Hubert Klimko: memory is a tool

We have little control over our memories, says the Polish novelist Hubert Klimko, but it's the only tool we have to create ourselves
Pensive gorilla
Pensive gorilla. Photograph: Michael Deyoung/Corbis

It is generally considered that memory is exclusively human. But there is a difference between memory and memorization. Indeed, most people are convinced that only people can remember: it is universally believed that while apes who have learned fairly complex gestures are able to reproduce them, they memorize but don't remember them. Personally, I haven't managed to debate this theory with any primates, which doesn't mean I don't respect them. On the contrary, I do respect them, sometimes even more than humans, but I don't speak their language. However, they speak mine perfectly but are unable to verbalize it in theirs. Despite our joint efforts, the apes and I have not, for technical reasons, succeeded in disproving this generally accepted theory.

In fact, every event, every sound, every word — lived, heard, pronounced by me or by another — is irrevocably destined to disappear and never come back. Only memory can preserve it. Will my personal memory, which, like a cellar, stores all my impressions, disappear when I do? What if I lived forever? In any case, I could never be able to bring reality back as it was. Are we, human beings that we are, the only ones to have memory? What about the apes? It's arguable. One can also ask the following question: if we and the apes both have memory, who doesn't? It seems that only God (assuming He exists) doesn't have memory, because He is in the unchanging present, that is, a time when, for us, everything is either past or yet to come. This raises another question. Being in the immutable present, can God change our memory of the past and make it so that what we experienced happening didn't happen? Some reply in chorus, "yes, of course!" Because God is all-powerful, He can do anything! Very well. As a writer, and more precisely, a novelist, I fight a daily battle with my memory and my memorization, but also against time. Earthly reality has nothing to do with the fact that God is timeless, and in fact, writers writing about time travel have always had trouble with the printed results of such travels. In any case, in the great beyond, time and memory are surely arranged differently than down here, so… I am going to write about what, according to me, is certain. It is certain that memory acts selectively and is highly deceptive. And there are various events in our memory that we'd rather not remember. Indeed it seems that our memory is a tool beyond our control, because some events refuse to be erased from it. What is certain, in any case, is that memory is a condition—a condition that makes it possible, for example, to feel identity, in the literal sense and in a more general way. Thanks to our memory, which is frequently deformed and incomplete, we are, quite simply, ourselves, because we carry our past within us. With every or almost every day lived more reasonably, we learn that the things we don't recall and those we'd like to remember but can't, come to mind unbidden. So it may be that there is what might be called full memory. Is it within us? Is it preserved somewhere intact? And what do the apes think?

An extract from Les assises international du roman 2012, published by Christian Bourgois Editeur. French translation of the Polish by Véronique Patte. English translation of the French by Naomi Norberg.