Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing

347 Pages·1990·25.45 MB·English

by  David Farrell Krell

OF MEMORY,
REMINISCENCE,
WRITING
AND
On the Verge
DAVID FARRELL KRELL
Indiana University Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
© 1990 by David Farrell Krell
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or hy
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of Amcri,·an
University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only
exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Anll'ri,·an
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
@TM
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Consress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Krell, David Farrell.
Of memory, reminiscence, and writing: on the verge / by David
Farrell Krell.
p. cm. - (Studies in continental thought)
ISBN 0-25 .'-.n 193-5 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-253-20592-1 (pbk. : alk. papl'r)
I. Memory-History. 2. Writing-Psychological aspects-History.
I. Title. II. Series.
BF37I.K74 1990
1 2.\ 4 5 94 93 9291 90
The narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia,"
endeavoring to remember the quality of Li
geia's eyes: "There is no point, among the
many incomprehensible anomalies of mind,
more thrillingly exciting than the fact-never,
I believe, noticed in the schools-that in our
endeavors to recall to memory something
long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon
the very verge of remembrance, without be
ing able, in the end, to remember."
Giordano Bruno, recording in De umbris
idearum (1582) the image of the first decan
of Gemini: In prima geminorum facie, vir
paratus ad serviendum, virgam habens in dex
tera. Vultu hilari atque iocundo. ["In the first
figure of The Twins, a man ready to serve,
holding the verge in his right hand. His ex
pression full of mirth and mischief."]
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS lX
PREFACE Xl
Introduction
I
PART ONE
TYPOGRAPHY, ICONOGRAPHY,
ENGRAMMATOLOGY
ONE. Slabs of Wax: Aristotle and Plato on Memory,
Reminiscence, and Writing
13
Mneme, Lethe 14
Anamnesis 19
Typos 23
Eikon 28
Grammata 39
TWO. Waxen Glands and Fleshy Hollows: The Body
of Memory from Descartes to Merleau-Ponty
51
August Mnemotechnic 52
Descartes 56
Hobbes and Locke 75
Coleridge, Erwin Straus, and Merleau-Ponty 83
THREE. Wax Magic: Freud and the Typography of
Effraction 105
Memory, Malady, and Therapy 106
Quantity 110
Quality II8
"The Introduction of the 'Ego' " 128
Signs 140
Wax Magic 150
VIII Contents
PART TWO
ON THE VERGE
fOUR. Of Tracings without Wax: The Early Work of
Jacques Derrida 165
Scripture, Scription, Script 166
The Absolute Past 179
Plato's Dream IX7
fiVE. Of Pits and Pyramids: Hegel on Memory,
Remembrance, and Writing 205
The Situation of Erinnerung in Hegel's System 206
The Psychology of Erinnerung and Gediichtnis 211
Erinnerung and Gediichtnis in the Philosophical
Propaedeutics of 1808 225
Er-Innerung in the Phenomenology of Spirit 230
SIX. Of Having-Been: Heidegger and Nietzsche on
the Time of Remembering and Forgetting 240
Forgetting Being 2.41
Remembering Time 2.55
Mnemosyne 2.62.
Let Bygones Be Bygones 268
SEVEN. Of Ashes: The Promise of Memory in the
Recent Thought of Jacques Derrida 277
Anamnesis, Amnesia, Affirmation 2.78
Impossible Mourning Possible 283
Gediichtnis and Andenken: In Memory of
Hegel and Heidegger 291
Mirth 300
Ashes 309
NOTES 315
INDEX 336
Acknowledgments
A number of passages of fiction have like old memories interrupted my train of
thought throughout the book. Those responsible for these intrusions are as
follows. In chapter I: William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, first pub
lished in 1931; I am grateful to the Trustees of the Estate of William Faulkner
and to Random House for their generous permission to reprint these passages.
In chapter 2: James Jdyce, Ulysses, first published in 1922; copyright renewed
© 1984 and 1986; my thanks to the Trustees of the Joyce Estate and to
Random House for their generous permission to reprint passages from Ulysses;
one or two intrusions from Emerson's Journals have also occurred in chapter 2,
as has a quotation from William Faulkner, Light in August, first published in
1932; again, thanks to the Trustees of the Faulkner Estate and to Random
House for their generous permission to reprint. In chapter 3: James Joyce,
Finnegans Wake, first published in 1939; copyright © 1939 by James Joyce;
copyright renewed © 1967 by the Estate of James Joyce. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA
and by the Society of Authors, London. In chapter 4: Herman Melville, Pierre:
Or, The Ambiguities, first published in 1852. In chapter 5: Edgar Allan Poe,
"Ligeia," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Pit and the Pendulum,"
first published in 1 8 3 8, 1839, and 1843, respectively; along with two further
intrusions by Pierre. In chapter 6: William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury,
reprinted with permission. Finally, in chapter 7: Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften, Book II, Part III, first published in 1933 (translations my own).
I am grateful to Olive Lambert and Barbara Crawshaw for their generous
and expert help in preparing the typescript and to John Sallis, Charles Scott, Jill
Lavelle, Michael Hudac, and Marta Salome for reading it.
For
Eunice Farrell Krell
Preface
This book has enjoyed a long and interesting death. I can see now that I will
never write it and hence want to relate what it was supposed to have been. As
well as I can remember.
When it was time for me to prepare a research proposal for my doctoral
dissertation-in October of 1969-1 submitted two of them. One involved
Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche, the other promised some "essays in the
