Alexey
Sklyarenko:'One remembers those little things much too clearly,
Lucette. Please, stop.'
'One remembers, Van, those
little things much more clearly than the big fatal ones. (Ada,
2.5)
"Удивительно, прaво! Тут - люди изувечены,
стонут, кричaт, a в пaмять щепочкa воткнулaсь. Эти штучки... вот эдaкие
щепочки... чорт их знaет!"("Truely, it is surprisingly! Here - people are
crippled, moans and cries, and in memory a little chip got stuck. Those
little things... little chips like that... the devil only knows!" Inokov's words
after the fall of the barracks wall in Gorky's The Life of Klim
Samgin, Part Two)
Jansy Mello: The little things one remembers
clearly, while one forgets the "big fatal ones," are part of very general
peculiarity of one's memory. It's interesting to see that you paired two
examples (from Nabokov and from Gorky), there'll certainly exist many
more, even perhaps less marked by another kind of remembrance, as in Gorki,
that is marred by a traumatic event. Nabokov's description, it seems to
me, is closer to what Sigmund Freud wrote about under the title of "Paramnesias"
( screen-memories)-