In a few years, when I will have forgotten you, and when other such adventures, from sheer habits, will happen to me, I'll remember you as the symbol of love's forgetfulness. I'll think of this adventure as of the horror of oblivion. I already know it.
—— Hiroshima mon Amour
Hiroshima mon Amour
The Platonic Discussion
The impossibility to discuss traumatic events is a platonic one. The statement casted by the man in the very beginning of the script, “You saw nothing at Hiroshima,” can be understood as a random, unsophisticated scorn had it not been for his persistent repetitions. The ridiculousness of the scene is somewhat laughable: the he and the she, stark naked in bed against absolute strangers, twisting in the ecstasy of wild sex, yet with one detailing the horror scenes of the Hiroshima aftermath and another sternly refuting her of her words. The actions and the languages are as different as ice and fire, with one hovering on the extreme of passion and another being as banal and sex-less as possible. The ridiculousness, however, seems also to be a platonic one. With the apparent absurdity in this scene, readers will easily take time to ponder on this seemingly random statement, “You saw nothing at Hiroshima.” Although, with no context provided, readers can hardly derive any philosophical understanding from this statement, the rest of the script provides a resonating discussion on the topic of remembrance and oblivion. What is unfolding is given in a discreet manner, of which I’ll try to organize into straightforward bullet points for later reference.
The man claims that the woman has seen nothing at Hiroshima. Then logically, the first question to consider is what is it that she considers to be “everything.” Through her bed-talks, we can see through her eyes the horrifying aftermath of Hiroshima: dead people, broken iron gates, deformed infants, and other scene—crafted replicas—in the museums, the exhibitions, the films. It is not an understatement to say that the Hiroshima seen by the woman is a banal symbol. She is here to act in a movie about peace, the only theme possible if Hiroshima were to be the shooting scene. Here, it is as if Hiroshima has been condensed into several symbols: the victims all have sad faces and deformed bodies, the visitors all weep over the ruins, and whenever people think about anti-war protests (like the Vietnam war) they’d think of Hiroshima. Any other symbol excluded from this sphere is considered politically incorrect, not worthy of memorizing, not able to be retold. Henceforth, the tears shed by the woman, though a hundred percent sincere, are triggered by a condensed version of Hiroshima. Those that are kept out of her surveillance are unheard, unremembered. This is why she is sincere when she says that she “knows everything,” because her descriptions are indeed truthful demonstrations of everything she had seen, but it is also logical when the man says that she “know nothing,” because she is never there to experience the full story of Hiroshima.
What is projected from the Hiroshima story is the woman’s story. The story told to the man are broken details: the shaven head, the scream, the German boyfriend with whom she will go to Bavaria. But what remains in herself are the real, big chunks of memory—the pain when she lay on top of her dead boyfriend, the numbness when she had her head shaved, the passive obstinacy with which she, in the cellar, watched feet passing her view. Those are the things she concluded as “I don’t really remember” but detailed in the nocturnal notations. In the very end, she can remember nothing about her boyfriend’s hair, eyes, or even their love stories, and what remains is only pain, vaguely lingering. This is the only thing she can relay to him, but both of them know that this is far from being the “everything.” Only the people who are “there” can possibly state that they have seen “everything.”
The same applies to Hiroshima. She is just a visitor, with her life accidentally gotten interwoven with the tragic of Hiroshima. Yet he is part of the tragic, with him rather lightheartedly saying “My family was there.” The footnote doesn’t offer an adequate story about his family, but readers can sense the trauma he has been through. Like her pain in Nevers, his tragedy in Hiroshima can be extremely difficult to relay. How is it possible to recapture something that is already fading and represent it to another person foreign to this topic? So he claims that she saw nothing in Hiroshima, because she can’t see things forgotten by people.
Memory and Oblivion
However, is it true that the things covered up are forgotten in eternity? Or is it that people are actively forcing the memories into oblivion because of their pestering nature in constantly popping-up to haunt people?
In the first scene, she said something similar to an oxymoron, “Like you, I have memory. I know what it is to forget.” With the second sentence following up, it is as if one point of having memory is to be able to forget. Scrutinizing her memory with the German boyfriend might provide us an answer. In scene IV, where she shared her story, she repeated the same storyline for three times, each with different details adding upon the original one. From the first version we see her madness, scraping her hand on the asphalt wall, the rain gushing down from the walls, the forgotten eternity. From the second version, we can detect her abysmal pain, her gradual resurrection from the forgotten eternity. Yet in the third version, she has gotten over her hate. What remains is a slight tinge of pain. Of her darling’s face, none.
What is it like to forget? Upon finishing her story, she added, “I want to have lived through that moment. That incomparable moment.” Shouldn’t she have indeed lived through the moment, and became the only person alive on earth to retell the story? Yet no, to her, the memory of her period in Nevers is fading to a thread of light smoke. Memories are broken into threaded sprinkles, and no matter how strenuously she has tried to preserve the gushing emotions—love or hate—the only remaining fragments she has are the slight tinge of pain and a distant face. She’d trade for anything to keep her vivid laughters near the popular trees and her horror laying on top of her lover, but she can no more. Once she has gotten over her hate and left for Paris, the Never phase of her life becomes nonexistent. And little by little, the memory betrays her, until she thinks that the “Nevers her” is dead and gone.
