Before I Forget

It has been said that Haydn did not write 104 symphonies, but that he wrote the same symphony 104 times. This does not make his music any less enjoyable.

Perhaps the same remark could be made about Elie Wiesel: that he has written the same book more than 30 times. All about the Holocaust; all about memory. And that does not detract from his work either.

I recently read his latest book, "The Time of the Uprooted", this time about a survivor, who makes his way in the world as a ghost writer for a famous French novelist who in fact has never written a word, and who is able to write about anything other than his own past, part of which he remembers but does not want to share, and part of which he has surpressed or distorted.

It's like I have read a trilogy. Memory and the Holocaust obviously was the basis for Imre Kertesz' "Fatelessness" (see recent posting), and loss of memory (for medical reasons) and its effect on life the subject of Nicole Krauss' "Man Walks Into a Room" (see recent posting).

Yes, memory. I got up early this morning (I thought it was about 5 a.m.), decided to get out of bed and get dressed (which I did), then sat down to read a book for an hour or so. But when I looked at the clock, it was not 5:30 or 6, but about 2 a.m. Feeling rather dumb, I put down the book, kept my clothes on, climbed back into bed, hoping I would fall asleep, which I did rather quickly.

I got up this morning (again ?) about 6:45. My first thought was to see how my clothes fared through the second half of the night. I looked to see, and then realized that it had all been a dream, and that in fact I had slept through the night. But I remember it (still) distinctly.

So, loss of memory, repressed memory, and the memory of things that never occurred. And why do I bother to write this blog? To preserve my own memory, I think. For me, and for others. But there are things that I don't write down, much of which I obviously forget, and there are things I don't want to write down and that I either want to forget or at least do not want to memorialize in this way.

A strange thing, memory.