"What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them"
About this Quote
“Wretched memory” is a nasty little accusation: not that memory fails, but that it succeeds at the wrong task. Roa Bastos sketches a mind that can recite and still be clueless, a consciousness that hoards language like receipts while misplacing the purchase. The line lands because it attacks a comforting modern fantasy: that having the right words is the same as having understanding.
As a novelist shaped by Paraguay’s dictatorships and the long shadow of state mythology, Roa Bastos is alert to how words become instruments of power. Official slogans, patriotic catechisms, even the “correct” historical narrative can be memorized, repeated, and weaponized while the lived reality - violence, fear, complicity - is erased. Memory “remembers the words” because words are portable, quotable, safe. “What’s behind them” is messy: motives, trauma, the real sequence of events, the moral cost. That part demands interpretation, not repetition.
The syntax mirrors the trap. “What happens is that...” sounds like a casual clarification, then tightens into a bleak diagnosis: memory doesn’t simply fade; it selectively preserves the surface. The subtext is literary, too. Writers work in words, yet Roa Bastos warns that language can become a screen. A reader can remember a line and miss the novel’s pulse; a nation can remember speeches and forget the bodies. It’s a critique of rote culture - schooling, propaganda, even our quote-sharing internet - where the artifact of meaning circulates faster than meaning itself.
As a novelist shaped by Paraguay’s dictatorships and the long shadow of state mythology, Roa Bastos is alert to how words become instruments of power. Official slogans, patriotic catechisms, even the “correct” historical narrative can be memorized, repeated, and weaponized while the lived reality - violence, fear, complicity - is erased. Memory “remembers the words” because words are portable, quotable, safe. “What’s behind them” is messy: motives, trauma, the real sequence of events, the moral cost. That part demands interpretation, not repetition.
The syntax mirrors the trap. “What happens is that...” sounds like a casual clarification, then tightens into a bleak diagnosis: memory doesn’t simply fade; it selectively preserves the surface. The subtext is literary, too. Writers work in words, yet Roa Bastos warns that language can become a screen. A reader can remember a line and miss the novel’s pulse; a nation can remember speeches and forget the bodies. It’s a critique of rote culture - schooling, propaganda, even our quote-sharing internet - where the artifact of meaning circulates faster than meaning itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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