Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears by Laszlo F. Foldenyi

Author:Laszlo F. Foldenyi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2020-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

“ONLY THAT WHICH NEVER CEASES TO HURT STAYS IN THE MEMORY”

Variations on the Human Body, Subjugated by Fantasies of Power

If I think back upon the subject of what, long ago, the body meant to me in my childhood or, more precisely, my own body, my recollections are extraordinarily variegated. The memories that have remained the most powerful are those connected with some kind of wound. I once almost sliced off my left index finger with a bread knife. Another time, while at Lake Balaton, the big toe of my right leg was split open by a large shell. And once I split my forehead open on a column. In each of these cases, I remember the spectacle of the flesh splitting apart much more vividly than the physical pain. I caught a glimpse of a place which had until then been concealed in darkness. I had seen something which in principle could never be seen, and which should always have remained hidden, for at least as long as I was alive. These were not serious injuries, and yet they were still memorable: the scars remain to this day. My body has retained the memory of these childhood injuries.

And yet, just as memorable as all these injuries are all the commands that arose in connection with my body. Wash your hands. Wash your ears. Take your hand out of your mouth. Brush your teeth thoroughly. Wash up properly after you’ve been to the toilet. Don’t run. Don’t scratch your wounds. Put your hand in front of your mouth when you yawn. Learn how to blow your nose properly. These commands are as memorable as all the physical wounds. They penetrated into my instincts. Admittedly, they didn’t hurt, per se, but my body has preserved them as much as it has preserved its scars. Of course, by now the scars don’t hurt anymore. Which makes me suspicious: Is it possible that at the time these commands also hurt—but differently from the cut of a knife? And if there were a particular kind of instrument for them, then could I also come upon the scars of these commands on my own body? “Only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory,” writes Nietzsche.1 And truly one could say that everything preserved in memory is connected with something that once gave pain. And the possibility of this pain continuing until today can’t be excluded, even if I don’t sense it, as I’ve grown so used to it.

Let me evoke another body. More precisely, the body of the young woman who was standing in front of me in line by the cashier. The weather was scorching, and her suntanned back was barely covered. The line was long, so I had plenty of time to observe it. And I could have taken a great deal of delight in it, indeed I could have found it erotic even, if my gaze had not continually, almost involuntarily, strayed to the tattoo beneath her neck. There was a sentence that ran from her left shoulder to the right.

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