Saturday, April 4, 2009

Ignorance, Kundera

I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals, but also because they don't hold the same importance for each other.

5 comments:

Marvin said...

somewhat unrelated but didn't i tell you how even better than the things we remember about people are the things they remember about us. sometimes we remember more. sometimes they do. coming to know that a certain someone still remembers an incident you had long relegated to some corner of your memory only cements the bond. perhaps making the heart grow fonder. perhaps filling us with that unique feeling that comes with knowledge that we are loved back.

Zinque said...

Nice!

Prabhu Dutta Das said...

Can we have an elongated version?

Piper said...

Actually, this was a random excerpt that I picked up from the web. Haven't read the book yet, so don't have the entire thing :(

Anonymous said...

well i guess thats what we humans do, don't we? we belong, separate and belong again. Only to discover that belonging is relative.