“[S]ome of the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant – some of them stand out in disproportionate clarity to the rest.”
Earlier in
the same paragraph, Iris Origo (1902-88) had been considering Proust and his novel in her Images and
Shadows: Part of a Life (1970). The Frenchman, she writes, confirms her
conviction that she is “carrying within me (in spite of all the changes that
have taken place) the whole of my
life.” I’ve always suspected the same, even before I first read Proust more
than half a century ago. Since my brother’s death last week, lost memories have
announced themselves like bubbles in a simmering kettle of soup. My nephew, clearing out his father’s
belongings, found this:
It’s the 1965
Grove Press edition of Selected Works of
Alfred Jarry, edited by Roger Shattuck, who later published The Banquet Years: The Origins of the
Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I (1968), which includes a chapter on Jarry. Abe then sent a photo of
the front end paper:
I think I gave
this to Ken early in the nineteen-eighties but I had forgotten all about it.
There’s the crossed-out dedication to the previous owner, but I want to know who gives
Jarry to his daughter for Christmas? Then Ken’s remembrance of my gift. He was
the last person alive who called me “Pat.” Best of all, the sentiment at the
top right: “No longer relevant to me.” That’s as honest a critical judgment as
I’ve ever heard. Ken, of course, recognized the allusion I would have intended.
The Cleveland band Pere Ubu, lead by David Thomas, took its name from Jarry’s
play Ubu Roi.
Origo admits
she would like more time: “But the time I would really beg for, at any street
corner, would be time in the past,
time in which to comfort, to complete and to repair—time wasted before I knew
how quickly it would slip by.”
1 comment:
Patrick, my condolences.
Ken "was the last person alive who called me "Pat."
January 20, 1827, Lamb visits his dying friend: Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf Richard, his son, looking doubly stupified.
Lamb couldn’t speak. All he could do is take Mrs. Norris’ hand. If you have visited a person who is dying, at home or in the hospital, circled by family, you know words can seem indecent. One feels tearful, fearful, awkward, helpless and privileged. A life – a world -- is ending and you are a witness. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now.”
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