phenomenology of memory." Even at that time the memory project would not
stop proliferating, would not hold to a particular center, and my advisor sug
gested I stick to the presumably more clearly delineated topic. Which I have
done now for twenty years.
Had I written about memory I might have told how, a year earlier, an
astonishing discovery had come my way, quite by chance. In order to relax and
settle down to sleep [ began to write about some of the earliest recollections of
my childhood, often mere images or vague sentiments devoid of context: my
father hoisting me high over his head as I sat on the staircase; or playing by
myself under a table with a fire engine; or bringing water to my earliest play
mates and heroes, who came each week to collect the trash. My discovery was
simply that in writing about these early memory images a vast store of remark
ably detailed memories-in fact, an entire world of the most intense percep
tions and feelings-began to unfold. I started to trace in the writing of these
early memories, at first gropingly, though not without stylistic affectation, a
world I assumed had been lost-no, that had indeed been lost, absent, "uncon
scious," call it what you will.
Such writing succeeded where no simple act of will or decision could. Suc
ceeded in what? Who could say that these memory sequences were not eminent
fictions? True, my mother, to whom I later sent a number of such sketches,
confirmed them in various points of detail. For example, in one I was able to
reconstruct the entire floorplan of the house I lived in until I was three, starting
with that red engine under the dining table, the sun shining through the win
dow at one end of the room, the stairway barely visible in the adjacent room.
Such confirmations frightened rather than emboldened me: I did not want to
be Borges' Funes el memorioso, laden to death with memories. Yet I did not
need the confirmations to be disturbed by the power of these past presences
that, far from being "haunting," as they properly ought to have been, were (as
Husser! says) leibhaft da, bodily present, in flesh and in blood.
None of these things, I am sure, would have actually found their way into the
dissertation. Instead, I planned to write about the failure of neurophysiological
research to render plausible accounts of long-term memory; about the more
fruitful psychoanalytic hermeneutic of memory and forgetting; and I would
have foclised on discllssions in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on time
c()ns~:i()lIsnl'ss and l'mhodicd ml'mory. Yl't behind all this brave science two
XII Preface
problems preoccupied me. First, the problem of the disparity between volun
tary and involuntary memory; second, something I called the problem of mem
ory and affirmation. About the first I wrote (I quote myself now, with apolo
gies, inasmuch as my proposal, marked "First Choice," is before me as I write):
How is it that I appear to be both slave and master with respect to my memory? For
the most part I am fed memories, am thrown into them by the vicissitudes of my
situation; my memory flow seems autonomous, almost schizophrenic, perpetually
announcing to me my bondage to a past. At the same time, I can remember; that is, 1
am able to pursue a memory, fasten onto it, and interrogate it. 1 appear to be able to
adopt a stance over and above the involuntary flow of memory. But what sort of "I"
is this? What must my consciousness be in order to do such a thing?
It is fortunate that I never executed this plan, which began with a lie. Never did
I "pursue" a memory, much less "fasten onto it" and, philosopher-policeman,
"interrogate it." The writing that had opened up the dimension of memory to
me was never so cocksure, sustained, or confident. It was on the contrary so
vulnerable that after I resuscitated the plan to write about memory eight years
ago 1 had to look on while the project died under my hand. Died by a kind of
irony, an ironizing into which I slipped as soon as I had to deal with my earlier
memory sketches, a coyness by which I sought to protect myself from myself.
When I saw this inexpugnable irony, this paralyzing mockery in every line I
sketched, I realized that On the Verge would never be written. For it would
mean exposing and killing something that was my life. It was not simply that
these memories were "dear" to me, that I "cherished" or "embraced" them
nostalgically. They were both an embarras de richesse and an embarrassment.
And this was the second problem, the question of memory and affirmation,
which I had broached gingerly in my proposal in this way: "Memory has a way
of transforming any content into a wondrous appearance, bathing even the
most traumatic event in a soothing light, a yes-saying. To call this 'distortion' is
perhaps to miss part of the meaning of the phenomenon of memory. ... " I
wanted that soothing light for my writing, but it turned out to be a darkness. A
darkness that irony and science could only disperse, never penetrate. No doubt
it was Nietzsche who had moved me: I wanted to oppose the affirmation of
eternal recurrence and arnor fati to what Paul Ricoeur was calling "consent," a
word that seemed lukewarm and saccharine, whereas Nietzsche's was fire and
wine. Yet whatever that yes-saying might have been that guided my writing
twenty years ago, irony and a kind of anxiety organized a wake, raised a din,
and celebrated the untimely death of On the Verge.
Not that yes-saying is done. Only that through recurrence it has become
rather more wakeful. More wakeful. Silence for those "essays" in the "phe
nonH'nology of memory" and, above all, those "autobiographical" musings.
For tht: l1lonwnt, a certain Illodest joy in these appendages, these bits of bone
allli cartilagt:. /);sieda membra Illay havl' SOI1lt: mt:rit on tht:ir own, on their
own givl' sonw pkasurt:.