Savage Mnemosyne: Meditation on the culture of memory

Volume 33

Jan 8

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
Expect poison from the standing water.

— William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

I enter the path of forgetful remembering. Words expand. I take the muse poesis as my guide, protecting Mnemosyne from speech bound by the need for appropriation. The mystery of memory is its eternal otherness among its own. I must remember that she is a goddess who personifies memory as a cosmic force — she guarded not so much the act of recalling facts as the preservation of the order of the universe. The Muses, born of her union with Zeus during nine nights of love, became the patronesses of the arts, whose source is rooted in memory. And because this source was not a psychological process of the human mind but a divine principle, for the Greeks creativity consisted in anamnesis — the recollection of truths hidden in the universe. This is why the mystery of Mnemosyne lies in her eternal otherness among people who long to claim her as their own and subject her to the laws that govern them as well.

In Polish, there is a very special phrase, “zapomnij mi to,” in which the word “zapomnij” means both forgiveness and forgetting. Unique and difficult to translate into another language, the words carry within them the energy of poesis flowing from the essence of things and capable of transforming from language into action. Forgiveness and forgetting do not gloss over anything, they do not escape the reality of suffering, they do not close their eyes to others. Transcending the boundaries of linguistic literalism, contradictory, blowing the logic of thinking out of its comfort zone, they carry within them the seed of transgression. Once spoken, they acquire healing power. I am looking for a way to forgive, to free myself from the burden of bad memories that cause trauma. I then utter the words "forget and forgive me for this." They are addressed to those who remember something about us.

I turn to the person I have hurt, through "my own," or through another force with which I identify. I may have hurt him or her with an action, a thought, or a betrayal of memory. The other person may be with me, in direct conversation, but also elsewhere – among the dead, at a distance overcome by prayer, letter, or memory. Forget and forgive me for this. These words may also be addressed to non-human beings or other entities: a place of remembrance, a bridge, a river, a tree, an animal, an angel, a goddess, or another transcendent being. We often do not realize the enormity of the beings with whom our memory communicates.

I say "forget." However, I do not mean to erase memory. It is not about giving up remembering. On the contrary. I utter words that free the path to another memory. One that is different from its dark side, when, for example, I say "you will remember me" or "I will remember this." I put aside the need for retaliation, revenge, or other compensation for my negative emotions.

I say, "forgive me." So it is within me that the source of evil lies, which has come between us. It may also be that, for some reason, I want to take the blame upon myself. I may also feel partly responsible for committing it. Either way, by making this request, I am beating my breast. I don't want our relationship to remain as it is. I find words that are followed by a gesture of openness to change.

I say, "forgive me for this." Between us there is "this" — something painful; something that really happened and that divides us. "This" is an open wound in our memory that no form of denial, concealment, or escape into oblivion could heal. It has something very concrete about it, something that pins us to reality. We know what happened. This is not a situation where we can question the facts or negotiate the truth. We may not talk about this, we may not know how to talk about this, we may wonder if there is any point in talking about this, but we cannot deny this, because I am saying these words to someone who knows. Outside of us – in court, in books, in the public agora – there may be different versions of the event to which our memory refers us. Which one prevails will be decided by circumstances, often shaped by subconscious (fear, blood ties) or conscious manipulation, resorting to lies, various forms of violence, or higher necessity. Meanwhile, between me and the person to whom I say "forget this," there is precisely "this," which we know and understand without words.

"This" is essential, concrete, and obvious. At the same time, it refers to something more general—a real power operating in the world, dark and destructive. By doing "this," and even more so by experiencing it, I am faced with evil that has the hallmarks of inevitability, necessity, and eternal existence. Or at least it can take on such characteristics in my consciousness. Especially if I seek justification for myself, as illustrated by Czesław Miłosz's poem This. Its extraordinary poetic power stems from the ruthless yet cathartic nakedness of language, combining the concrete realities of life with that which is subject to a non-human law, which eludes naming and counteraction, yet is painfully real. Miłosz's This is different from any word that attempts to name it. Even "evil" seems to be a term that does not encompass everything that lies behind the almighty force referred to here. It is significant that Miłosz did not title his poem Evil.

