the art of memory in boris pasternak's aesthetics

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Russian Literature XLII (1997) 25-46 North-Holland THE ART OF MEMORY IN BORIS PASTERNAK’S AESTHETICS ERIKA GREBER I. The theme of memory and recollection is a frequent one in the work of Boris Paster&. It appears there in manifold contexts and with complex, often overlapping functions: in dedications, in metatextual reflection, as a narrative element in his fictional texts, or, in his autobiographical texts, as a link connecting a remembering “I” and a remembered one. Up to now, the problem of memory has been neglected in Pastemak criticism, even though it is of great importance particularly in regard to Pastemak’s conception of art and his poetic world model. Indeed, many peculiarities of Pastemak’s writing can be understood only by referring to the problem of memory.’ The memory theme in fact appears in Pasternak’s work in such surprising multiplicity that it might seem as if Pastemak himself had made a special study of the art of memory.2 The classical art of memory (ars memofiae or memofia artificialis), a subdivision of the art of rhetoric, was, in an age knowing neither paper nor print, a mnemonic system used to train memory and, in particular, to memorize speeches (their subject matter and/or words, memoria rerum and memoria verborum).The art of memory is mentioned in the most important Greek memory treatise, Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscenfia, and is preserved in three Latin sources (the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero’s De orafore, and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria). The art of memory is based on a few mnemotechnic principles regu- lating the combination of memory places (loci, topoj) and memory images 0304-3479/97/$17.00 @ 1997 - Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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Page 1: The Art of Memory in Boris Pasternak's Aesthetics

Russian Literature XLII (1997) 25-46 North-Holland

THE ART OF MEMORY IN BORIS PASTERNAK’S AESTHETICS

ERIKA GREBER

I.

The theme of memory and recollection is a frequent one in the work of Boris Paster&. It appears there in manifold contexts and with complex, often overlapping functions: in dedications, in metatextual reflection, as a narrative element in his fictional texts, or, in his autobiographical texts, as a link connecting a remembering “I” and a remembered one. Up to now, the problem of memory has been neglected in Pastemak criticism, even though it is of great importance particularly in regard to Pastemak’s conception of art and his poetic world model. Indeed, many peculiarities of Pastemak’s writing can be understood only by referring to the problem of memory.’

The memory theme in fact appears in Pasternak’s work in such surprising multiplicity that it might seem as if Pastemak himself had made a special study of the art of memory.2

The classical art of memory (ars memofiae or memofia artificialis), a subdivision of the art of rhetoric, was, in an age knowing neither paper nor print, a mnemonic system used to train memory and, in particular, to memorize speeches (their subject matter and/or words, memoria rerum and memoria verborum). The art of memory is mentioned in the most important Greek memory treatise, Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscenfia, and is preserved in three Latin sources (the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero’s De orafore, and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria).

The art of memory is based on a few mnemotechnic principles regu- lating the combination of memory places (loci, topoj) and memory images

0304-3479/97/$17.00 @ 1997 - Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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26 Erika Greber

(imagines). Th e main rules have been summarized by Frances Yates in her book The Art of Memory as follows:

The first step was to imprint on the memory a series of loci or places. The commonest [. . .] type of mnemonic place system used was the architectural type. The clearest description of the process is that given by Quintilian. In order to form a series of places in memory [. . .] a building is to be remembered, as spacious and varied a one as possible, the forecourt, the living room, bedrooms, and parlours, not omitting statues and other ornaments with which the rooms are decorated. The images by which the speech is to be remembered [. . .] are then placed in imagination on the places which have been memo- rised in the building. This done, as soon as the memory of the facts requires to be revived, all these places are visited in turn and the various deposits demanded of their custodians. We have to think of the ancient orator as moving in imagination through his memory building whilst he is making his speech, drawing from the memo- rised places the images he has placed on them. The method ensures that the points are remembered in the right order, since the order is fixed by the sequence of places in the building. 3

The spatial sequence “ab initio’* may correspond to a logical order. Cicero maintained that it is the order in particular which “provides memory with light”: whereby he used the metaphor in a literal sense: the images have to be sufficiently illuminated in order to be recognized.

Rhetorical tradition further suggests using peculiar images for helping memory, the so-called imagines age&s 6 (“strikin

# images of human figures

engaged in some activity”, as explained by Yates). The art of memory was understood as an inner writing, and Cicero

drew parallels between mnemotechnic places and the wax tablet of writing (loci = cera), as well as between images and letters (imagines = litterae).8

The various above-mentioned aspects of mnemotechnics are important for Pastemak’s model of memory and recollection. But in addition to the system of artificial memory, there are also many phenomena of natural memory, memoria naturalis, that are constitutive for Pastemak’s conception of art in general. His use of both modes, memoria artificialis and memoria naturalis, makes Pastemak’s art truly a mnemonic art.’

II.

Typical of Pastemak’s works is the spatial-visual quality of its scenes and images, in which we encounter memory places and buildings of the most varied kind.

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In Pasternak’s reminiscences in ochrannaja gramota” and ‘Avtobio- grafiEeskij oEerk’*’ one comes across interesting, at times idiosyncratic, memory places, u which frequently refer to his childhood or youth and to “first time” experiences, as in the following examples.

Pasternak envisions the memory space of youth as an airplane hangar filled with memories (OG, 195). To describe how he experienced the or- chestra rehearsals for Skrjabin’s L_e poime de I’extase Paster& uses mne- monic metaphors of space (OG, 195 f.). He conjures up a “lyrical residence” of imagination and art that can be interpreted as a locus. It represents an architecture of the synthesis of arts (Gesamtkunstwerk), in which the works of various artists and arts appear as imagines rising above a fence and sitting on window sills.

Pastemak recalls his first love with the image of a blackboard covered with chalkmarks, and he comments specifically on the genesis of this memory image (OG, 220 f.). The recalled image of writing on and erasing from the blackboard as well as the image of the cleansing and renewed leasing of the world’s rooms are in turn images of remembering and for- getting. They lead to a concept of eternal recurrence, which - when applied to culture - suggests the eternal recurrence of signs.’

In Do&or iivago we find a perfect example of a realized memory me- taphor. After all, the most immediate image for memory’s storage space is that of a storage room itself.” Zivago, who has just returned home from the front, fails to recognize a room because his wife has replaced the furniture and changed the pattern of the wallpaper (which correspond to imagines and litterae). Therefore the locus itself, the previously designated space, has to be identified (with the help of the illuminating moonlight) before memory can refurnish it with the old memory furniture (broken tables and chairs, chests, and the family archive), with the effect that Zivago remembers bygone times.

III.

Certain passages in Pastemak’s texts clearly demonstrate that his images work according to mnemotechnic rules governing artificial memory.

The crucial procedure in mnemotechnics is to link the contents to be memorized with a mnemonic sign. One lengthy sequence of images in DZ clearly illustrates this process and how it coincides with that of image crea- tion.

A classicist building called “dom s figurami” figures prominently in the title of book XIII (‘Protiv doma s figurami’) - doubtlessly only because of its function as a polyvalent memory place. The title refers to Lara’s address; it is a metonymical signifier of special significance: Pastemak meticulously de- picts how it becomes charged with mnemonic value.

