According to an old tradition preserved in the Palestinian Targums, wrote Ron Hendel, the Hebrew Bible is the “Book of Memories” (ספר דנכריא) … The remembered past, is the material with which biblical Israel constructed its identity as a people, a religion, and a culture.” [i]
Ernest Renan states that national identity depends on “the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories”; but significantly, he adds, “Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.” [ii] I would add that it is a stumbling block.
National, ethnic, and religious identities are founded on a complex dialectic of memory and forgetting. Israel’s OT memories, a mixture of history, poetry and mythology “are inevitably laced with the unhistorical”,[iii] coloured by literary influences, and political and religious interests. “Culture, history and memory interweave in the biblical accounts of the Patriarchs, bringing to us a past that is”, in Rendel’s words, “a marvellous blend of public memory, religious vision, and literary brilliance”.[iv]
Today we have Remembrance Sunday in mind. And, as time goes by, I wonder more and more what exactly are we supposed to remember? Is what we “remember” on this day truly historical, or is it a slowly developing mythology? What will the people of the year 4000 CE be saying about our memories – supposing they have access to them? What will their remembrances be?
The other day I noticed, perhaps belatedly, that the memorial in the Elizabeth Ann Brown Park is now partly cordoned off with notices saying, “Sacred War Memorial, Please Keep Off.”
Firstly, and particularly in view of the fact that this is NAIDOC Week, it is insensitive to the Bundjalung Nation, the traditional owners of the land which hosts our Memorial; and upon whose land I preach today. The absurdity of the demand is illuminated in the shocking disregard white culture has for Aboriginal Memorials of similar ilk.
Secondly, my dictionary defines the word sacred as meaning “connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration. So, do we have the seeds of a new religion in our local park? Who is responsible? And will it have a temple like ancient Israel? The National War Memorial perhaps? My imagination reels. A new priesthood of uniformed officers whose habits could well outdo the colourful fineries of the best Catholic liturgical garb?
What exactly are we supposed to remember? And what is an appropriate way to do so? Canon Rachel Mann in her book Fierce Imaginings, wants us to hear “some of the lost and never-heard voices of the Great War”.
… to take seriously the stark truth about the loss that the First World War brought about: the loss of countless young men, whose voices never counted in the first place in our society; the loss of the capacity to talk about their wounded experiences by those who survived; the loss of certain myths about manhood; and the loss of a God who providentially ordered history and protected his own. [v]
With a nod to Ronald Rendel, we must bear in mind that stark truths, especially unacknowledged ones, the hidden ones, tend to get lost in mythologies “laced with the unhistorical”, or disappear altogether.
In 1959, Geoffrey Hill published two sonnets under the title “Two Formal Elegies for the Jews of Europe”. Much of his work explores the use of art as an act of atonement to give voice to the victims of the Holocaust, and that bears witness to other historical atrocities, all in a world that has become “witness-proof”. The second sonnet ponders the worth and actual nature of sacrifice.
2
For all that must be gone through, their long death
Documented and safe, we have enough
Witnesses (our world being witness-proof),
The sea flickers, roars, in its wide hearth.
Here, yearly, the pushing midlanders stand
To warm themselves; men brawny with life,
Women who expect life. They relieve
Their thickening bodies, settle on scraped sand.
Is it good to remind them, on a brief screen,
Of what they have witnessed and not seen?
(Deaths of the city that persistently dies…?)
To put up stones ensures some sacrifice,
Sufficient men confer, carry their weight.
(At whose door does the sacrifice stand or start?)
1959[vi]
Erecting historical monuments, says Hill, to the Holocaust ensures “some sacrifice" by "sufficient men” who carry their weight, but in his sonnet the words "some" and "sufficient" vibrate with doubt.
And, the poet draws attention to “the inadequacy of witness, which can never fully recapture and convey the experience of the past to those living in the present, even for those events that seem relatively recent.” He “contrasts what is ‘witnessed’ with what is ‘seen’,” and he points to the “deficiencies of memory, as though even those who lived through traumatic events cannot fully comprehend them”.
“That”, said Mark Oatley, “is why we need visible memorials: if we are not to be dishonest, shallow and unreal we need to make the invisible visible.”[vii] And today’s memorials have a much broader canvas, for the unknown and unacknowledged are also represented. Let it be so; but let us not turn them into temples for sacred festivals.
The original motive for Remembrance Day was, quite simply, to remember the fallen. But that simplicity embraces the unthinkable horror that war brings to individuals, communities and nations. The two-minute silence was first proposed by the Mayor of Cape Town in 1918 – for the whole city, marked by the noon day gun on Signal Hill. It was an awesome experience for the Cape Town citizens. The whole city, silent as a grave. Every day from 14 May 1918 to 14 May 1919.
So – what do we remember? Certainly, the fallen, the maimed, the mangled lives; but also, perforce, the unknown that has escaped the notice of history and narrative – that is to say, the things we do not know, or have forgotten, or do not wish to bring to mind. So, when we say, “Lest we forget,” let our remembrance be not only for the things we know as historical fact, but also the things we do not know – “Not known because not looked for”, as T S Eliot might have put it.[viii] George Eliot’s concluding paragraph of Middlemarch gives eloquent expression to this.
… the good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
The other dimension of remembrance, as Mark Oatley remarked, is the “non-negotiable God-given dignity and preciousness of each human life, the beauties and strength of friendship and love, the courage of working for what is just and fair.”[ix] These, too, we must remember in their purity. That is why a pledge for the future is now part of remembrance services. For “we cannot talk about freedom without embracing responsibilities and values”.[x]
Let us know. Let us remember. Let us change. Lest we forget.
Amen.
Doug Bannerman Ó 2020
[1] Ronald Hendel Remembering Abraham; Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible Oxford University Press (2005) Preface pX
[1] E. Renan, “What Is a Nation?” in Nation and Narration, ed. H.Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 19, 11 (French original, 1882) my italics – Among the many recent studies of these issues, see particularly B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism , 2nded. (London: Verso, 1991), 187–206 (“Memory and Forgetting”); and A. D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999).
[1] Op cit Ronald Hendel pX
[1] Ibid
[1] See Fr Kevin Morris, see https://www.smaaa.org.uk/wp/worship/services/preachers-and-sermons/sermons-by-fr-kevin-morris/remembrance-sunday-2017-sermon-by-the-vicar-fr-kevin-morris/
[1] From “Two Formal Elegies: For the Jews in Europe”, Geoffrey Hill (UK, 1932-2016)
[1] Stephen William Grace, PhD “Forms of Memory: The Sonnet in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry” (University of York, English and Related Literature September 2019 p28)
[1] Mark Oatley Monday 12th November, 2007. See https://www.st-albans.dk/publications/sermons/remembrance-sunday-2007/
[1] T S Eliot “Little Gidding” lines 248, 249
[1] Op cit Mark Oatley
[1] Ibid