This. Which is like the thoughts of a homeless man walking in an alien city in freezing weather. […]
Or the immobile face of someone who has just understood that he’s been abandoned forever.
Or the irrevocable verdict of the doctor.
This. Which signifies knocking against a stone wall and knowing that the wall will not yield to any imploration.

The "this" I use in the phrase "forget and forgive me for this" is not the same as Miłosz's. But it could be. I could want to believe that what I did is subject to some general law, that the world is like that, that everyone does it, and try to calm my conscience with the inevitability and lack of alternatives of my action. The "this" in Miłosz's poem makes me realize how courageous and contrary to the necessities of life my request to another person is, a request dictated by a conscience that cannot be appeased by what is general. Memory places me in front of a wall, but not so that I may acknowledge the fatality of its impenetrability and finality, but so that I may try to cross it.

The words "forget and forgive me for this" carry with them a call to action: do something! By saying them, I am the one who does something. However, I am not, and should not be, the only agent of action here. I cannot bring about change on my own. I need the support of another person. Only she or he, having been hurt by me or by the people or forces with whom I identify, can forget and forgive me for this. In a profound sense, this means that they will remember differently, without resentment, and even more – that they will rise above their understandable and justified emotions caused by pain and grant me their forgetfulness.

This is how the culture of memory is born. In dialogue and through the work of cultivating emotions and thoughts sown in the garden of Mnemosyne. When I say the words "forget and forgive me for this," I do not expect a quick response, a one-time satisfaction. Memory needs time. And you have to trust the other person. Or maybe even bring yourself to do something more extraordinary. Because the truth is that as soon as the conversation is freed on the path of forgetful remembering, Eros enters it. Hearing, even if only silently, the words "I will forgive and forget you this" written in the eyes or the touch of the hand, I hear a confession of love. And then it dawns on me that deep remembering is inseparable from loving communion.

By indulging in the cultivation of a traumatic event from the past, I may lose control of the dark emotions that enslave my mind and heart. They are like a festering wound, inflicted on me personally, or on my deceased loved ones and others I love, and sometimes also on my own morbid delusions. This separates me from other people and condemns me to the loneliness of remembrance. Although being a victim may lead to joining a circle of people who feel a similar wound of memory, this connection will not heal my alienation. In fact, finding oneself in a community—be it a family, a local community, a minority, or an entire nation—that shares the same dark emotions further deepens the loneliness of victims. Liberation comes from working in Mnemosyne's garden to free oneself from bad memories.

Critical memory

I share traumatic and conflicted memories with others. Bringing myself to say the words "forget and forgive me for this" requires self-critical reflection and the courage to recognize my own guilt. Critical memory freed in this way liberates me from colluding with my own cowardice and repressing uncomfortable facts from the past. This may also apply to collusion with "my own," behind which lies a morbid loyalty that distorts the truth in the name of a misunderstood "higher necessity," under which a person is capable of impersonating any "holiness" – homeland, family, faith, a circle of enthusiasts for a cause, a community of interest, or self-love. Individuals and communities experiencing persecution and harm are particularly threatened by victimhood and the cult of self-suffering. It is then easy to blind oneself to reality with one's own belief in a "higher cause" and to appropriate memory for oneself, instrumentalizing it and damaging it with prejudice or obsession.

Critical memory is an organic antidote to the enslavement of bad memories, which are always destructive, produced by myself in my conscience and way of thinking. When my memory begins to fail, a growth of self-admiration develops in it, feeding on resentment or hatred towards others. Until I develop a culture capable of producing an antidote to this disease, the poisoned seed of memory will be passed on in closed circles of collusion and inherited by future generations.

