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“Not I, but the poets…”
Freud's acknowledgement that he alone could not take credit for the burgeoning study of the unconscious, is but another vital link in the practice of building collective memory. In this vignette, Freud, with his life's work laid out in front of him, instead looks back to the storytellers that informed him and rightfully says without them, there is no me.
The author of this article, my grandmother, Merle Molofsky, fills in the blanks for Freud, and points to the greats who still permeate our culture and language such as Shakespeare. At this suggestion, I'd like to imagine that Shakespeare himself may protest with his own humility, and point the devoted back to Arthur Brooke, the man who penned the narrative poem, “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet” two years before Shakespeare's birth. And Brooke of course may then acknowledge Pierre Boaistuau. And Boaistuau, Matteo Bandello. And so on.
In the introduction of Leslie Marmon Silko's 2012 reissue of her 1981 collection, Storyteller, she writes “…the urge to share our experience, to tell our stories to another human is so strong that humans invented language—sign languages and spoken languages but also dance, music, and painting…”.
My grandmother touches on both music and dance as cultural conduits and how they can enter through us as individuals, before permeating out of us to our children, grandchildren, and into the wider collective. The image of my great-grandmother's face, lit aglow, in a moment of joy, her arms raised, performing a dance she undoubtedly learned from her elders.
Marmon Silko goes on to say “…I imagine that at first humans exchanged stories to acquire knowledge as a survival strategy, to learn to anticipate the many threats and dangers in their world. Considerable details and
vivid descriptions were essential to the telling; the most important actions in a story might be repeated to make sure listeners remembered…“
These first stories, these first songs, first dances, and