The Invention of Solitude

itself and something else. And then it dawns on him that everything he is trying to record in The. Book of Memory, everything he has written so far, is no more than the translation of a moment or two of his life—those moments he lived through on Christmas Eve, 1979, in his room at 6 Varick Street.
    The moment of illumination that burns across the sky of solitude.
    Pascal in his room on the night of November 23,1654, sewing the Memorial into the lining of his clothes, so that at any moment, for the rest of his life, he could find beneath his hand the record of that ecstasy.
    In the Year of Grace 1654
    On Monday, November 23rd, Feast of Saint Clement,
    Pope and Martyr,
    and of others in the Martyrology.
    and eve of Saint Chrysogomus and other Martyrs.
    From about half past ten at night until about half past twelve.
     
    Fire
    “ God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, ”
    not of the philosophers and scientists.
    Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
     
    * * *
    Greatness of the human soul.
     
    * * *
    Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
     
    * * *
    I will not forget thy word. Amen.
     
    * * *

    Concerning the power of memory.
    In the spring of 1966, not long after meeting his future wife, A. was invited by her father (an English professor at Columbia) to the family apartment on Morningside Drive for dessert and coffee. The dinner guests were Francis Ponge and his wife, and A. ’ s future father-in-law thought that the young A. Oust nineteen at the time), would enjoy meeting so famous a writer. Ponge, the master poet of the object, who had invented a poetry more firmly placed in the outer world perhaps than any other, was teaching a course at Columbia that semester. By then A. already spoke reasonably good French. Since Ponge and his wife spoke no English, and A. ’ s future in-laws spoke almost no French, A. joined in the discussion more fully than he might have, given his innate shyness and penchant for saying nothing whenever possible. He remembers Ponge as a gracious and lively man with sparkling blue eyes.
    The second time A. met Ponge was in 1969 (although it could have been 1968 or 1970) at a party given in Ponge ’ s honor by G., a Barnard professor who had been translating his work. When A. shook Ponge ’ s hand, he introduced himself by saying that although he probably didn ’ t remember it, they had once met in New York several years ago. On the contrary, Ponge replied, he remembered the evening quite well. And then he proceeded to talk about the apartment in which that dinner had taken place, describing it in all its details, from the view out the windows to the color of the couch and the arrangement of the furniture in each of the various rooms. For a man to remember so precisely things he had seen only once, things which could not have had any bearing on his life except for a fleeting instant, struck A. with all the force of a supernatural act. He realized that for Ponge there was no division between the work of writing and the work of seeing. For no word can be written without first having been seen, and before it finds its way to the page it must first have been part of the body, a physical presence that one has lived with in the same way one lives with one ’ s heart, one ’ s stomach, and one ’ s brain. Memory, then, not so much as the past contained within us, but as proof of our life in the present. If a man is to be truly present among his surroundings, he must be thinking not of himself, but of what he sees. He must forget himself in order to be there. And from that forgetfulness arises the power of memory. It is a way of living one ’ s life so that nothing is ever lost.
    It is also true that “ the man with a good memory does not remember anything because he does not forget anything, ” as Beckett has written about Proust. And it is true that one must make a dis tinction between voluntary and involuntary memory, as Proust does during the course of his long novel about the past.
    What A. feels he is doing, however, as he writes the pages of his own book, is something that does not belong to either one of these two types of memory. A. has both a good memory and a bad memory. He has lost much, but he has also retained much. As he writes, he feels that he is moving inward (through himself) and at the same time moving outward (towards the world). What he experienced, perhaps, during those few moments on Christmas Eve, 1979, as he sat alone in his room on Varick Street, was this: the