Member-only story
- The great and terrible wars of the 20th century destroyed our belief in high or European culture. The culture of Goethe and Montaigne and Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Dante also produced Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, et al. Poetry and philosophy were dethroned when they failed in their promise to humanize us and our politics.
- Memory is the essence of culture. If it isn’t remembered, or memorable, it isn’t culture.
- Memory takes exercise and effort; therefore, art, incipient culture, must be difficult, must require effort.
- We overvalue involuntary, Proustian memory. Memory is also — can also be — an intentional act. To will a memory is to create a culture.
- What’s worth remembering is what’s living for.
- Culture remembers pain, which is why we neutralize it, ignore it, dumb it down.
