Borges’ “Funes” and Luria’s “S.” make for a fascinating pair of contrasting mnemonists. Comparing their respective mnemonic abilities from an external, practical perspective, Funes seems like a super-powered fantasy conception of Luria’s real-life patient, whose name a quick internet search discovers is Solomon Shereshevskii. While Shereshevskii can retain and subsequently reproduce a practically infinite series of random information under proper conditions, Funes retains everything; every piece of sensory information he experiences is preserved perfectly in his memory.
Funes’ internal memory – that is, his recall of his mental experiences apart from external sensorial information – also makes that of Shereshevskii pale in comparison. Shereshevskii has a lasting and detailed internal reality, a kind of mental world as palpable is the material one, which allows him, through its manipulation, to form mnemonic devices that have permanence thanks to their imagined physical nature. It is as though he has a computer game world existing inside his head which he can explore and manipulate at will. But Funes does him one better. He holds the entirety of reality in his memory, or at least as much of it as he can experience or imagine. While these worlds do not operate on the same level of complexity – the former is like a dream landscape littered with strategically placed symbolic images and storylines, the latter recalls the nesting warehouse theaters of the film Synecdoche, New York, limited in detail only by the attention of its owner – they both possess an inherent materiality that can both inhibit and aid the man whose mind inhabits them. When trying to recall a word from a series, Shereshevski might miss the word if its image were placed within his mental world in a place where it was camouflaged such that he might not “see” it clearly. He explains that this “happened with the word egg. I had put it up against a white wall and it blended in with the background. How could I possibly spot a white egg up against a white wall?” (Luria 36). Knowing the egg was against the wall was not enough. He had to be able to perceive the egg within the physical laws of his internal world. The world’s physics were in a sense thought-proof. But the physical nature of the internal world could be turned to his advantage. He could make the egg larger, in other words more immediately visible, to facilitate an easier recall of the image. Funes uses a similar device as a tool to manipulate his thoughts. To quiet his overcrowded mind for sleep, he would turn toward the new houses in his town that he had never laid eyes on and could only imagine as “black, compact, made of homogeneous shadow” (Lethem 126). Since he had never experienced them, Funes’ otherwise infinitely detailed conception of reality resorted to a blank, placeholder substance to fill the gaps he knew existed but could never perceive. His thoughts could not infer imagined houses; his memory of everything was so precise and specific that he could not generalize in his imagination to create anything less complex than the rest of his remembered reality. The placeholder shadow houses were so sturdy in their nonexistence that they became a refuge from thought and perception.
Shereshevskii would have been served well by such a refuge. Though their informational experiences differ as significantly as the natures of their internal memories – Funes endures an unending stream of information of overwhelming complexity, while Shereshevskii is muddled by blurring and interweaving sensorial experiences – both men are comparably overmatched by neural stimulation. Neurologically, I can guess that Shereshevskii’s sensory irregularity comes much earlier in the course of processing incoming information. He is sometimes unable to process a simple narrative, because each particle of information triggers a series of sensory experiences that distract from the communicative power of the original information. Funes had no such difficulty with taking in the full meaning of abstract information. His blessing and curse is that he takes in all information at all levels. If there is anything that can be gleaned from any sensory or mental experience at any moment, he retains it with perfect clarity. This wealth of information is too much to process if he is to achieve some semblance of clarity. Similarly, Shereshevski’s mnemonic abilities are hampered by the white noise of extra sensory input. The both want for a method to block out surplus information. It seems strange to me as one of the vast majority of human beings who forgets exponentially more than he remembers, but it is clear that for someone with infinite memory, the most desirable skill is the ability to forget.
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"Shereshevskii has a lasting and detailed internal reality, a kind of mental world as palpable is the material one, which allows him, through its manipulation, to form mnemonic devices that have permanence thanks to their imagined physical nature. It is as though he has a computer game world existing inside his head which he can explore and manipulate at will."
ReplyDeleteI would disagree with this assessment, that S. can explore and manipulate the world in his head at will. It seems, instead, that he must construct this rich inner life out of the overwhelming amount of imagery he gets from what to a non-synaesthete would be a singular, simple sensory input. We learn of how S. comes to cope with this overload of data, but also how as he first begins his career as a professional mnemonist he has trouble filtering out the unnecessary information. For instance, from a conversation on Sept. 14, 1936:
"Last year I was read an assignment having to do with a merchant who had sold so many meters of fabric...As soon as I heard the words merchant and sold, I saw both the shop and the storekeeper, who was standing behind the counter with only the upper part of his body visible to me. He was dealingw ith a factory representative. Standing at the door of the shop I could see the buyer, whose back was toward me. When he moved off a little to the left, I saw not only the factory but also some account books--details that had nothing to do with the assignment. So I couldn't get the gist of the story." (Luria 65-66)
It seems to me that imagining S. has complete control over his inner world is romanticizing his skill. Most other people, presented with a story of a merchant selling bolts of cloth, would find a way to relate to the pertinent details and retain at least the general outline of the story. S.'s brain, with its density of imagery and virtually no capacity for "weeding out", allows him too many possibilities, too many details, and, to me, seems to trap him in a well of imagery where no logical associations can be easily made.
" He had to be able to perceive the egg within the physical laws of his internal world."
ReplyDelete"To quiet his overcrowded mind for sleep, he would turn toward the new houses in his town that he had never laid eyes on and could only imagine as “black, compact, made of homogeneous shadow” (Lethem 126)."
S.'s need to EXPERIENCE his memories through an internally created visual world is very similar to Fune's internally imagined "darkness" he requires to fall asleep. These necessary imagined states seem to suggest that both men can possibly ONLY function with the assistance of an alternative and internal imagined world.
A striking similarity about the the case's of S. and Funes is the way in which their capacity to retain information inhibited their ability to use reason and think logically. Although S. had an overwhelming propensity for creating vivid visual depictions that served as mnemonic devices, when it came to categorization involving the meaning of words he was at a complete loss. Luria says, "At that time S. still recalled material largely 'in terms of lines,' and the job of isolating those words in the series which formed one distinct category was simply beyond him. He had failed to note that among the words for recall were some that were related in meaning..." (59). Remembering the words themselves was no problem for S., but he was incapable of useful comprehension. His mind could not preform the crucial linguistic task of recognizing the significance of words and understanding how the context they exist in serves to shape their meaning.
ReplyDeleteOf Funes Borges says, "He effortlessly learned English, French, Portugese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very good at thinking. To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract. In the teeming world of Ireneo Funes there was nothing but partculars - and they were virtually immediate particulars" (126). In Borges' rendering, the ability to forget is an elemental aspect of the act of thinking. A mind like Funes, that automatically records everything it encounters, has no discriminating capacity that allows it to make the connections necessary to shape creative ideas. Though armed with the gift of infinite recall, both S. and Funes faced the problem of not being able to process the information they gathered in a practical way in order to ground them in reality.
Tina, you made an interesting point and I wanted to make sure to respond to it in case we don't get to it in class.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right to say that S. doesn't have complete control of what we might call his synesthetic hallucinations, and that they often overwhelm him and obfuscate what would be to you or me a simple piece of information. When I was writing about his "internal world," I meant only his land of memory recording, which I imagine as separate from his immediate sensory experiences because it originates with his imagination rather than his perception of his external world. When I wrote that he can explore and manipulate this world at will, what I was getting at was his ability to travel around and place objects in the world with precise and consistent control, like the egg on a wall or a pencil next to a fence. I didn't want to suggest that his entire neurological experience is bent to his will, which would certainly be, as you say, romanticizing it. I hope this is clearer.