through the piece of Nottinghamshire and her reaction to it: ‘She would always blame him for that [forgetting about Nottinghamshire]. She was over twenty-five, and she would go on getting older than twenty-five […] and she would be on her own; but she would always blame him for that.’ (Julian Barnes, England, England, p. 25)

Nottinghamshire will never come back, just as her relation with her father.

This one of the two blog of the course Memory and Literature in a Globalized Culture.
Mimnésko, the title, is an ancient greek word that means remember.