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28 Erika Gerber

When this house is mentioned for the first time (DA, 343), it is introduced as a building which has stored its architectural and political history. Beneath the Soviet government decrees on the walls, there can still be imagined those of the tsars. The building is a palimpsest of the old and the new times even as iivago first comes across it; he then proceeds to lay inscriptions on it in his own stead. The house’s future function as locus is hinted at when iivago imagines that he sees the statues moving: in other words, even before the statues have been invested with a specific mnemonic function, they are introduced as im@nes agentes:

NOM c &iTyPaM&i] no BCeMy BepXy 6bIn OrIOOCaH XceHCKWMFi MH-

f&onormecmbm KapHaTmaMw B nonTopa venoBevecmx pocTa.

Me= AByMR IIOpbIBaMH BeTpa, CKpbIBlUEiMH WO &tC&I& AOK-

TOP)’ Ha MTHOBeHEfe IIO9)‘jJEiJIOCb, ‘IT0 B3 nOMa BblIIIJIO BCe XCeH-

cKoe HaceneHwe Ha 6-0~ n, nepernysmacb vepes nepwna,

CMOTpHT Ha Her0 [. . .]. (Dp, 343 f.)

The already existing memory strata are now overlaid with the new, private memory stratum: the house becomes the locus for storing the painful re- collection of iivago’s attempt at separation from Lara. The fact that he is kidnapped on the ride home while he is recalling his dialogue with Lara, and that he is in fact temporarily, but not definitely separated from her makes the mnemonic sign a prophetic one:

HX o6’bacHeHHe rrpowcxomi~~o B ITYCTOR, HeO6mFiTOti napHCOti

@eJJOpOBHOft KOMHaTe rIpemHwx X039eB, BbIXOHHBUIefi Ha Kyne-

9ecKym. llo JIapmbIM lqeKaM Temw HeomyTmme, Hec03HaBae-

MbIe eI0 CJIeJbl, KIK BOn,a IUeHIIIWO B 3TO BpeMSI JJOxKHR II0

JIHI@M KaMl?HHbIX CTaT)% HBllpOTHB, Ha ,QOMe C ~SW~Nh4Ei.

(Dz 355)

The relationship between mnemonic signifier and signified is motivated here in a twofold manner: metaphorically (similarity of the female figures and faces) and metonymically (proximity of the houses); this twofold motivation renders the relationship particularly palpable and durable. The completed memory image then recurs in the title and in various passages of book XIII (Dg, 437,440,442,446).

After fleeing the partisan camp, iivago goes directly to the street comer by the “dom s, figurami”, where people are gathering to read the latest news on the wall (DZ, 437). The point of the episode is an ironic equation of Soviet decrees with literature, highlighting once again the fact that Z&ago’s memory is still affected by the wall’s palimpsest quality. Later on, the lack of literariness in the new texts (442 f.) triggers iivago’s fainting spell: “On li- Silsja Euvstv i upal na trotuar bez pamjati” (443). Because of the etymolo-

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The Art of Memory in Pastemak’s Aesthetics 29

gically obvious polysemy of the Russian expression for being unconscious,fi it is possible to interpret this scene symbolically: the new texts literally deprive their reader of memory, because they represent the new era which fights tradition - in other words, because they themselves no longer pass on memory.

IV.

If the unconscious body is a body without memory, “bez pamjati”, then this implies that only a body in possession of memory is a living body capable of action: the Russian language accords the body an intuitive power of memory, and Pastemak activates this word’s deeper meaning. In Pasternak, body memory is always presented as involuntary memory (corresponding to Proust’s m&moire involontaize).

Pastemak draws special attention to the phenomenon of body memory in the following passage in OG:

3aYeMX TBK nonpo6eo o6o3Havam CBOKI nO3y? nOTOMy,'ITO II npo6w1 B Het BCIO HOSb. [...I

fl o603x-raWi.u llOnOXeHbe MOeI' Tena C TaKOft TOSHOCTbIO, no~owy YT~ 3~0 6bmo ero yTpeHHee nonoxeHbe Ha cryrfeHbKe neTeBuxeronoe3~a~oHoehiy3anoh4mnocb.(OG,225)

This passage describes Pastemak’s posture after his marriage proposal has been rejected, and after he has decided, while riding on the train, to abandon his career in philosophy. But it is not the turn of fate, the unusual mnemonic content which is given as a reason for the detailed description of the body’s posture. What is given as the reason is the posture’s mnemonic character as such: the remembering “I” describes his body’s activity of recollecting.

The gesture with which the adored Skrjabin had encouraged his pupil is shown as a physically perceptible inscription (OG, 196); initiation is recalled as memory being traced upon the body.

Individual parts and limbs of the body retain the memory of their former activities. An example of this are Zivago’s lips whispering in a child- like manner when he returns to the cemetery where as a child he had attended hisVmother’s funeral: “‘MamoEka’, [...I proSeptaI on por3i gubami tech let” (DZ, 106).

A connection between body and memory is directly established in the first stanza of Pastemak’s love poem ‘Ne trogat” (from the collection Sestra moja - Z&z’). Used as a metaphor for the writing screen of memory (in the Aristotelian tradition), the soul appears in the shape of a freshly painted,

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30 Erika Greber

unmarred white wall which the body proceeds to inscribe with the imprints of contact:

“He TporaTb - cBemeBbrKpameH” - J&ma He Bepernacb,

kI llaMIITb - B IIRTHaX HKP Pi II@K,

Ei py~, u ry6, H mas.

In a love relationship, the imprint of the other’s body upon one’s own creates a connection between the two bodies in absentia. Thus Zivago thinks of Lara in an imaginary dialogue: “Poka tebja pomnjat vgiby loktej moich, poka eG?e ty na rukach moich, ja pobudu s toboj” (Dg, 525). This is a concrete memory trace which is conceived of as deriving from the direct contact between two bodies.

In contrast, the contact between bodies in the following example has to be conceived of as a contact taking place virtually in cultural evolution. On his arrival in Marburg, Pasternak has the impression of experiencing the same sensations as Lomonosov two centuries before. Here, Pasternak con- ceives of cultural memory as something that can be concretely experienced by means of corporeal memory: The same glance, repeated centuries later, allows another body to perceive the same thing perceived before. For Paster- nak, cultural memory seems to originate in motion and to rise again by repe- tition of that motion. He captures this idea in the downright grotesque image of the “dvuchsotletie EuZich Sejnych my&Y, an image which can be described with the help of Bachtin’s concept of the “grotesque body”.”

It is the city, its pavement, that brings the bodies into contact with one another. The city is a semiotic space in which the inscription on the bodies takes place as an act of cultural transmission. The city as a palimpsest of memory conveys its palimpsestic quality to the body which moves through it, through the city as memory space.

For Pastemak, city-text-body are as one. He portrays this unity in the impression which Blok’s lyrics made upon him, “[.. .] toEno ne Eelovek soobSEaet o tom, Eto delaetsja v gorode, a sam gorod ustami Eeloveka za- javljaet o sebe” (AO, 428).

V.

Much has been written about Pastemak’s cities - his Marburg, his Venice, his Moscow; yet the function of these cities as memory spaces remains to be examined. Each of these cities connotes different aspects of the concept of memory and develops its own particular semantics of remembering; Paster- nak remodels their conventional topology.

