A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past

In this delicate, allusive thought experiment, literary critic Hyde (The Gift) probes the idea of forgetting as a positive act. He ponders three major themes: ways to release a personal trauma, as in the story of an African-American man who publicly accepted a plea for forgiveness from one of his brother’s Klansmen killers; ways of moving past collective traumas, such as through the amnesty for atrocities granted through post-apartheid South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and the act of self-forgetting, “a technique to help us shed... the mind’s buffering blubber of routine.” Hyde draws on widely varied references, including Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, literary luminaries that include Nabokov and Borges, and, most fruitfully, classical literature—he compares the avenging Furies of ancient Greek tragedy to the “restless, intrusive Unforgettable” of America’s history of racial violence. Venturing outside Western culture, he also finds a luminous truth in the Buddhist notion that real awakening comes when one forgets everything but the present moment. An elegant exercise in philosophy and form, Hyde’s meditation on forgetting as an act of clarity offers stimulating contemplation of the odd paradox that “memory and oblivion... cannot function unless they work together.” (June)