Critical memory does not claim to be the exclusive or only form of remembrance. Like no other, it knows of the existence of others and respects them without silencing them. It simply tells me: start with yourself, don't beat your chest, don't be afraid, look me straight in the eye. It opens up a space in me for encounter, for curiosity about others, right up to the threshold of love. Paradoxically, its opponents accuse it of self-hatred, of prejudice against one's own kind and against oneself. But it is precisely in this belief that the poisoned seed of love itself is sown. For there is no true love without transcending oneself, without reaching out to what is not one's own. There is no true love for one's homeland that does not embrace the palimpsest of the different cultures that make it real. There is no true love for one's own land without understanding that it is part of an ecosystem, and therefore its well-being depends on good neighborliness. There is no true love for one's own children without allowing them to go out into the world following the voice of their hearts, which knows no division between their own and others. Critical memory, grounded in mature self-awareness and an honest view of one's own behavior, protects me from running away from myself and gives credibility to my heart's inclination toward the other.

If critical memory stands behind the words "forget and forgive me this," the chance of transformation leading to forgiveness/reconciliation increases. The person I have hurt gains confidence in the conversation. Thanks to this, it may happen that critical memory will also awaken in them. For it is a mystery of the human conscience that, in response to another person's confession of guilt, we are reminded of our own weakness. In any case, a space of reciprocity is created between us. It opens the way to understanding the other side and getting closer to each other. By forgiving, we simultaneously ask for forgiveness. I remember that Polish victims of Nazism were able to say these words to the Germans (I am referring here to the famous letter from Polish bishops to German bishops from 1965). Remembering critically, I awaken in others the need to do similar work. I do not expect it, I do not demand it, I do not make it a condition for doing anything. And yet, critical memory never exists in isolation—turned inward, it resonates with others whose wounds of memory and the prejudice arising from them have left them unmoved and indifferent to the reasons for my own memory and to my best intentions addressed to them.

Common memory

We remember things differently. Without even asking for permission, I take Mnemosyne as my muse and create stories about how it was. From these stories, I derive an image of who I am, as well as knowledge of how I should tell my children about the past and how to live in order to remain true to myself. There are as many stories flowing from our memory as there are languages and nations, individuals and social groups. And it does not matter that they may concern the same place, time, or event—they will differ significantly from one another.

The multitude of stories drawn from memory can be considered our cultural wealth. Their diversity resists the tyranny that seeks to homogenize society and subject it to the power of a single narrative, imposed by political violence or market pop culture. Memory then becomes a hostage to historical politics or nihilistic indifference. On the other hand, however, cutting ourselves off from a truth shared with others, fearing to look our neighbor in the eye, living in closed districts of our own memory, without access to the agora, to the meeting place, to the source from which everyone can draw one and the same story, recognizing themselves in it, degrades us. The longing for koinos logos – a common story – is the longing of the heirs of harmonia mundi, that wonderful mosaic of sounds, words, colors, and memories that people have broken into pieces, content with one, but their own. And there is no one left in polarized communities who remembers the picture of the whole.

Despite everything, however, my life passes in the constant presence of Mnemosyne. The goddess of memory presides over the muses of all the arts. That is why, in her garden, work is being done to piece together the fragments of a broken story into a single, harmoniously tuned microcosm. We lost it through forgetfulness. Experienced by conflict and the breakdown of bonds, we say that memory divides us. But this only happens when we appropriate it. By giving it a chance to be Other among us, different and arguing about how it was, we gain access to what we have in common. It is only the erosion of memory, brought about by illness or indifference, that creates deep divisions between us. Diavolos, the one who divides, will never be defeated by the gods of war or hatred, Ares or Eris. He is most threatened by Mnemosyne, the goddess who wields the power of unity and watches over what we have in common. None of us owns Mnemosyne's garden. The goddess is with me and knows more than I would like to know about myself. I am haunted by the loss of the shared memory she carries within her. I am beginning to recognize my limitations and long to broaden the horizons of my memory.

