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page192from Nordic Architects Writes
But
most forgettable of all were the walls themselves. The stubborn life of these
rooms had not let itself be trampled out. It was still there; it clung to the
nails that had been left there, it stood on the remaining hand-breadth of
flooring, it crouched under the corner joints where there was still a little
bit of interior. One could see that it was in the paint which, year by year,
had slowly altered: blue into moldy green, green into grey, and yellow into an
old, stale rotting white.10
Spatiality and situaionality of memory
Our recollections are situational and
spatialized memories, they are memories attached to places and events. It is
hard to recall, for instance, a familiar or iconic photograph as a
two-dimensional image on photographic paper; we tend to remember the depicted
object, person or event in its full spatial reality. It is obvious, that our existential
space is never a two-dimensional pictorial space, it is a lived and
multi-sensory space saturated and structured by memories and intentions. We
keep projecting meanings and signification to everything we encounter, I have
rarely disagreed with the views of Joseph Brodsky, one of my house gods, but
when he argues that after having seen touristic buildings, such as Westminster
Abbey, the Eiffel Tower, St Basil’s, the Taj Mahal or the Acropolis, “we retain
not their three-dimensional image but their printed version”, and concludes
that “Strictly speaking, we remember not a place but our postcard of it”.11 I
have to disagree with the poet. We do not remember the postcard but the real
place pictured in it. A recalled image is always more than the once seen image
itself. In my view, Brodsky presents a rushed argument here, perhaps misguided
by Susan Sontag’s ideas of the power of the photographed image in her seminal
book On Photography.12
Pictures,
objects, fragments, insignificant things, all serve as condensation centres for
our memories. Jarkko Laine, the Finnish poet, writes about the role of objects
in his memory:
I
like looking at these things. I don’t seek aesthetic pleasure in them … nor do I
recall their origins: that is not important. But even so they all arouse
memories, real and imagined. A poem is a thing that arouses memories of real
and imagined things… The things in the window act like a poem. They are images
that do not reflect anything … I sing of the things in the window.13
The
significance of objects in our processes of remembering is the main reason why
we like to collect familiar or peculiar objects around us; they expand and
reinforce the realm of memories, and eventually, of our very sense of self. Few
of the objects we possess are really needed strictly for utilitarian purposes;
their function is social and mental. “ I am what is around me”, argues Wallace
Stevens, 14 whereas Nöel Arnaud, another poet, claims: “ I am the space, where I
am.”15 These condensed formulations by two poets emphasize the intertwining of
the world and the self as well as the externalized ground of remembrance and
identity.
A
room can also in individualized and taken into one’s possession by turning it
into a place of dreaming; the acts of memorizing and dreaming are interrelated.
As Bachelard puts it: “The house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the
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At 2021-11-02 20:28:57,
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Paula Noronen
Yökoulun Pieni Kauhukäsikirja
kuvitus
Kati Närhi
Tammi
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Ruoka
Kakkua pullaa, leipää ja
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