Do not imagine that to possess memory is to possess a dead world.
Among your friends there is surely one who has a house and a garden.
From time to time he invites you to visit him. Every time you enter
his house you observe some striking change: he has connected two parts
of the building which till then had no means of communication. He has
planted some new trees. The old elms are flourishing. Some rosebushes
have died. Urns have been set out on the lawn. The life of men, of
animals, of plants has drawn the inanimate world into its toils,
modeled it, sculptured it, forced it to take part in the movement of
the soul.
It is in like fashion that the domains of memory cultivate themselves
and live. They are not ruins, inalterable, rigid, fixed forever in the
ice of some past epoch. Life still penetrates and moves them; they do
not cease to share in its enterprises, its labors, its festivals.
When a man has opened for you several times the same gate in the wall,
when several times he has related the same adventure to you, with
intervals of a few months or a few years, observe closely the spots
to which he leads you and the persons to whom he presents you. Every
time you will find new things, you will find that roads have been laid
out, underbrush cut down, windows opened and unexpected supernumeraries
called in.
Is it true then that that was a dead tale, wrapped up in what we call
the shroud of the past?
The world of “living memory” is so indissolubly bound up with our
resolutions and our acts that in accumulating memories we feel we are
preparing, erecting our future itself.