As savage Mnemosyne, memory is the Other living among us. We would like to have it for ourselves, preferably exclusively, grant it citizenship of our country, include it in our family, in our social circle, assimilate and tame its non-belonging. In vain. Memory will never be "ours" or "theirs," always present among us as someone separate, a newcomer from another place, remembering differently, allowing memories different from ours to be heard and storing within itself what we would like to forget or erase from the wax tablet placed, as Plato claimed, in our minds.

The presence of Mnemosyne as the Other among people seeking a way to make her their own raises the question of whether common memory is really accessible to us or whether it remains an idealist's pipe dream. After all, I know how deep the divisions and conflicts between people are, how different the literature and history textbooks in schools are, how deadly we wage cultural wars based on mutually exclusive narratives of the past. However, this awareness does not take away my desire to strive for a common memory. The desire for truth and the longing for wholeness are just as real. While acknowledging that a common memory is an ideal, unattainable for exiles, I simultaneously feel an uncontrollable desire to work towards its restoration, or at least to be on the path towards it.

Critical memory certainly serves common memory well. The same applies to any attempt to broaden its horizons. The perspective of common memory opens up a space for dialogue in which radically different narratives about how things were can clash. However, it is important that this does not take place in closed circles of “our own,” but in the agora, in a polyphony of voices and in the presence of people from different sides of the barricade. It is then that Mnemosyne, condemned by our fear and spiritual immaturity, returns to us from exile. And if we manage—and this is usually a process involving many years of meetings and other forms of preparatory work—to put two pieces of the mosaic together, to add a third, then a common memory begins to live in the words "forget and forgive me this." Yes, we will still be aware of how many other fragments of the whole remain to be joined together. However, we will also discover that in the very joining of two or three stories from different perspectives, a common memory already lives. Just as it lives in a polyphonic and multi-layered place, which without it we can only inhabit on the outskirts, in separate districts. With these discoveries, Mnemosyne begins to appear to us as the goddess of community, of coexistence with the dead and everything non-human. A longing for flight comes to us from memory.

Good memory

Critical memory is a difficult challenge for me. Even more difficult seems to be the pursuit of restoring common memory. And yet, of the three emanations of Mnemosyne freed by the words "forget and forgive me this," the most difficult, in my opinion, is good memory. I admit it sounds innocent and seems to be within reach. However, if, driven by curiosity, we went to an academy, parliament, press room, library, bookstore, cinema, museum, or theater, we would find the least mention of good memory. The same would be true during a public debate, a conversation at the family table, or a chat with neighbors. And if we looked deep inside ourselves for the same purpose, the most hidden and most difficult to bring out again would be the very memory that stores goodness and radiates it.

I write "good memory" being aware of how many meanings are hidden behind this term. However, none of them distorts the meaning that is the subject of my reflections. On the contrary, they complement each other. If I had written "memory of good," it would have directed my attention to goodness and remembering it. Going deeper, I discover that goodness has its own memory. In other words, by doing good, I enter the garden of Mnemosyne, leaving behind bad memories, to which the gate does not open. Entering, I look around and see that everything good that we do grows there. Even the smallest deeds are remembered and flourish here. The memory of good gives meaning to everything we do in its name, even when in the real world it encounters a wall of impossibility and seems to be done in vain. The memory cultivated by goodness is at the opposite pole of this "seems," because it has no relativity, it is naked, obvious, and effective.

When I write “good memory,” I am referring to the efficiency of memory, its mnemonic proficiency. And although I am not primarily thinking of techne when considering this type of memory, I must not disregard this aspect of remembering. All the more so because it also has a negative element. I am referring here to vindictiveness, a trait that is so common among us when we are internally weak. We then say: "I'll remember this," "I have a good memory, be afraid," "I won't forget this." In this way, "good" memory, only in quotation marks, becomes malicious, divisive, and creates divisions between us. A resentful person is incapable of reconciliation, because they will always put the rightness of their own cause above coexistence with others, which in relation to memory means its superiority over those we remember something about.

