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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 26 из 286That’s it, that’s how I am. I’m holding a long note, like a stuck record, and since I can’t remember the opening notes, I can’t finish the song. I wonder what it is I’m supposed to finish, and why. While I was singing without thinking I was actually myself for the duration of my memory, which in that case was what you might call throat memory, with the befores and afters linked together, and I was the complete song, and every time I began it my vocal cords were already preparing to vibrate the sounds to come. I think a pianist works that way, too: even as he plays one note he’s readying his fingers to strike the keys that come next. Without the first notes, we won’t make it to the last ones, we’ll come untuned, and we’ll succeed in getting from start to finish only if we somehow contain the entire song within us. I don’t know the whole song anymore. I’m like… a burning log. The log burns, but it has no awareness of having once been part of a whole trunk nor any way to find out that it has been, or to know when it caught fire. So it burns up and that’s all. I’m living in pure loss."
"Let’s not go overboard with the philosophy," Paola whispered.
"No, let’s. Where do I keep my copy of Augustine’s Confessions? "
"In the bookcase with the encyclopedias, the Bible, the Koran, Lao Tzu, and the philosophy books."
I went to pick out the Confessions and looked in the index for the passages on memory. I must have read them because they were all underlined: I come then to the fields and the vast chambers of memory… When I enter there , I summon whatever images I wish. Some appear at once , but others must be sought at length , dragged forth as it were from hidden nooks… Memory gathers all this in its vast cavern , in its hidden and ineffable recesses… In the enormous palace of my memory , heaven , earth , and sea are present to me… I find myself there also… Great is the power of memory , O my God , and awe-inspiring its infinite , profound complexity. And that is the mind , and that is myself… Behold the fields and caves , the measureless caverns of memory , immeasurably full of immeasurable things… I pass among them all , I fly from here to there , and nowhere is there any end… "You see, Paola," I said, "you’ve told me about my grandfather and the country house, everyone’s trying to give me all this information, but when I receive it in this way, in order really to populate these caverns I’d have to put into them every one of the sixty years I’ve lived till now. No, this is not the way to do it. I have to go into the cavern alone. Like Tom Sawyer.
"Let’s not go overboard with the philosophy," Paola whispered.
"No, let’s. Where do I keep my copy of Augustine’s Confessions? "
"In the bookcase with the encyclopedias, the Bible, the Koran, Lao Tzu, and the philosophy books."
I went to pick out the Confessions and looked in the index for the passages on memory. I must have read them because they were all underlined: I come then to the fields and the vast chambers of memory… When I enter there , I summon whatever images I wish. Some appear at once , but others must be sought at length , dragged forth as it were from hidden nooks… Memory gathers all this in its vast cavern , in its hidden and ineffable recesses… In the enormous palace of my memory , heaven , earth , and sea are present to me… I find myself there also… Great is the power of memory , O my God , and awe-inspiring its infinite , profound complexity. And that is the mind , and that is myself… Behold the fields and caves , the measureless caverns of memory , immeasurably full of immeasurable things… I pass among them all , I fly from here to there , and nowhere is there any end… "You see, Paola," I said, "you’ve told me about my grandfather and the country house, everyone’s trying to give me all this information, but when I receive it in this way, in order really to populate these caverns I’d have to put into them every one of the sixty years I’ve lived till now. No, this is not the way to do it. I have to go into the cavern alone. Like Tom Sawyer.