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Moscow is the city of political and cultural upheaval following the revolution - the new old capital. Pastemak looks for the semiotics of cultural change in Moscow’s topography and toponyms. He critically emphasizes the name changes by also naming and remembering the old names; or, by anachronistically using only the old names, he in a sense reverses the name- change. He thereby insists on the continuance of culture - in a culture-critical model of toponymic anachronism which presents the panchrony of culture in the onomastic palimpsest of the city.”

Marburg figures primarily as a socio-political-historiographic palim- psest, whose strata are each commented upon (Hans Sachs, the Thirty Years’ War, contemporary post-war Germany; OG, 216, 229, 240 f.). The mne- monic metaphor of “doroga” is used here to show critically how yet another, modem layer is laid upon a “medieval” palimpsest.

As for other cities, it is the idea of cultural or literary palimpsest that is emphasized: the city as text - in one word: “architexture”.”

For Pastemak, the quintessential Venice is architexture (“slovo, ska- zannoe v kamne”), palimpsest (“Pustych mest v pustych dvorcach ne osta- 10s’. Vse zanjato krasotoj”), and locus (“Slovo [...I obroslo vekovymi vos- torgami puteSestvennikov”; OG, 248). The Pastemakian image of Venice in OG is motivated by the polemics against Futurism which is characteristic of the text as a whole. In contrast to the Futurists’ denial of tradition which, in the Italian variant, is expressed in the disparagement of “passeistic” Venice, Pasternak sketches Venice as a cultural palimpsest (in which Renaissance painting is the most significant layer). In visiting the various collections, Pastemak had grasped a basic element of culture (OG, 252), which could be called, following Bergson, the “d&e” of culture.

Florence, too, epitomizes the idea of architexture: “Florenciju, temnuju, tesnuju, strojnuju, - Zivoe izvleEenie iz dantovskich tercin” (AO, 444).

Petersburg is also presented by Pastemak as a textual (intertextual) city, a “kamennaja kniga” (AO, 431). In OG he has Majakovskij’s eyes rove over the city’s layers, and Majakovskij reads there texts by PuSkin, Dosto- evskij, and Belyj (OG, 269) - the main texts of that intertextual chain which constitutes the Petersburg myth. In Pasternak’s experience of Petersburg/ Petrograd, it is only movement in space that unveils the “architextural” qua- lity; it is only “nogami i glazami” (AO, 431) that one can read the city’s book as one walks, walk it as one reads.

VI.

Movement in itself is a constitutive element in the art of memory: the mne- monist has to revisit the loci in order to remember. For Pastemak, corporeal memory also serves to underline the importance of movement, of the body’s

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32 Eika Greber

vital presence on the spot. It is through movement (lip movements, caresses) that the body acquires what is to be remembered, and it is by the repetition of this movement that the body remembers and can recall.

The motif of movement dominates in Pasternak’s memory spaces. He chooses paths, streets, boulevards, a clock, an airplane hangar, a house with moving statues, etc. as topoi. The leitmotif in OG is a moving train, in which recollection takes place; Dz is the novel of perpetual motion (with chro- notopic chapter titles like ‘PjatiEasovyj skoryj’, ‘V doroge’, ‘Priezd’, ‘Na bol’ Soj doroge’ ) .

The memory places in or on which one is moving and which them- selves are moving reflect the motion of the remembering person: the process of remembering is one of walking. Pasternak is recollecting - which is for him synonymous with creating art - while in motion. Pastemak remembers walking through Moscow at night, passing along the little cobblestoned streets of Marburg, riding on the train en route to Berlin, pacing up and down in his lodgings, descending the stairs to the cellar (OG, 199, 214, 224-225, 232-233, 206); Pastemak renders Majakovskij’s remembering as taking place while walking through Petersburg, and he has his fictional characters remember while in motion (e.g. iivago during the funeral procession, while climbing stairs, or on the ride home; DA, 104 f., 349,432 f.).

Even script has to represent the movement of writing: “Razgonistym poEerkom, zabotjas’, Etoby vneSnost’ napisannogo peredavala Zivoe dviZenie ruki, on vspomnil i zapisal.. .‘y (DA, 506 f.).

Pastemak’s negative symbol of forgetting, conversely, is immobility. In the image of a train’ stopping and being delayed he portrays people’s indifference to memory and history (OG, 259 f.). The memory ritual played out in the tsarist centennial celebration is revealed as false through the image of a motionless memory place.

The motifs of speed and movement already make their appearance in Pastemak’s early works, including his theoretical essays, where some ex- pressions of fast movement “suggest an affinity to the &UI vital of Bergson”, as A. Livingstone has remarked.”

Considered in the context of the art of memory, this emphasis on dynamics can be traced to the mnemonic essence of Pastemak’s conception of art, which in turn is connected with Bergson.” A certain interrelatedness of chronotopical memory and processuality/dynamics is also characteristic of the Acmeist model of memory, and the Acmeists’ ideas are demonstrably related to Bergson’s concept of &rn vital. 21 It is not coincidental that Paster- nak’s conception of memory has a great deal in common with, for example, Mandel’Stam’s.” Reading the novel in its connection to Bergson, I. Masing- Delic interprets iivago’s “Kunst, das Vergessene zu sehen” as part of his intuitive consciousness.~ As a representative of this type of consciousness Zivago is opposed to the instinctive and the intellectual types.%

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The vitalist-intuitive implications in Pastemak’s art of memory seem to affect the mnemotechnical ones. For Pastemak’s mental movement through memory places does not correspond to the planned and ordered memorizing that is provided for by the rules of ars memo&e. He does not adhere to a straight spatial or logical sequence ab initio. His movements are more un- systematic, zigzagging through memory space, where his glance gives ran- dom occurrences a privileged position and creates new proximities - it is a metonymical motion with so to speak a “metonymizing” glance. The follow- ing example, which depicts &vago remembering his foster mother in the graveyard during her burial, clearly illustrates the accidental collection of “things at random”:

K)pa c BomneneHHeM npe~Kyman,KaK 01i [...I B coon sayno- KOZhlbIe CTpOKHIlOAHHe &iBaHOBHeB~aBHTBCe,9TOeMy K TO$i MmiyTenon~epHeTc~:Bceuyfa8Hoe,wo er4ynoncyHeTmasHb: ztee-TpsnyuIInix OTJniYHTeJIbHbIx~epTbI 110KOthiOti; 06pa3To~a B Tpaype; HeCKOJIbKO JVIH~HbIX Ha6JnOlJeHHfi II0 IIyTH Hasan C ruran6nma;crwpaunoe 6enbe Ha~O~MecTe,r~eHaBHoKorAa-To HOYbIO3aBbIBa.JIaBbIOI-aUOHlTJIarta.JIMNIeHbKHM.(D~,107)

This example, which presents i!ivago in the act of memorizing, shows Pastemak’s metaphorics of memory space in its metapoetic function. %vago commits concrete sensory details to memory for his subsequent composition of poetry, i.e. he furnishes his memory space in anticipation, so that during some future creative process these images need only be recalled. When A. Livingstone remarks about Pastemak’s poetology that Zivago makes “poems [. . .] about whatever happened to be 1 ing

% around in space or memory”,a

then this is not quite accurate; rather, ivago makes poems of whatever is lying around in the space of memory: zivago mnemotechnically takes the things in the space around him and places them for the moment into his own memory space - in order to recall the images of those things later when writing poetry.

And he re-arranges these things in a new coincidental order, which could be defined, following Jakobson,% as an order of “metonymical elective affinity”.