Another completely different aspect of the culture of remembering is the exercise of its efficiency, which is an important element in cultivating the garden of Mnemosyne. The gaps and eclipses that appear in memory, and the declining ability to comprehend what experience and transmission have managed to accumulate in it, are not without consequences; they do not serve reconciliation with others. When memory sleeps, demons awaken. Its gaps can be filled with falsehoods, and its lack of precision and blurring of specifics distance me from the person with whom I am connected by memory. That is why Mnemosyne also requires me to work on improving my technique and self-discipline, constantly clearing my memory through reading books, conversations, travel, and other forms of expanding my knowledge, right up to the art of concentration, listening, and empathy.

Above all, however, I understand a good memory in the sense in which we use the term "good person." It is good because it can bring out what is good from within itself—from its fragility, weakness, and sinfulness. The same is true of memory. Although it stores what is dark, painful, and traumatic, it also hides fragments of light, experiences of goodness, superhuman strength of mercy, courage in helping others, and selfless impulses of the heart. How can we bring this to light and make it shine?

In our psyche, both individual and collective, apologetic memory of our own history and the martyrdom of our people occupies the most space. Self-critical or empathetic attitudes are not often encountered, especially among people living in the shadow of the past, but even in the face of the uniqueness of such attitudes, good memory seems even rarer, sometimes almost completely absent and silent. The reason for this, I believe, is not the widespread belief in our culture that evil is more interesting than good. Although I admit that this is the most common excuse resorted to by media people, academics, artists, and politicians alike. But this is only the surface of the phenomenon, the most visible and easiest to grasp. Digging deeper, I discover that it is extremely difficult to dig up good memories within oneself, bring them to light in front of others, and express them in a way that does not detract from their truth and moral power.

Good memory is difficult to express and does not easily find its place in interpersonal relations and public life. We lack sufficiently flexible language, rituals, calendar dates, space, and ultimately culture for it to live and mature among us on an equal footing with the memory of harm and pain experienced from others. This is all the more painful because it is hidden within each of us and suffers from not finding an outlet. The world is full of people who carry in their hearts the need to do good to and for others, which is based on remembrance. And because it contains "this," which, as I have emphasized before, carries a heavy emotional and ethical weight, it cannot be done carelessly, with kitsch, empty words, or some other form of artificial material that substitutes for being in the truth. How many times have I met people who, wanting to break the silence of good memory, asked rhetorically: "But how and on what occasion? I'll just make a fool of myself." Life has experienced more than one ridicule to which dictators, propagandists, and pop-culture opportunists have exposed good memory. They left behind a pile of slogans that sooner or later began to sound empty and mocking in the face of reality, and today only irritate human memory, such as дружба народов, Wandel durch Handel, or never again. Significantly, these slogans were born in the post-war ruins, when people promised themselves to be better and leave behind ideologies narcissistically centered on themselves and their own. For many people united by a shared experience of tragedy, it was obvious that bad memories had become a breeding ground for nationalism, fascism, and communism; that they contained the poisoned seed of racism, whose resurgence so terrifies us today. In this way, many ideals have been discredited, and as a result, it is not easy for us today to utter words such as reconciliation, tolerance, or goodness.

The poem Goodness was written by Czesław Miłosz in his old age and published only after his death. The poet no longer cared about conventions, both literary and social. He freed his writing hand from the rigors of form, the desire to please, and the fear of ridicule. He was able to be a child again, but also a jester, a nonconformist sage, sometimes pious, sometimes a heretic, painfully honest and often merciless in his self-criticism. Earlier, I learned from him critical memory, sharp both in terms of self-love and various nationalistic or messianic "fads." He held up a mirror to Poles and Lithuanians, revealing their anima naturaliter endecjana (endecja – from National Democracy, a right-wing nationalistic group in early-twentieth-century Poland) , which, in its fratricidal blindness, suppressed (but also betrayed) the word christiana, previously existing in Tertullian's phrase paraphrased by Miłosz. At the same time, he worked on a common memory. In the borderland, it is impossible to separate common memory from critical memory, because rebuilding broken bridges in multicultural communities requires the courage to face the truth about one's own sins. When writing Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition, he was a Greek traveling from one country to another, trying to make Europeans aware that culture is not only a difference in languages and traditions, but also, and perhaps above all, a "connective tissue." He realized it as a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one of the last, although the thread of this tradition has not yet been broken and new "last citizens" of the GDL continue to appear on the horizon of the borderlands. It took the poet a lifetime of struggle with the Prince of Darkness, with the Conradian "heart of darkness" that ends Moral Treatise, for his poetic language to mature enough to release good memory.

