The Man With a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound by A. R. Luria

Author:A. R. Luria [Luria, A. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical, Psychiatry, General, Psychology
ISBN: 9780674546257
Google: YTjcRIPDxH4C
Publisher: HarvardUP
Published: 1987-04-30T21:35:53+00:00

Why Did He Write?

He asked himself this question many times. Why bother with this difficult, exhausting work? Was it necessary? In the end he decided it was, for he was not fit for anything else (he could not help around the house, got lost when he went for walks, and often failed to understand what he read or heard on the radio). All such things were beyond him. Yet he could try gradually to assemble the bits and pieces of his past, compare and arrange them into episodes, create a coherent view of what his experience and desires were. This was still possible. Hence, writing his journal, the story of his life, gave him some reason to live. It was essential in that it was his only link with life, his one hope of recovering and becoming the man he had been. Perhaps if he developed his ability to think, he could still be useful, make something of his life. Reviving the past was thus a way of trying to ensure a future. That is why he undertook this exhausting labor, spending hours, days, years searching for lost memories.

He also thought it might be useful to others, that by understanding the damage a bullet fragment does to a man (fracturing his memory, obliterating all possibility of a present, past, future), people would appreciate how much they had been given. So, regardless of how difficult it was for him to write, he had every justification to continue.

The point of my writing is to show how I have been, and still am, struggling to recover my memory. It’s an extremely difficult fight. I had no choice but to try and put together a vocabulary by listening to the radio, reading books, talking to people, collecting words, phrases, sentences, and finally writing an account of what I’d tried to say back in 1944. After that strange, awful head wound I couldn’t do anything else—even read a grammar or look at a book on physics.

So I started to write. I got so carried away with this morbid writing I wouldn’t budge out of the house to go for a walk or see a movie. I’d just sit trying to write this story, to dig up memories of my past that had vanished, to recall words and ideas that are as hard for me as ever. For months on end, I’d spend day after day putting together a vocabulary from my scattered memory, collecting my thoughts and writing them down. That’s the only way I’ve managed to write, and I’m still forced to do this.

This work became the most important thing in life to him—his reason for living: to write his story and possibly overcome his illness, pick up his life again, become a man like other men:

By working on that one story of mine every day—even small amounts at a time—I hoped I’d be able to tell people about this illness and overcome it.

I’ve already worked on the story of my illness for three years.

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