Pastemak’s “creative metonymy” changes “the accustomed order of things. Association by proximity [. . .] transforms spatial distribution and tem- poral succession”. Pastemak’s “dislocated space”n replaces the systematic order with unsystematic, intuitive metonymical connections. It is a matter not of organization of knowledge, but of creative intuition.

Thus it also seems questionable in regard to Pastemak whether it is order that assists memory, as Cicero would have it. In Pastemak, as in classi- cal mnemotechnics, an almost literal illumination is required to light up the

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Erika Greber

imagines so that they become recognizable. However, for Pasternak, the illu- mination does not result from the system of order, but from chance intuition.

The source of illumination can be a kind of enlightenment, for example in Pastemak’s experience of d6# vu which he relates in OG (247 ff.). This episode about a “familiar stranger” (an inhabitant of Venice who reminds him, as he later realizes, of a Marburg waiter) is recounted in scrupulous detail, although in its narrative context it appears to be quite superfluous. It reveals its importance only when considered from the point of view of memory: its sole motivation is the ddjii vu phenomenon, which Pastemak uses here to develop his concept of “edinstvo Liznennych sobytij” (OG, 247). This unity is established by coincidental relationships “perekrestnymi dejst- vijami” (ibid.), which are unimportant in and of themselves and become relevant only as interconnected units seen within the semantic frame of Pastemak’s specific system of coincidence, In this conception of teleolo- gical-providential coincidence, which we are familiar with from D2, an important function is fulfilled by memory.%

A further non-manipulable source of light is the moonlight in the storage room (cf. the realized memory metaphor above: Dk, 200 f.).29 The moonlight points out to Zivago’s memory the traces contained in the storage room of bygone times. The furnishing of this memory space encompasses both disorderly-chaotic aspects of memory (clutter) and orderly-cosmic aspects (the family archive) - not in opposition to each other, but rather in the form of some unregulated co-existence, in accordance with the chance order of intuition.

The same ordered-disorderly constellation is repeated in the novel when givago returns to Lara’s home after his imprisonment in the partisan camp:

KaK qacT0 B necHoM narepe no nocnemiefi 3asmymm Bcnohm-

HaJ-l OH peUIeT9aTbIti J’3Op JIWTbIX ‘4J’IJ’HHbIX CTyIIeHeti. Ha KaKOM-TO IIOBOpOTe nOJJ’beMa, IIpn B3WIXJJe CKBO3b peIIIeTK)’ IIOn

HOI-n, BHRJY OTKpbIBaJInCb CBaJIeHHbIe JIOJJ JIeCTHnIJet XJ’JJbIe

Begpa, JIOXaHn n IIOJIOMaHHbIe CTyJIbSI. TaK I-IOBTOpliJTOCb n Cd-

sac. Hnvero ire n3MeHmocb, Bee 6bIno no-npemaehly. A0K~0p

6bI.n I-IO’dTn 6naroAapeH JIecTHEqe 38 BepHOCTb ITpOULJIOMj’.

(D& 440 f.)

Zivago finds both the cosmic locus of the stairway ornamentation and the chaotic imagines of the clutter” unchanged since the time he had put them in storage; because locus and imagines activate the meaning deposited in them, he draws the conclusion that the staircase (metonymy for the woman inhabiting the house) has remained faithful to him. His memory predicts the immediate future - and, gifted mnemonist that he is, he is proven right.

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Where the mnemonic sign becomes a prophetic sign, there takes place, so to speak, a “recollection of the future”. C.A. Jackson31 calls this “prophe- tic coincidence: knowledge of past or future history is transmitted to the cha- racters through the mechanisms of their cherished memories and connects them with their immortal destiny in eternity”.

A paradoxical pattern of tension between “past predicted - future re- membered” works in Dg, as Jackson (266 ff.) convincingly argued. It is based on the function of memory (defined as a power “operating on the subtle level in the extrasensory substructure”)32 “to predict events on the obvious level in the time-space structure which lie within the fate of each character”.33 Only those characters who have preserved recollective access to their past can, according to Jackson,% be successful prophets of their future, while those who reject their personal, social, political and cultural past are bound to suffer failures in such an enterprise.

A revealing scene of coincidence determined by memory can be found already in the prose fragment ‘Povest”. The protagonist Se&a has to search for his fiancee Anna somewhere in the city; he strains his memory, but he can recall the names of only two streets where some acquaintances of hers live. “Ignoring the forgotten directions”, he searches for her, “as if Anna’s choice were restricted by his forgetfulness”$ in one of the two streets and eventually finds her. This scene shows that not only space can structure me- mory, but, conversely, that memory can literally direct the space, can make it accessible in the first place. It shows the intuitive harmony of two souls, of two memories in Pastemak’s mnemonic conception of coincidence.

Pastemak’s unsystematic art of memory is an art of the metonymically functioning memory and an art of intuitive memory.

VII.

The process of recollection possesses metapoetical significance for Paster- nak. In OG, the origins of art are explicitly connected with memory and re- collection: “Ona [poezija] rotdalas’ [...I na glubokom gorizonte vospomi- nan’ja” (OG, 202). In other words, Pastemak conceives of poetry per se as mnemonic art,” explicitly informing the reader on the mnemonic background of this idea: “Rto edinstvennoe Euvstvo, kotoroe pamjat’ sberegla mne vo vsej svetisti” (OG, 202). The fact that “pamjat’” in Russian is feminine fits perfectly well into Pasternak’s feminine myth, where another feminine principle holds a sacred place: “Zizn”‘. Pastemak’s cherished ideas of life and memory combine in his vitalist mnemopoetics.

The concept of mnemonic art becomes manifest in the concrete des- criptions of the “birth of poetry”, in the attempt at writing, the stages of in- spiration, or creative phases of his protagonists.

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In ‘Povest”, the situation of the “birth of poetry” is portrayed in a sug- gestive manner. Poetical inspiration occurs precisely on the “horizon of me- mories”: Before falling asleep, SereZa, the incipient writer, conjures up the visual image of a summer’s day (‘Povest”, 142). After this deliberate recol- lection, he experiences, “perenosjas’ ot vospominan’ja k vospominan’ju” (ibid.), the memory of the last pre-war summer as a m&noife involontaire. Embedded in this recollection (as a text within the text, “povest’ v Povesti”), we find in rough draft the detailed paraphrase of his first literary work. Thus inspiration, nurtured by memory, is presented in a (romantic) analogy of imagination, dream, and poetic creation,n where re-collection and collection, re-production and production are one and the same.

The novel Doktor &ago chronicles the life of a poet - often in this retrospective-reconstructive manner, with scenes of re-experiencing, re-vi- sualizing, recollecting (sometimes recollecting recollection, “Erinnern des Erinnems”), or even in anticipatory form (“recollection of the future”).