In the poem This, situated at the opposite pole to Goodness, Miłosz attempts to name the dark force that remains nameless and impersonal, embodying the general law that governs human existence. In this poem, it is different. Goodness is named and personal, referring to the good man who was the author's cousin and mentor, Oscar Milosz. Interestingly, the poet does not attribute the right to recognize him as good to himself or other people, but to winged creatures:

Some people perhaps could sense it, but it was certainly known,
In ways mysterious to us, to the small birds
That would perch on his head and hands when he stopped
In a park alley. They would it from his hands
As if the law that demands that the smaller
Take shelter from the larger,
Lest it be devoured, was suspended.

By releasing good memory of a loved one whom he met in the distant past, at the beginning of his creative journey, Miłosz expresses his belief that this is an act of transformation, thanks to which man can swim against the tide of the forces that rule the world: "As if time had turned back, and the paths / Of the heavenly garden shone anew." Goodness is within me, it is a fragment of light hidden in every being. The moment I reach it and bring it out into the world, making it the driving force behind my actions, I release a power that transforms both me and the world. I become someone else and nothing around me remains the same.

And there is something else I must ask before I reach the last link connecting forgetful remembering with good memory. Where does goodness come from? Where does “A tenderness so great welled up in him that upon seeing / A Wounded sparrow, he was ready to burst into tears” come from? Miłosz is puzzled by the fact that he discovers the power of goodness in someone who has experienced the trauma of the heart of darkness:

I had trouble understanding this man,
Since what he said betrayed his knowledge of the horror of the world,
A knowledge at some point known and experienced to the very core

The experience of evil obscures the light for a person, but ultimately does not extinguish it. Memory—only memory, if it is good—is capable of preserving the light and nurturing it. I clear a path to the garden of Mnemosyne, becoming an apprentice to the gardeners who work there, so as not to succumb to the law of earthly necessity, which surrounds us with an impenetrable wall that will not yield to any of our pleas. There is a goodness that arises from the experience of the heart of darkness, which will not yield to any will of the Prince of Darkness.

This is how the paths of meditation intersect in the garden of Mnemosyne. The words "forget and forgive me this" led me into a space of encounter with a person who had experienced something bad from me and with whom I wanted to reconcile. We both journeyed into the past, where something dark and painful had happened. This inevitably led us to open a burning wound. At the same time, our quiet conversation, interrupted by long silences, created an opportunity to release good memory. In critically examining our own guilt, in working on what we have in common in our memories, it is extremely important to be able to refer to what is good – between us and in the world. Even if it is only a crumb of goodness, it is enough to give a person support. And so, suddenly and unexpectedly, thanks to a wisely cultivated memory, the good that seemed to have long since been lost in the darkness of the world and rendered useless returns as a real power, a building block of reconciliation, a material for the regeneration of connective tissue. The goodness released in a person brings about change. And without it, you will never forget and forgive me. We enter Mnemosyne's garden through forgetful remembering. And then none of us is who we used to be. Called to inner transgression, if we manage to meet it, we leave behind a good memory. Isn't that what we say about a person who has lived a good life? Forget and forgive me this. If that happens, each of us will leave behind a good memory.

Savage Mnemosyne: Meditation on the culture of memory

Excerpts

Queer Belonging and Ukraine