The tricks memory plays (or, was Michelangelo's Pieta that small?)
Before the visit to Rome at the end of January 2022, I remembered very little of my first visit as a student over thirty-five years ago. My old friend Ana and I were doing an interrail tour of Europe; we spent three days altogether in Rome, lodging in a seedy youth hostel around the Termini. We rushed through the Vatican Museums and St Peter’s Basilica, climbed on the cupola, and promptly ticked Rome off the list, before getting on the train to the next destination. I was 22, fresh-faced and green in judgment.
Among the few things I remember was the huge, larger than life statues inside St Peter’s: Michelangelo’s Pieta and St Peter, with its foot worn out by the touch of millions of pilgrims. Only…last month I realised that they were nothing like huge and larger than life: they are much smaller than I remembered.
Oh, and I had no recollection of Bernini’s stunning sculpted canopy (baldacchino) that stands over St Peter’s tomb. How is this even possible?
What happened here? Had I formed memories that had to do more with my perception than with objective reality, and I continued to preserve them for three-and-a-half decades?
Those that know me wonder at the (usually useless but precise) details I remember: when a distant cousin died, the birthday of a classmate I haven’t seen for decades, the blouse I wore on a first date. Even the exact phrase my mother used to put me down when she caught me modelling my hair on her mother’s engagement photo.
But if I remembered famous statues as hugely larger than they really are, and I had no memory at all of the beauty and the size of the canopy - nay, its very existence! - what else do I misremember or have forgotten entirely?
The implications for a memoir and life-writer are clear: have I overestimated the reliability of my memory? Do I trust my memory possibly more than I should? Is this going to be another writing block added to the long list of all the other blocks? All these questions have been milling around my head since the Vatican visit. Well, yes, the memories of these statues were factually wrong. But emotionally?
The late 80s was a period of transition in my native Greece, which had just joined the (then) European Community. I had already set my sights upon leaving home for London, that would become my home. That Interrail European tour, crossing Italy, Austria, Germany, France and ending in London felt like the dress rehearsal of a whole life. Is it possible that the prospect of the daunting reality of a future in unfamiliar but alluring places was projected on the two statues?
Four weeks after the return from Rome and the trip still feeds prompts. Would you believe that I still dream of walking in cobblestone alleys and stepping into churches I have already been in, as if for the first time? Is my subconscious trying to give a message? Go down into alleys you have never been before; have another look at what you think you know well with fresh eyes. I still need to work out what all this means for my life writing.
