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Like death and taxes,
memory losses are inevitable. We may swear to ourselves or to someone else that
this moment will never be forgotten but it will, even before old age or worse
sets in. As psychologists keep trying to tell us, to little effect, our minds
constantly reorganise our memories: deleting, mislaying, editing, revising,
inventing. Our memory is a bit like Microsoft run amok, improving or weeding to
its own satisfaction yesterday’s Word docs while we sleep.
There are things I
would like to write about but when I sit down to it, I promptly discover that I
remember no more than the file name. Oh, they are splendid file names but standalone
they do not make a splendid story.
The objects which pass
through our hands perhaps have a bit more success in being there when we want
them. It’s true that we lose things, bin them, give them away, forget where we
have put them but, still, some survive and often for much longer than the
memories which we may hope to find still attached - but don’t.
Today I come across
this charming card which has managed to accompany me through many house moves
since it was purchased in 1964 - fifty five years ago! The summer of that year - I had just turned seventeen - I organised for myself a holiday job in Sweden, working in the Hotel
Siljansborg situated beside Lake Siljan in the province of Dalarna.
Everyone is familiar
with one Dalarna thing: those simple, chunky carved wooden horses painted in
bright colours (traditionally red) with simple floral decorations in green,
white, blue and yellow - the last two the colours of Sweden’s flag. When I came
to the end of my time at the Hotel Siljansborg, I was given one as a leaving
present and I still have it.
The carved horses were
a portable part of a larger tradition of visual folk art, centred in Dalarna,
which flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and which produced
painted furniture and wall decorations in which the floral motifs ( the
technical name is Kurbits and I was
able to google it because I still remembered the word) are always present.
My card has pin holes
in the top corners so at one time I must have displayed it. A horizontal banner
across the top spells out what the original depicts: De Tre wise man matthei 21 Cap Malat ar 1841 an A L S ( The Three Wise Men Matthew chap[ter] 21 Painted [in the] year 1841 by A L S ).
Aren’t they splendid?
Not a whiff of the Middle East. No donkeys or camels to bring them to the stable,
just fine Dalarna horses. The three kneeling figures who could have been modelled on the
local priest or lawyer - maybe they were; a rather patrician Joseph and a matronly
Mary, her black leather shoes peeking out from under her full skirts. It looks as if having babies is something she takes in her stride.
We are very
familiar with the idea that human beings fashion God in their own image; in
Dalarna, they imagined the Nativity as something which happened not so long ago and just
down the road. But I suspect that their religious beliefs were at least as
robust as those of people who were brought up on donkeys, flowing robes, and
sandals. But either way, the Dalarna folk artists were thinking rather like those who re-thought Shakespeare as West Side Story.
On the back of the card, the work
is titled De tre vise men
(modernising the spelling) and given as originating from the small town of
Rättvik which provided the postal address for my hotel. Then it gives the
current location of the work as the Zornmuseet.
That opens a file: one day, during hours off work, I walked to the Anders Zorn
museum in Mora. It googles and I am immediately offered a portrait of the
artist (1860-1920) which I recognise as one of which I took away a postcard. But
though I can google as much of his work as I want, I can’t see the folk art
which must also have been in the museum.
I google a bit more. It is out of the question
that I walked. Mora is 37.8 kilometers from Rättvik!
The World Memory finds
and opens its files for me in half a second and, once again, forces me to revise my own
memory.
*
This essay is now published in Trevor Pateman, Between Remembering and Forgetting (degree zero 2019). Online stockists include Amazon and Waterstones but individual orders are also taken directly at patemantrevor@gmail.com and will be charged at cover price post free in the UK at £15 and 20€ when payment is made from SEPA countries direct to a German bank account. Currently no US distribution available.
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