Acts of memory and mourning: Derrida and the fictions of anteriority. Richter, G. In Radstone, S. & Schwarz, B., editors, Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, pages 150–160. Fordham University Press, New York, 2010.
Acts of memory and mourning: Derrida and the fictions of anteriority [link]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
[first paragraph] In a remarkable letter to Ka¨thchen Scho¨nkopffrom December 12, 1769, the young Goethe records a description of her as she had appeared in his guilt-ridden dream the night before. Having failed to respond to her most recent missive for what suddenly seemed like an eternity, his sleep was fitful: ‘‘A dream last night reminded me that I owe you an answer. It is neither that I had forgotten entirely, nor that I never think of you; no, my friend, every day tells me something of you and of my debts.'' Goethe continues: ‘‘But it is strange—and this is an experience with which you may be familiar—time does not erase our memory of absent ones but it does conceal them. Our life's diversions, our making the acquaintance of new things, in short, every change in our condition, do to our heart what dust and smoke do to a painting; they render the subtle traits wholly unrecognizable and the strong ones less visible, all in a manner so unnoticeable that one does not even know how it comes about. A thousand things remind me of you, I see your image a thou- sand times, but so weakly and often with as little sentiment as if I were thinking of a stranger.''1 Even the image of the beautiful head of Fra¨u- lein Scho¨nkopf, whom Goethe privately referred to as his ‘‘first girl'' and with whom he had ended his courtship almost two years earlier, proves no match for the effects of time on memory. While memory requires time to become what it is—no memory without time, no time without memory—time also hinders memory, veiling its specificities, blurring its details, accentuating too selectively and, in so doing, uncan- nily rendering the familiar strange while, at the same time, causing the
@incollection{Richter2010,
abstract = {[first paragraph] In a remarkable letter to Ka¨thchen Scho¨nkopffrom December 12, 1769, the young Goethe records a description of her as she had appeared in his guilt-ridden dream the night before. Having failed to respond to her most recent missive for what suddenly seemed like an eternity, his sleep was fitful: ‘‘A dream last night reminded me that I owe you an answer. It is neither that I had forgotten entirely, nor that I never think of you; no, my friend, every day tells me something of you and of my debts.'' Goethe continues: ‘‘But it is strange—and this is an experience with which you may be familiar—time does not erase our memory of absent ones but it does conceal them. Our life's diversions, our making the acquaintance of new things, in short, every change in our condition, do to our heart what dust and smoke do to a painting; they render the subtle traits wholly unrecognizable and the strong ones less visible, all in a manner so unnoticeable that one does not even know how it comes about. A thousand things remind me of you, I see your image a thou- sand times, but so weakly and often with as little sentiment as if I were thinking of a stranger.''1 Even the image of the beautiful head of Fra¨u- lein Scho¨nkopf, whom Goethe privately referred to as his ‘‘first girl'' and with whom he had ended his courtship almost two years earlier, proves no match for the effects of time on memory. While memory requires time to become what it is—no memory without time, no time without memory—time also hinders memory, veiling its specificities, blurring its details, accentuating too selectively and, in so doing, uncan- nily rendering the familiar strange while, at the same time, causing the},
address = {New York},
author = {Richter, Gerhard},
booktitle = {Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates},
editor = {Radstone, S. and Schwarz, B.},
file = {:Users/michaelk/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/Downloaded/Richter - 2010 - Acts of memory and mourning Derrida and the fictions of anteriority.pdf:pdf},
pages = {150--160},
publisher = {Fordham University Press},
title = {{Acts of memory and mourning: Derrida and the fictions of anteriority}},
url = {https://about.jstor.org/terms},
year = {2010}
}

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