Remembering his poems, i?ivago writes them down during the phase of love and creativity in Varykino: “on vspomnil i zapisal [. . .] naibolee oprede- 1ivSeesja i pamjatnoe, RoZdestvenskuju zvezdu, Zimrsjuju noti’ i dovol’no mnogo drugich stichotvorenij.. .” (D$!, 507).

givago’s power of recollection is above all dedicated to Lam He sees her even when she is not with him; the reminiscences of her inspire his ~oerns.~ The love scenes themselves are also frequently captured in a retrospective-reconstructive fashion as scenes of re-experiencing and recol- lecting.39

Loving and writing coincide in the act of remembering. All three spheres are joined together by the person of the beloved woman - she is the Muse of poetry and the Muse of memory to her lover.“’

In one of the hymnal, lofty conversations between givago and Lam, the lovers become recollection incarnate, become the memory of culture, when Lara says:

II Mb1 c ~0608 nourennee 3ocnor+ninanrie 060 BceM TOM nenc- WiCJniMO BMIHKOM, ‘IT0 HaTBOpeHO Ha CBeTe 38 MHOrHe TbICSNH

neT Mew HHMH si HaMsi, H B nabwrb wnix 5icqe3Hpnnix vyAec

MM AbIlWiM H Jno6HM, H lTJ’IaYCM, H ACPXHMCR ApJ’r 38 HpYra H APJT K APJ’IJ’ JIbHeM. (DZ?, 468)

After the irrevocable separation from Lara, zivago expresses his longing and grief in dialogical soliloquies; Lara becomes his Muse one last time. He re- members the members of her body lost to him forever. These passages of poetic prose become, through the striking coincidence of remembering and image-finding and through the concentration of quasi-archetypal mnemonic images, a paragon of mnemonic art:

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“l$XJIeCTb hi011 nesa6sennaX! noKa ~e651 ~OMI-IPT eni6b1 JIOKT~~~ MOHX, noKa ewe ~bl Ha py~ax H rydax MOHX, II no6yny c ~06oti. JI BbInJIasy cJIe3bI o~e6e B ~~M-H~~~~~ocTo~HoM,O~T~~~M~~. A 3arIHIIIyrIahUZTboTe6e ~~exHO~,~ex~OM,~e~ene9~- HOM w306pameuIw 2 OcTaHycb TUT, IIOKa 3~01-0 He C~eJIaIo. A

IIOTOM H caM yew. BOT K~K II Hso6pamy ~e6x d nonomy sepw

TBOH Ha By~ary, K~K nOcJIe cTpa111~0ft 6yp11, B3pbIBaIOIqeti Mope

A0 OCHOB8HHS,JIO~aTCIIHa IleCOK C.lIem CHJIbHe#IIIe~, &UIblI.Ie BCWO JJOl'IJIeCKHBaBIIle~CSI BOJIHM. nOMiUiOti HSBHJIWCTOti IIHHH- eti HaKHnbxsaeT Mope neM3y, npobry, partynoca, ~0A0pOCnIi,

CaMOeJIeI’KOeIi HeBeCOMOe,YTOOHOMOrJIOlIO,IIJ-IIITbCOJ&Ha.~O 6eCKOHeuHO TXIiylQaaCH BAaJIb 6eperosaR I-paIIIiua CaMOrO Bbl- coKoro npw6oa. T~K IIPH~RTIO ~e6a eti IKKH~HH KO me, rop-

AOCI% ~0% T~K II wso6pamy Te6%” (D

The poetic act is simulated here as both present and absent: present in the lyrical-metaphorical style of composition, and absent insofar as it is projected into the future.

It is significant for Paster&c’s conception of poetic creativity that all these acts of creation are not rendered synchronically, but described either as an anticipatory act of memorizing or as a subsequent act of recollection. The creative act acquires substance only in the act of being repeated and re- captured. It would seem as if it is rendered post factum, but strictly speaking the creative act is not even repeated, as it has not taken place at all (nor will it take place withing the limits of the novel): it is only in the process of re- membering that the creative act comes about.‘l The fact that poetic creation would not take place in the present means that it is not at the poet’s disposala - which reveals a non-availability of creation, an absence that can only be made present by prospective and retrospective remembering.

VIII.

A specific concept of collective, cultural memory is outlined in Di!, when zivago expounds his ideas of a socio-culturally based immortality as trans- personal memory to his foster mother on her deathbed:

qeM BbI ce6ss IIOMHHTe, KaKJ’IO SaCTb CO3liaBaJDi H3 CBOerO CO- cTaBa?C~oSi IIOYKH, neYeHb,coCyAbt?HeT, CKOJI~KO HH~~WOM- HHTe, Bbl BCerAa 3aCTaBaJIH ce6x B Hapy;Y(HOM, AeSITeJIbHOM IIpOIIBJIeHHH,BJ@ZJIaXBalIIHX pyK,B CeMbe,BApyrHX.[...]%JIo- BeK B ~pyn~ ~nowx H ecTb gyfua SenoBeKa. BOT vro Bbl ecTb, BOT~eM~U.U~O,IIHTaJIOCb,yIIHBaJIOCbBCIOXUi3HbBiUIIeCo3Ha- HHe. BaIueti .qyn101O, B~II.IHM 6eCCMepTHeM, BaIIIeti mH3HbIo B npynix. w YTO me? B ~pynix BbI 6bImr,Bnp~WX H OcTaHeTeCb.

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38 Erika Greber

M KaK81I Bahl pa3HHqa, 'IT0 IIOTOM 3TO 6yAeT Ha3bIBaTbCSI IIa- Im'bIO.~O6y~eTeBbI,BOI.ueJIJIIaIIBCOCTaB Byztymero. 0% 82)

Zivago holds out the prospect of survival in cultural memory to a dying woman, and he himself outlives his own death in the memory of his poetry.

During the funeral, the act of remembering his foster mother inspires Zivago to compose poetry. The place of inspiration is the cemetery, a me- morial place par excellence, since it is the memorial ture. Also, it is %vago’s personal memorial place “

k i!

lace of an entire cul- to bylo to pamjatnoe

kladbiSEe, mesto upokoenija Marii Nikolaevny”; D , 106) where the locus itself and the imagines of drying clothes on a line remind him of another image, the storm that had been raging during his mother’s funeral, an image associated with his tears and grief.

Zivago does not lament the dead; he does not even visit his mother’s grave; for him, the contiguity of his and her respective sites is sufficient. Remembrance instead of lament, a commemorative act instead of a dirge - this is Zivago’s strange act of piety. Rather than undertaking pilgrimages to petrified memorial sites he creates his own literary memorial, and once more, the act of remembering results in the non-synchronic, postponed “birth of Poetry - “* “Jura s votieleniem predvkugal, kak on [...I v svoi zaupokojnye stroki po Anne Ivanovne vstavit vse.. .” (DA, 107).

Zivago formulates his artistic creed as an oxymoronic relation between life and death that is resolved in art: “[iskusstvo] neotstupno razmySljaet o smerti i neotstupno tvorit etim Zizn”’ (ibid.).

Vedenjapin, too, expresses this relation in his main philosophical idea: “mysl’ ob istorii, kak o vtoroj vselennoj, vozdvigaemoj EeloveEestvom v ot- vet na javlenie smerti i pomoQ?ju javlenij vremeni i pamjati” (DA, 79). Apart from the implication of this notion for his philosophy of religion and of history4 - its poetological consequence is a “novaja ideja iskusstva” (DZ, 107).

And this novel conception of art is mnemonic. Zivago’s reply to the challenge of death on the cemetery, “otvet na opustoienie, proizvedennoe smert’ju” (ibid.) is precisely an art based on remembering. In a certain sense, this art is a religion of art, it has transcendental powers. Even the first sentence of the novel (3li i Sli i peli ‘Ve2nuju pamjat”“) cryptically con- tains a symbolic ambiguity. Here, the liturgical dirge for Zivago’s mother (a dirge that will later metonymically enter into Zivago’s poetry), heralds Pas- temak’s own artistic credo: literature is eternal remembrance, “vdnaja pa- mjat”‘.

