On Remembering
Around the midpoint of last year I made a decision to start remembering things. I hope not to be proved wrong in thinking that the Covid-19 pandemic will be a unique experience in my lifetime, and I wanted my memories of that year to have texture and detail. (With the rate that technology is advancing, I think the safe money is on "another pandemic in my lifetime, but that feels different.") Everyone has been so tired, and so stressed, and our conversations so easily circle around the drain of lockdown that I didn't want my memories to end up in the same place. There are events of 2020 that I'll remember without trying—the heartbeat I didn't hear, the one I did—but there's a habit of hopefulness in realizing that some things are worth the active verb of remembering. I need that hope.
My project of things worth remembering stems from a belief about my place in the world. I'm not the author of my own story, but God has given me the creative power to narrate it. I trace this thought back to J.R.R. Tolkien's concept of "mythopoeia," the act of myth-making that he sees as constitutive of our very worlds:
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
"Mythopoeia"
📷 @timdtrad on Unsplash
It's a terrible responsibility and wonderful freedom to apply that right to my own life. How do I choose to remember 2020? I've striven to be hopeful without flat optimism, to find meaningfulness within the weariness rather than in spite of it, to craft my own history well. At the risk of disappearing into an infinite mirror of reflections on reflections, I'm satisfied with the attempt.
Thinking about my history and the writing of it, I'm reminded of my favourite History-with-a-capital-H. It's an accidental childhood memory of sore cheeks and tears of laughter at W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman's comic history of England, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Kings, 5 Bad Kings, and 2 Genuine Dates (1930). The best comedy says something meaningful, and 1066 and All That's attitude toward the project of history has stuck with me, probably reinforced by those tears:
Histories have previously been written with the object of exalting their authors. The object of this History is to console the reader. No other history does this.
History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
The slim volume takes a post-modernist approach to history in a similar vein as later British comedies like Blackadder or Monty Python, and its irreverent rejection of both the "great man" and progressive views of history is refreshing. Sellar and Yeatman have a distinctly anti-imperialist view of British history, suggesting that with Britain's fall from the status of "Top Nation" at the end of the Great War, it has become impossible to remember anything more—and mercilessly parodying what is actually remembered in the "golf-clubs, gun-rooms, green-rooms, etc." where the authors conducted their field research. When capital-h History is so fragile, the reader is catapulted into a role of terrible responsibility but also (and here's the "consolation" bit) freedom and playfulness.
Sellar and Yeatman recognize that history, like fantasy, has the power to build a world out of narrative. When the raw material comes from the human mind, whether it's the cobwebs of memory or the silk of imagination, the most important choice we have is not what to include but what our purpose is. My goal has been to find meaning and, somehow, joy in the resilient connections that stretched and held under the stress of the pandemic year. The object of my history is to find consolation in the parts truly worth remembering. What's the purpose of your history?
CODA. Memorable quotes from 1066 and All That, among those conveniently remembered here and here. Better yet, the whole consoling History is available at any memorable library (e.g. the TPL).
artist's rendering of Hengist and his wife (or shield), 1611
Memorable among the Saxon warriors were Hengist and his wife (? or horse), Horsa. Hengist made himself King in the South. Thus Hengist was the first English King and his wife (or horse), Horsa, the first English Queen (or horse). The country was now almost entirely inhabited by Saxons and was therefore renamed England, and thus (naturally) soon became C. of E.
By congregating there, armed to the teeth, the Barons compelled John to sign the Magna Charter, which said:
1. That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason—(except the Common People).
2. That everyone should be free—(except the Common People).
3. That everything should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm—(except the Common People).
not amused
Finding herself on the throne, Queen Victoria immediately announced her intention of being Good and plural but not amused. This challenge was joyfully accepted by her subjects, and throughout her protracted reign loyal and indefatigable attempts to amuse her were made by Her Majesty’s eminently Victorian ministers and generals. . . . All these attempts having failed, news was brought to the Queen that the Fiji Islands were annexed to the British “by the desire of the inhabitants.” At this point, according to some (seditious) historians, Her Majesty’s lip was observed to tremble.
