434
contradict them.
11
In Henri-Frederic Amiel’s Journal Intime (1882), or the seven
volumes of Marcel Proust’s (1871–1922) À la recherche du temps perdu, the logical
outcome at the far peripheries of transparency is this same task of perpetual embossing of that elusive center between oneself and the outside. One’s inner world is
irretrievably tensed between its autobiographical instincts and an extroversion that
can be explained by any number of impulses—the embrace of oneself as nature
speaking through Being; a futile explanatory predilection; the endless, garrulous
path that is language embodied in more language, forever trying to escape its linguistic landmines; or, the sad, endless struggle to wander beyond the simplicity of
mental constructs which happen to include humanity’s desperate, meaningless, endless chatter.
12
No less the engine of verbs and metaphors, Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici
(1643) references “the Cosmography of myself.”
13
André Malraux writes that the
truth about ourselves “lies first and foremost in what he hides”;
14
Rousseau commenced his Confessions by asserting, “I mean to present my fellow mortals with a
man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself.” The absolute zero
person, an aboriginal stream of self-regard, from the Achaemenid acts of Darius
(519 BC), inscribed confessionally to the God Ahuramazda on the 1500-foot cliff of
Mount Behistun, to Flavius Josephus’ “Life” (circa AD 90) appended to his Jewish
Antiquities, Bach’s “Art of the Fugue,” to the 1.25 million words in the Diary of
Samuel Pepys written between 1660 and 1669 (he was 27 years old when he started
it)
15
all connoted this struggle with the exposition of Self.
Wrote Stephen Spender, “The basic truth of autobiography is: I am alone in the
universe.”
16
Or there is Rabbi Hillel declaring, “…if I am for myself alone, what
then am I? And if not now, then when?” Descartes’ unambivalent Cogito. Or Jorges
Luis Borges chiming in, “…there is at least a moment in the life of a man when you
can see him. I have tried to find such a moment.”
17
11 See Frederick Rider, The Dialectic of Selfhood in Montaigne, Stanford University Press, 1973,
pp. 72–73. And Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays, ed. Blanchard Bates, New York Modern
Library, 1949, pp. 439–509.
12 See Henri Frederic Amiel, Amiel’s Journal, trans. Mrs Humphry War, New York, Macmillan
1899.
13 See Margaret Bottrall, Every Man a Phoenix – Studies in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography,
John Murray, London: 1958, p. 21.
14 André Malraux, Anti-Memoirs. Trans. Terence Kilmartin, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York,
1968, p. 5.
15 See George Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1951; See also Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, and André Maurois, Aspects of Biography, Ungar,
New York, 1966.
16 See Stephen Spender, “Confessions and Autobiography,” in The Making of a Poem, H. Hamilton,
London, 1955, p. 65.
17 J. L. Borges, “Post-Lecture Discussion of His Own Writing,” Critical Inquiry 1, no. 4, June 1975,
p. 721. See Karl J. Weintraub, “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness,” Critical Inquiry 1,
no. 4, June 1975, p. 824.
47 Sakya Coming Out of His Mountain Retreat
contradict them.
11
In Henri-Frederic Amiel’s Journal Intime (1882), or the seven
volumes of Marcel Proust’s (1871–1922) À la recherche du temps perdu, the logical
outcome at the far peripheries of transparency is this same task of perpetual embossing of that elusive center between oneself and the outside. One’s inner world is
irretrievably tensed between its autobiographical instincts and an extroversion that
can be explained by any number of impulses—the embrace of oneself as nature
speaking through Being; a futile explanatory predilection; the endless, garrulous
path that is language embodied in more language, forever trying to escape its linguistic landmines; or, the sad, endless struggle to wander beyond the simplicity of
mental constructs which happen to include humanity’s desperate, meaningless, endless chatter.
12
No less the engine of verbs and metaphors, Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici
(1643) references “the Cosmography of myself.”
13
André Malraux writes that the
truth about ourselves “lies first and foremost in what he hides”;
14
Rousseau commenced his Confessions by asserting, “I mean to present my fellow mortals with a
man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself.” The absolute zero
person, an aboriginal stream of self-regard, from the Achaemenid acts of Darius
(519 BC), inscribed confessionally to the God Ahuramazda on the 1500-foot cliff of
Mount Behistun, to Flavius Josephus’ “Life” (circa AD 90) appended to his Jewish
Antiquities, Bach’s “Art of the Fugue,” to the 1.25 million words in the Diary of
Samuel Pepys written between 1660 and 1669 (he was 27 years old when he started
it)
15
all connoted this struggle with the exposition of Self.
Wrote Stephen Spender, “The basic truth of autobiography is: I am alone in the
universe.”
16
Or there is Rabbi Hillel declaring, “…if I am for myself alone, what
then am I? And if not now, then when?” Descartes’ unambivalent Cogito. Or Jorges
Luis Borges chiming in, “…there is at least a moment in the life of a man when you
can see him. I have tried to find such a moment.”
17
11 See Frederick Rider, The Dialectic of Selfhood in Montaigne, Stanford University Press, 1973,
pp. 72–73. And Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays, ed. Blanchard Bates, New York Modern
Library, 1949, pp. 439–509.
12 See Henri Frederic Amiel, Amiel’s Journal, trans. Mrs Humphry War, New York, Macmillan
1899.
13 See Margaret Bottrall, Every Man a Phoenix – Studies in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography,
John Murray, London: 1958, p. 21.
14 André Malraux, Anti-Memoirs. Trans. Terence Kilmartin, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York,
1968, p. 5.
15 See George Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1951; See also Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, and André Maurois, Aspects of Biography, Ungar,
New York, 1966.
16 See Stephen Spender, “Confessions and Autobiography,” in The Making of a Poem, H. Hamilton,
London, 1955, p. 65.
17 J. L. Borges, “Post-Lecture Discussion of His Own Writing,” Critical Inquiry 1, no. 4, June 1975,
p. 721. See Karl J. Weintraub, “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness,” Critical Inquiry 1,
no. 4, June 1975, p. 824.
47 Sakya Coming Out of His Mountain Retreat