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Ix.

As a consequence, such a conception of literature as eternal remembrance requires that a poetical necrology be future-oriented. Pastemak’s reflections on Majakovskij’s suicide (OG, 281 ff.) are examples of this. His necrology, which insists on the future of the deceased, is a commemorative labor pitted against death; the “death mask” that Pastemak accords Majakovskij shows the mimic imprint of someone whose life is yet to come. Pastemak’s acts of remembering after having heard the news (on the way to the apartment, in the room when he sees Majakovskij’s death pose, and later by the coffin) each recall specific instances of Majakovskij’s early futurist work (especially Oblako v Stanach).

Jakobson detects a contradiction between, on the one hand, Pastemak’s “endeavor” to proclaim the future as “the crucial category” of his poetic system, as did the futurists Chlebnikov and Majakovskij, and, on the other hand, Pastemak’s “ingrained propensity for the ‘deep horizon of memo- ries “‘.“ However, as I have tried to show, Pastemak’s memory system is in itself future-oriented, as it even encompasses something like a “recollection of the future” and is aimed at eternal remembrance, and this is why the two aspects turn out to be not at all contradictory. Within Pastemak’s mnemonic aesthetics, they are oxymoronically integrated.

Majakovskij is particularly important for the poetics of memory that Pastemak develops in OG. There are over twenty occasions where mnemonic and mnemotechnical motifs appear in connection with him. Majakovskij is shown not only as a catalyst for recollection, but also as one who himself remembers. Pastemak applies his rhetoric of memory in a deconstructive way here: Majakovskij - the cultural revolutionary, the militant attacker of classical cultural values, advocate of an unprecedented, non-remembering art, rhetorician of anti-memory - is presented as an agent of memory.6

X.

As Pasternak demonstrates, the memory of language retains the history of words, their etymology. Significantly enough, the etymological structure of the key term “pamja_t”’ is foregrounded by a figura etymologica: “pamjat”’ - “bespamjatstvo” (DZ, 443).&

Etymology is presented in its quality of storage and accumulation,” especially in the chapter on Venice in OG. Pastemak uses here etymolo- gically based devices and comments on formations of etymological interest. The root “roZd”, a leitmotif in OG,” is presented in several paronomastic variants, reaching a climax in a metatextual reflection on etymology itself (“ponjatija pererotdajutsja”; OG, 259). Another example is “pantalony” -

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“Pantalone” - “pianta leone” which Pasternak develops into his neologism “pantalonnyj jazyk” (OG, 249). The “pantalonnyj jazyk” is set in contrast to the language of forgetfulness (“jazyk zabvenija”; OG, 250), and the disparate terms themselves illustrate the contrast of their content: “pantalonnyj jazyk’ is Pastemak’s metaphor for the language that is mindful of its etymology and that is therefore capable of metaphor - while, conversely, the language of forgetfulness does not participate in the image treasury of cultural memory and hence is devoid of metaphor.

The language of forgetfulness is the language of censorship; Pastemak demonstrates this in the emblem of the lion (OG, 249). The slot for secret denunciations at the stairs to the censor’s palace was chiseled in the shape of a lion’s opened jaws. It serves as a locus of prohibited remembrance, because “upominanie o licach, zagadoEno provalivSichsja v prekrasno izvajannuju SEel”’ was dangerous (ibid.). It is this negative notion of forgetting due to censorship that Pasternak resists: he remembers in spite of it, and he re- members forgetting itself.

Pastemak, who does not speak the language of forgetfulness, comme- morates some of the poets who disappeared in the lion’s jaws during Stalin’s reign of terror.

Pastemak also remembers some of the poets whose texts disappeared from the active memory of contemporaries through decanonization; e.g. the futurist Bol’Sakov, whom he mentions as Majakovskij’s constant compa- nion” In this respect then, too, Ochmnaja gramota is an “ochrannaja gra- mota fuhuizma”, retaining the memory of the Futurists’ beginnings, and, in- deed, writing them down.

The process of alternation between decanonization and re-canonization is basically a mnemonic process, an alternation between forgetting and re- membering.s Here we find a positively connoted notion of forgetting: as the potential for recalling again (and Pastemak subversively demonstrates how to transform censorship-based forgetting into remembering).

Pasternak’s remembering is a threefold and autoreflexive one: it re- members remembering processes, it remembers that which has been forgot- ten, and it remembers forgetting itself as an integral part of memory:

TepxTb B mi3Hn 6orree HeoBxognMo, se&I npno6peTaTb. 3epHO

He AWT BCXOAtl, WJIH He YMpeT. Haso XKWTb He YCT8B811, CMO-

TpeTb BIIepeA H IIHTaTbCII JKBBblMH 3UItlCfiMli, KOTOpbR CoBMeCT- HO c rramTbI0 BbIpa6aTbIBaeT 3a6BeHne. (AO, 448)

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XI.

Finally, Pastemak conceives of language’s memory as an autopoietic system,

41

a self-generating memory system. In several instances, Pastemak alludes to this idea.

Poesy itself begins to speak, using Majakovskij’s tongue: “[. . .] poezija zagovorila jazykom po&i sektantskich otofdestvlenij” (OG, 269).

Or the poetic objects begin writing themselves, laying their traces on the paper - the way Pastemak imagines it in his reminiscence of Blok: “[. . .] stichotvorenija nikto ne pisal i ne soEinjal” (AO, 428). In this passage, Pas- temak’s words form an iconic memorial for Blok’s poetry, since subliminally - imitating Blok’s devices - they quote the famous urbanistic poem “NoE’, ulica, fonar’, apteka”. The implication is that Pastemak’s language itself vir- tually remembers Blok’s poetical signs.

Numerous devices in the production of poetic texts can be considered “mnemonic devices”, devices that are automatically activated in the recount- ing of oral literature (recurrence of metric patterns, epitheta omantia, syntac- tic parallelisms). For Pastemak, such mnemonic devices are concomitant to and preconditional for any kind of poetic production. Writing means finding the mnemonic signs which poetic language itself has deposited in “its own laws” (“siloj svoich zakonov”; Pastemak mentions meter, rhyme, and other forms):

[...I OH WCIIblTaJI npw6nwmeeae TOrO, ST0 Ha3bIBaeTCII BJJOXHO- BeHneM.thOTHOLUeHneCnJI,yIIpaBJISIBIIInX TBOp'IeCTBOM,KBK 6bI CTaHOBHTCII Ha I-OJIOBY. lkpBeHCTB0 IIOJIyWeT He 'IeJIOBeK W COCTOIIHHe WO ,Q'mH,KOTOpO~ OH HI.IJeT BblpIUKKeHWI, 8 SKJbIK, KOTOpbIMOHXOYeTerOBbIpa3HTb. ~3bIK,pOJ&IiHanBMeCTELlI~e KpaCOTbI W CMbICJIa, CaM HaWiHaeT WMaTb n rOBOpnTb 38 '4eJIOBeKan BeCbCTZlHOBWTCIIMJ'3bIKO~, HeBOTHOIIIeHnnBHeUtHe CJIyXOBOrO 3ByYaHnII, HO B OTHOUIeHnn CTpeMnTeJIbHOCTn n MOl-yIIJeCTBaCBOerOBHYTpeHHerOTe~eHNII. Torna lTOJ406HO KaTII- me&x rpoMane pesaoro noroka, ca=rM nr3n~ennerbr cr3onM 06TaWBaIOlqeft KaMHn ma n BopouaH>lqeft Koneca MenbHnu, JIbIOqUCSI pegb caMa,cnnoti CBOWX 3aKOHOB C03AaeTno IlyTn, MnMoxoAoM, pa3Mep n pn&dy, n TbIcsrwi gpyrnx +opM n 06pa30saHnti erqe 6onee BamHbIX,HO A0 CnX IIOp Hey3HaHHbIX, HeyYTeHHbIX,HeHa3BaHHbIX.(Dp,507)

