Memory and Literature

Abstract

Memory is always problematic, usually deceptive, sometimes treach erous. Proust knew this and the English reader is deprived of the full force of his title which conveys, not the blandly reassuring Remembrance of Things Past of the Moncrieff translation, but an ini tially darker and more anxious search for a time that has been lost. In the ensorcelled film of Alain Resnais the heroine quickly dis covers that she cannot even be certain of what transpired last year at Marienbad. We ourselves are periodically aware that memory is among the most fragile and capricious of our faculties.