(no subject)

В погоне за невольными воспоминаниями я набрела на фигуру Эстер Саламан-Поляновской. Еврейская девушка из Житомира, которая была ученицей Резерфорда и после замужества переключилась не литературу, и написала среди прочего книгу на нужную тему. Очень интересная фигура. Жаль, что ее мемуары про погром в Житомире мне пока что не удалось сыскать в сети.

I have shown that memories of events are easily distinguishable from memories of the background; that only memories of events come back involuntarily, bring with them strong emotions, and give a sensation of living in a past moment; that memories of events are of two kinds: whole memories, which always contain a disturbance or a shock, and fragment memories which do not; that because both of these bring back emotions of the same kind and intensity, and both give us the feeling of living in the past, they are probably basically similar, and therefore that the fragments were originally associated witha shock or disturbance which has been lost. I also pointed out that we all carry innumerable other floating fragment-memories — of faces, names, numbers — which are easily distinguishable from the kind of ‘precious fragments’ I have been considering by the fact that they carry no strong emotions, do not give the feeling of living in the past, and never come back involuntarily.


I have given many examples of memories in which there is a great intensity of sensations caused by a fright, an alarm, a shock, but for me the memory of a moment of incomprehension related to a shock appears to scintillate with even greater intensity on the phosphorescent screen, our conscious mind. I am not saying that to everyone memories of incomprehension are the most luminous. Writers do not reveal to us how their
memories vary in luminosity, but many stress the greater importance for them of certain moments. Perhaps to De Quincey memories of his most intense moments, experiences of solitude and what he calls ‘pure religion’, were more luminous than others. Tolstoy, surveying his early memories of when he had reluctantly left the nursery at five and, anxious and afraid, joined his three elder brothers and their tutor, picks out ‘one spiritual state’ which he considers the most important because ‘it was a first experience of love, not love of someone, but love of love, love of God, a feeling which I rarely experienced later — rarely, but all the same I did experience it, thanks, I think, to the trace laid down in childhood'.

...a memory of a moment is a primary experience, an island holding the feelings of the moment. There are innumerable memories of moments in our conscious mind which we can bring back at will. What makes a moment which has been in abeyance for many years and which comes back involuntarily very special is that it is new, has not been looked at, rationalised about; it has not faded, has not been overlaid. The involuntary memory has this in common with a moment of inspiration: it is unexpected, surprising, and yet we claim it as our own at once, sure of its validity. Though an involuntary memory need not necessarily be more detailed or vivid than a memory which has been available to us for years, it differs from it in that it makes a past moment become a present.

(no subject)

Our consciousness and our conscience
Alone in the pale anthill of galaxies
Put their hope in a humane God.

Who cannot but feel and think,
Who is kindred to us by his warmth and movement,
For we are, as he told us, similar to Him.

Yet if it is so, then He takes pity
On every mauled mouse, every wounded bird.
Then the universe for him is like a Crucifixion.