Once again, the metapoetic statement is mimetically reflected through rhyth- mization and sound ornamentation. Language's etymological memory is ac- tive and produces a conspicuous paronomasia: speech (“reE”‘) is compared to the flow of a river (“recnoj potok”), whereby the habitual notion of speech- flow (“recevoj potok”) arises without being mentioned. Poetic speech un-

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covers the origins of the dead metaphor and revitalizes the word; it renews and brings about its own lively flow.

In this way, Pasteruak formulates a mnemonic vitalist variant of &cti- ture automatique: bound into the memory system of mnemonic art, poetic language remembers in passing, “PO puti, mimochodom”, in flowing through its own memory space; it remembers its own laws and creates itself.

NOTES

1 There are only few studies that deal with the question of memory in Pastemak’s writing: C.A. Jackson, Teleological Coincidence and Eternity in Pastemak’s Prose (Diss. New York University, 1978), treats it as a secondary issue in her discussion of Pasternak’s conception of coincidence (cf. note 31 below); I. Masing-Delic, ‘Bergsons Schiipferisce Entwicklung und Pastemaks Doktor Shivago’, in Literatur- und Sprachentwicklung in Osteuropa im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin 1982, pp. 112-130; esp. pp. 125127) touches upon it in connection with Pasternak’s relationship to Bergson (cf. notes 20 and 23.29, 30 below); I.C. Kelly, Eternal Memory: Historical Themes in Pastemak’s Doctor &ago’ (Diss. Columbia University, 1986) examines the interrelation of Pasternak’s notions of memory and history (cf. note 43 below). In the various studies dedicated to Pastemak’s conception of art there has been little mention of the topic (e.g. A. Livingstone, Pasternak on Art and Creativity [Cambridge-London 19851; cf. notes 19, 22 below). Bayara Aroutunova presented a paper ‘Motiv pamjati v stichach Pastemaka’ at the Boris Pastemak Centenary Conference (Oxford, July 1990). where the present article was read at the same panel. From this paper emerged two longer articles in German language: E. Greber, ‘Pasternaks unsystematische Kunst des Gedlchtnisses’, in R. Lachmann, A. Haverkamp (Eds.), Getichtniskunst: Raum - Bild - Schrifi. Studien zur Mnemotechnik (Frankfurt/M. 1991, pp. 295-327); ‘Das Erinnem des Erinnems. Die mnemonische Asthetik Boris Pasternaks’, in Poetica 24,

2 1992, pp. 356-391. There is no sure way of telling whether Pasternak was acquainted with the classical mnemotechnical theories; possibly he studied antique rhetoric in connection with his studies of philosophy. At any rate, he was demonstrably acquainted with the concept of anamnesis as derived from Plato (cf. the essay ‘Cemyj bokal’, 1916).

3

’ F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 19842, p. 3. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11,2,20.

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5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

13

16

‘Ordinem esse maxime, qui memoriae lucem adferret” (De Oratore: II, 86. 353). Cf. Ad Herennium (III, XXII, 37), Cicero (De oratore, II. 87), and Quintilian (Znstitutio oratoria, XI, 2.22). F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 10. De or&ore, II, 88, 360 and II, 86. 354 (cf. also Quintilian, Znstitutio oratoria, XI, 2.22). For further aspects of Pasternak’s mnemonic conception, e.g. the idea of cultural intertextual memory, the interrelation of memory and intertextuality, the relation between memoirs, anti-memoirs and memoria cf. E. Greber, ‘Das Erinnem des Erinnems’. Octinaia gramota, in B. Pasternak, Vozduhye puti(Moskva 1982) referred to below as OG. ‘AvtobiografiEeskij o&k’, in Vozduhye puti, p. 452, referred to below as AO. Comparing Pastemak’s two “autobiographical” texts with respect to their con- ceptualization of memory I found them to be quite different. OG is fashioned as a kind of anti-autobiography (“anti-memuary”, L. FlejSman, Boris Pasternak v dvadcatye gody [Miinchen 1981, p. 1851). whereas A0 is written in the style of conventional memoirs. Accordingly, A0 is set towards the remembering I (“erinnemdes Ich”), whereas OG is set towards the remembered I (“erinnertes IN), which turns out, quite originally, to be the genuine remembering I, be- cause numerous past acts of remembering are narrated. Thus the narrative mode is one of recollecting recollection, or remembering remembering (cf. E. Greber, ‘Das Erinnern des Erinnems’). E. Greber, ‘Das Erinnem des Erinnerns’. lot. cit. B. Pasternak, Do&or fivago (Paris 1959, pp. 200 f.), referred to below as Dg. This connotation cannot be considered a coincidence, since Pastemak else- where employs the same polysemy, expounding it in a paronomasia and developing this paradoxically (AO, 452). M. Bachtin, TvorEestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul’tura srednevekov’ja i renessansa, Moskva 1965, ch. 5, esp. p. 363. Cf. the chapter on Moscow in E. Greber, ‘Pastemaks unsystematische Kunst des Gedichtnisses’, lot. cit. This expression is borrowed from E. Meyer, ‘Fur eine Architektur des Ge- dichtnisses’, in her Architexturen (Basel-Frankfurt/M. 1976, pp. 75-92). For her, this term defines the architecture of memory as space (p. 93) while here, it conversely is meant to designate the architectural space as text. Cf. also Livingstone’s description of Pastemak’s “lifelong fascination with paraphernalia of travel” and “lasting imagery of traveling”: “The world is in fast movement and art is even faster - this seems to be his basic conception” (Art and Creativity, pp. 2 ff.). M. Aucouturier, ‘Ob odnom klju& k Ochrannoj gramote’, in Boris Pastemak 1890-1960. Colloque de CCrisy-la-Salle (11-14 Sept. 1975) (Paris 1979, pp. 337-349, 340 f.), points out the parallels between Pasternak’s aesthetics as

