"The Tyranny of Memories"

The following extract is from W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. This is actually taken from the notebooks of nineteenth century French writer and memoirist Chateaubriand, whom Sebald (or the narrator), quite clearly finds a kindred spirit.

But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight. Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life. How often this has caused me to feel that my memories and the labours expended in writing them down are all part of the same humiliating and, at bottom, contemptible business! And yet, what would we be without memory? We would not be capable of order the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a never ending chain of meaningless moments, and there would not be the faintest trace of past. How wretched this life of ours is!--so full of false conceits, so futile, that it is little more than the shadow of chimeras loosed by memory.

I am trying to write something on the connection between Sebald and Nabokov. My curiosity has been piqued after reading this passage (although Nabokov is much more benign when it comes to describing the tyrannies of memories) and Sebald's essay on Nabokov's Speak, Memory in his latest essay collection Campo Santo. But it needs some more thinking and some more time.

Previous posts on The Rings of Saturn here and here.

On Speak, Memory.

Some quotes from the book:
The Cradle Rocks above an Abyss
Death, A Shameful Family Secret?