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The Ghost of Memory
I had been shot. A bullet in my back. I fell. Where did I fall? I fell from a great height, it seemed, into a painting in a gallery in a great City. I found myself returning across centuries and generations to the end of my age. I had been caught by the Artist in what seemed the womb of unexpected being in which one becomes sensitive to the end one has reached and to a new beginning. It was an end, it was a new beginning one was called upon to probe and discover.
We may dream, while still alive, of dying. But the dream is soon forgotten as are the edges and corners of a re-lived life of which we dream. It is buried in the unconscious. We know that life fades into death but, in what degree, does life re-live itself as it dreams of dying?
The Ghost of Memory is a novel about life and death or rather - to put it somewhat differently - about the close, almost indefinable cross-culturalities between moments of life and death.
This is played out through a man who is mistakenly shot as a terrorist - he sees himself
We may dream, while still alive, of dying. But the dream is soon forgotten as are the edges and corners of a re-lived life of which we dream. It is buried in the unconscious. We know that life fades into death but, in what degree, does life re-live itself as it dreams of dying?
The Ghost of Memory is a novel about life and death or rather - to put it somewhat differently - about the close, almost indefinable cross-culturalities between moments of life and death.
This is played out through a man who is mistakenly shot as a terrorist - he sees himself
- GenresFiction
200 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
2 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Wilson Harris
55 books57 followersBorn in Guyana in 1921 and based in England since 1959, Wilson Harris is one of the most original novelists and critics of the twentieth century. His writings, which include poems, numerous essays and twenty-four novels, provide a passionate and unique defense of the notion of cross-culturalism as well as a visionary exploration of the interdependence between history, landscape and humanity. In 2010 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 14, 2019
This is the last novel Wilson Harris has said he will ever write. It is a short and as always with Harris, very dense novel; packed with ideas, possibilites and allusions.
It is a reaction/reflection on the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian who was mistakenly shot by police not long after the 7/7 bombing. The man who is shot falls through time and space into a picture in an art gallery in a city that is not named.The story is the characters record of sporadic and partial conversations with other characters on the canvases and visitors to the gallery. It is a meditation on the states of consciouness between dream and death. There ia a colourful cast of characters. Christopher Columbus is a visitor to the gallery and the nature of art is debated with him. On the canvases there are converstaions and observations with and about characters from Greek mythology; Tiresias, Jason and Medea, Prometheus. There are Arawak indians, an Olmec head and lots of South American references.
This is a book stuffed full of ideas, magic realism, incendiary throw away lines and questions. Difficult to read but fascinating; typical of Harris and encapsulates a lot of his thought.
It is in the tradition of Blake and Yeats with added magic realism. Harris himself says in this novel he:
"sought to bring 'unconscious perceptions' into play through a man who is shot as a terrorist but who claims he is no terrorist and sees himself as a sacrifice for the failure of a civilisation to recognise how it is aligned to ancient rituals that feared the Sun might never rise again and Darkness would engulf the world for ever. This man is not to be taken literally. He is a dream-animal who dies and lives in the dreams of Mankind at the edges of consciousness and unconsciousness."
Harris admits Jung has influenced him but also Ehrenzweig (The Hidden Order of Art) and a quote from Ehrenzweig is illustrative;
“All artistic structure is essentially polyphonic: it evolves not in a single line of thought, but in several superimposed strands at once. Hence creativity requires a diffuse, scattered kind of attention that contradicts our normal, logical habits of thinking”
Harris does just that and as one critic says, reading Harris is like trying to swim on dry land. He is well worth trying.
It is a reaction/reflection on the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian who was mistakenly shot by police not long after the 7/7 bombing. The man who is shot falls through time and space into a picture in an art gallery in a city that is not named.The story is the characters record of sporadic and partial conversations with other characters on the canvases and visitors to the gallery. It is a meditation on the states of consciouness between dream and death. There ia a colourful cast of characters. Christopher Columbus is a visitor to the gallery and the nature of art is debated with him. On the canvases there are converstaions and observations with and about characters from Greek mythology; Tiresias, Jason and Medea, Prometheus. There are Arawak indians, an Olmec head and lots of South American references.
This is a book stuffed full of ideas, magic realism, incendiary throw away lines and questions. Difficult to read but fascinating; typical of Harris and encapsulates a lot of his thought.
It is in the tradition of Blake and Yeats with added magic realism. Harris himself says in this novel he:
"sought to bring 'unconscious perceptions' into play through a man who is shot as a terrorist but who claims he is no terrorist and sees himself as a sacrifice for the failure of a civilisation to recognise how it is aligned to ancient rituals that feared the Sun might never rise again and Darkness would engulf the world for ever. This man is not to be taken literally. He is a dream-animal who dies and lives in the dreams of Mankind at the edges of consciousness and unconsciousness."
Harris admits Jung has influenced him but also Ehrenzweig (The Hidden Order of Art) and a quote from Ehrenzweig is illustrative;
“All artistic structure is essentially polyphonic: it evolves not in a single line of thought, but in several superimposed strands at once. Hence creativity requires a diffuse, scattered kind of attention that contradicts our normal, logical habits of thinking”
Harris does just that and as one critic says, reading Harris is like trying to swim on dry land. He is well worth trying.
February 7, 2017
One of the most beautifully crafted works I have ever read - not least because of Wilson Harris's complex narrative interwoven between the canvas and composition of a work of art. I leave the last words to the author, simply to reflect again on his wonderful use of language: "Dying into creativity may prove a threshold into an existence that passes away and comes into other levels of consciousness. One dies many times perhaps as one lives..."
September 14, 2021
Woah. This pretentious and academic piece recognises both the frailty of human existence and the reach of human experience, which is limited and yet profound. It speaks of the journey from life to death, exploring the different beliefs that people have about this unfurling and the role that art has to play in all our knowledge and the creation of our ethical consciousness.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews