The literary-artistic process is a fundamental element in
Dostoevskij's oeuvre. As Gary Saul Morson explains, much of his work
is metaliterary; in
Whether focused on understanding the past or oriented toward
divining or crafting the future, literary activity is nothing without
memory. If readers and writers were unable to retain and contemplate
experiences, their words and texts would lose the power to mean, and
existence would become thoroughly senseless. In his assessment of
I
merges with all.
While Jackson conceives of memory as
the source of art, Belknap views memory as its goal. In his study of
straightforward communication
between
self and other of the future utopia.
The scholarly dialogue on the goals and processes of art— and
memory's role therein— prompts as many questions as it
answers. How does memory function in the utopian universality
described by Jackson and Miller? Does the death of memory necessarily
follow if the I
merges with all
in a
relationship which requires no mediation? Are self and other thus
forgotten, drowned in a sea of eternal homogeneity? If all
consciousnesses were to merge into one, would there be any need, or
anything, to remember? Is the end result of all this fervid
recollection a terminal forgetting? While Belknap's view of eternal
memory as both the way and the destination of art appears to contrast
with that of Jackson and Miller, it raises questions as well. Is
memory, or recollection, synonymous with, or something different from,
literary art itself? What, if any, difference is there between memory
and recollection? If we must render an account of the self to secure
perpetual memory, and we must remember in order to generate such an
account, are not art and memory locked in a cycle, simultaneously
inescapable and impenetrable, with no resolution in sight?
Operating from a Baxtinian understanding of the processes of
reading and writing and their relevance to the development of identity
and relationships, I propose to assess the significance of memory to
the goals and processes of literary activity through an evaluation of
the fictive
works in vicious
cycle
of memory and art may lie in the skillfully executed
creative cooperation between self and other in the quest for truth and
understanding. Alternatively, this productive relationship, while
meaningful, may prove insufficient without a faith in the divine. Only
by studying these issues carefully can we gain a better appreciation
of the powers and limitations of art and memory.