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21

22

23

24

25

26

27

2a

29

outlined in OG and Bergson’s opposition of matter vs. life. I. Masing-Delic, ‘Bergson und Pasternak’. p. 129, writes about the traces of Bergson’s “Cvo- lution c&a&ice” in the novel and about pivago’s “philosophical ‘transforma- tionism”‘. R. Lachmann, ‘Vergangenheit als Aufschub: Die Kulturosophie des Akmeis- mus’, in her Gediichtnis und Literatur. Intertextualitit in der modemen russi- schen Literatur (Frankfurt/M. 1990, pp. 354403) (English version ‘The Past as Delay: The Culturosophy of the Acmeists’, in her Text and Memory, in print at Minnesota Press). A. Livingstone, Art and Creativity, pp. 14 f., however, restricts the idea that “the creative moment is one of recollection” exclusively to Mandel’Stam and states that in Pasternak “instead of a slow recalling of the past, there is a sudden grasp of the present”. Furthermore, Livingstone stresses the differences between the two poets: “While Mandel’shtam’s moment of art involves the mystery of perfect recognition, Pasternak’s involves the astonishment of com- plete loss of recognition.” Yet, as my discussion of some examples of the “birth of poetry at the deep horizon of memories” shows (cf. section VI below), Pasternak’s “moment of art” is in fact one of recollection (and, in some in- stances, recollection not of things past, but recollection of recollection past). The missing “recognition” in Paster& can be explained by that moment in his mnemonic conception of art which I want to call the “non-availability of creation” (“Nichtvetftigbarkeit des Dichtens”. cf. section VI). I. Masing-Delic, ‘Bergson und Pasternak’, p. 125. Two passages from the novel are quoted by Masing-Delic as examples for pivago’s mnemonic talent (pp. 126, 127). Ibid., p. 112 f. A. Livingstone, Art and Creativity, p. 58 (italics mine). R. Jakobson, ‘Marginal Notes on the Prose of the Poet Pastemak’ (1935). in D. Davie, A. Livingstone (Eds.), Pastemak, London 1969, pp. 135-151, 146. Ibid., p. 144. C.A. Jackson, Teleological Coincidence and Eternity, p. 149. I. Masing-Delic uses this passage to point out that the past is a playroom for intuition, while for intellect the past is merely a storage room. Referring to Bergson, she explains that Aivago’s “voyage into the past” is motivated by a remembering “illumination’* (‘Bergson und Pastemak’, p. 127). The image of clutter has, in my view, a positive connotation within Pastemak’s memory system and does not represent superfluous, useless items, as I. Masing-Delic (‘Bergson und Pasternak’) would have it (“Shivago [... kann Lara nich zu ‘Gerilmpel’ werden lassen”, p. 126). Quite the contrary, d ivago even makes the clutter part of his memory-image of Lara. The memory space of his intuitive consciousness seems to me precisely a “‘junk-room of the unconscious” (“‘Rumpelkammer’ des UnbewuBten”, ibid.). Teleological Coincidence and Eternity, p. 339. Jackson’s study is not con- cerned with the idea of memory as such. She includes aspects of memory only where they are implicated in the conception of coincidence, which means for

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her, where they refer to character, time, and action. It is, paradoxically, a somewhat technical study, e.g. where the author tries to painstakingly differen- tiate between the various types of coincidence (happenstance and synchro- nicity, each on the obvious, subtle and transcendent level). In addition to the cases of coincidence which are already explicitly commented upon by Paster- nak, Jackson finds - thanks to a (overly?) developed tracking instinct - a multitude of coincidental relationships based on “psychic transmission” (sleep, dreams, delirium, hallucination, inspiration, madness, unconsciousness, clair- voyance, telepathy, as well as other parapsychological faculties, including the phenomenon of d&j4 vu). Jackson interprets the connection of coincidence and memory in the two “Self-Sketches” OG and A0 as the structure of an “immortal biography” (pp. 126 ff.), neglecting the profound differences which can be found in the memory concepts of the two texts (cf. note 12 above). The most remarkable passages in Pasternak’s prose that are relevant for memory are, of course, commented upon by Jackson: but my compilation of examples has for the most part not been included in her study. C.A. Jackson, Telwlogical Coincidence and Eternity, pp. 286 ff. Ibid., p. 286. Ibid. ‘Povest”, in B. Pastemak, Vozduhyeputi, p. 183. In connection with the well-known quotation from OG (“Samoe jasnoe, zapo- minajuSEeesja i vaznoe v iskusstve est’ ego vozniknoven’e.. .‘*, p. 229) one could speak of a mise en abyme of poetical memory: Art develops out of re- membering, it remembers and is itself worth remembering. E. Greber, Intertextualitiit und Znteqretierbarkeit des Texts. Zur friihen Rosa Boris Pastemaks, Munchen 1989, pp. 206 ff. I. Masing-Delic, ‘Bergson und Pasternak’, p. 126. C.A. Jackson, Telwlogical Coincidence and Eternity, p. 305. In one of the preliminary fragmentary studies for Dg, ‘Uezd v Tylu’, the concept of memory’s personification (Mnemosyne) is fashioned in its purest form, related again to the female protagonist (with her similarities to Lara): “[. . .] vo vsjakuju vstr&u menja presledovalo oEu&?enie, budto sverch togo ja uZe ee kogda-to videl [. . .] Ona dolZna byla Eto-nibud’ napominat’ k&domu, potomu Eto nekotoroj neopredelennost’ju maner sama Easto pochodila na vospominan’e” (Vozduhye puti p. 292). Here, the riddle of dkja vu is not illu- minated by sudden insight, in contradistinction to the passage quoted from OG. The “explanation” takes on the guise of a further riddle, using a surprising auto-recursive element that combines with allegory to produce a paradoxical reversal: there is no anthropomorphic Muse, but a human figure who is so to speak “mnemomorphic”. C.A. Jackson, Teleological Coincidence and Eternity, p. 3 18, discusses this and other cases of d&jA vu, but interprets them in a different way: she takes them to refer solely to the novel’s characters and sees them as ominous projections and predictions of the future.

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This conception seems to be parallel to W. Benjamin’s notion of r&iscopage which implies that the past is brought closer, gaining presence only in the act of being remembered. For Benjamin, the “Here and Now of recognizability” (“Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit”) is not synchronic, but always subsequent; a historical “fact” is not available as such. Cf. B. Menke, ‘Das Nach-Leben im Zi.tat. Walter Benjamins Gedachtnis der Texte’, in R. Lachmann, A. Haver- kamp @is.), Ge&cbtniskunst, lot. tit, pp. 74-110. The narrative mode Pasternak uses in his autobiographical works and his fiction written in the first person is one of remembering, resulting in a doubling effect: “remembering the remembering”, or “recollecting recollection” (cf. above note 12). Experiences are recovered through double recollection. In the metapoetical passages -where remembering turns into composing poetry - the double distance specifically stresses the non-availability of creation. Cf. E. Greber, ‘Das Erinnern des Erinnems’. I.C. Kelly, Eternal Memory, outlines Pasternak’s conception of history as based on “eternal memory” in accordance with Pastemak’s statement (recorded by A. Gladkov): ‘Time and memory - that is, history - are what constitute true immortality, for which the Christian idea of personal life everlasting is a poetic image” (p. 117). R. Jakobson, ‘The Contours of The Safe Conduct’ (1935), in L. Matejka, LR. Titunik (Eds.), Semiotics of Art. Prague School Contributions, Cambridge, Mass/London 1976, pp. 188-196, p. 196. Cf. the chapter on Majakovskij, E. Greber, ‘Das Erinnem des Erinnems’, lot. cit. Cf. above, note 15. In my view, etymology, as presented in the passages on Venice in OG, in- dicates for Pastemak storage and accumulation, and not transitoriness, as A. Livingstone, Art and Creativity p. 58, would have it. L. FlejSman, Pastemak v dvadcatye gody, p. 268. Ibid., p. 291. Cf. R. Lachmann, ‘Die Ambivalenz der Klassik: PuSkin und die russische Ge- d%chtniskultur’, in her Gediichtnis und Literatur, lot. cit., pp. 280-303.