What a tragedy! She never branded the phase as “unforgettable,” “heart-wrenching,” or “beautiful,” but used the word “incomparable.” Incomparable heartbreak, incomparable beauty, incomparable love, incomparable hate, everything. But just imagine! Something as incomparably intense as this piece of memory can be gotten over with and gradually forgotten. I call this the cruelty of unreliable memory.
Judging from this aspect, the oxymoron is probably the best demonstration of the cruelty of memory. Were humans unable to retain memories, they would fare much better without the burden of worrying over remembrance and oblivion. Yet here we are, capable of knowing that “something might happened,” yet tragically unable to resurrect any prior moment for us to savor again. The accumulation of this factor would only result in one said truth, that we ourselves, the only experiencer of our own lives, will forget so many incomparable moments that we will regard our lives as those seen from the museum or read in books. We can possibly remember events, but never the full details. The only maneuver we can establish is straining in vain to maintain as much details as possible, with the acknowledgment that one day even these hard-won memories will be lost. Such pain is what it is to forget.
In both the beginning and the end of the script, she had an obscure interior monologue with slight differences between the two versions. The first version reads as such:
I meet you. / I remember you. / Who are you? / You destroy me. / You’re so good for me. / How could I have known that this city was made to the size of love? / How could I have known that you were made to the size of my body? / You’re great. How wonderful. You’re great. / How slow all of the sudden. / And how sweet. / More than you can know. / You destroy me. / You’re so good for me. / You destroy me. / You’re so good for me. / Plenty of time. / Please. / Take me. / Deform me, make me ugly. / Why not you? / Why not you in this city and in this night so like others you can’t tell the difference?
And the second version:
I meet you. / I remember you. / This city was made to size of love. / You were made to the size of my body. / Who are you? / You destroy me. / I was hungry. Hungry for infidelity, for adultery, for lies, hungry to die. / I always have been. / I always expected that one day you would descend on me. / I waited for you calmly, with infinite patience. / Take me. Deform me to your likeness so that no one, after you, can understand the reason for so much desire. / We are going to remain alone, my love. / The night will ever end. / The sun will never rise again on anyone. / Never. Never more. At last. / You destroy me. / You’re so good for me. / In good conscience, in good will, we will mourn the departed day. / And a time is going to come. / A time will come. When we will know no more what thing it is that binds us. By slow degrees the word for fade from our memory. / Then it will disappear altogether.
Who is the “you” mentioned in the monologues? The German boyfriend, the Japanese officer, or else? Rather than pinpointing to one single hero, I’d believe that the “you” is rather an anonymous symbol. Before the rendezvous, the city and the night have a touch of universal banality that can’t distinguish it from anything else of its kind. Yet it is only after the love, the sex that the city can be made to the size of love and the man made to the size of the woman. It is only after the incomparable moment that they hope the night to never end and they will never depart from each other. Such desire is transcending, capable of transforming the most banal into the most incomparable. The anonymous “you” become the lover. The similar applies to Hiroshima and Nevers. Before the atomic bomb, Hiroshima is but a distant city in the Far East unbeknownst to the crowd, and before her love with the enemy she is a normal French school girl hating the enemies. Now they are known.
Yet, “a time is going to come.” It is impossible to have the tie binding two things for eternity. The German boyfriend may die. Hiroshima may be forgotten as the World War II becomes a distant past. There will be no more of the incomparable moments—lovely rendezvouses between two enemies—until everything that remains are the fragmented history represented in the museum. Memories can transcend the banalities on life, but in the end, it still can’t live forever. By slow degrees, words fade and disappear.
Therefore, things are not covered up nor forced into oblivion. Moments are simply forgotten, until the remaining story become so worn and so fragmented that even the experiencers are uncertain of the authenticity of their life stories.
Why "Hiroshima mon Amour"?
Why Hiroshima? Why not Auschwitz, Nanjing, or other trampled towns from the World War II? It may be that there are still survivors from Auschwitz and Nanjing. Though fragmented, there are still people alive to piece together the broken memories. Someone loved, cried, broke, evaded death in there. The museums in Auschwitz and Nanjing are not completely filled by official records and foreign media broadcasts, but at least with some records of the scene. Yet there are no survivors from Hiroshima. The entire city, dead, gone, uprooted. Only media broadcasts and official records can be given, which are all provided by the posthumous “experiencer” of Hiroshima. We can never know the full story of Hiroshima, because it is basically inexistent—worse than forgotten, it is completely nucleated.
She want to have lived through that incident. Don’t blame her; I do too. Just like her love with the German boyfriend, this is an incomparable moment—dark, but incomparable indeed (a little like Lord Voldemort). Probably the reason for her yearning originates from her acknowledging the fact that such moment cannot be revived, just like her past life. And this can only happen in Hiroshima.
Also, why “love”? Why not “peace”? The second question is easier to approach: because Hiroshima is solely remembered as a symbol for peace so that nothing but banality pervades in such interpretation. To answer the first question, I’d quote from the nocturnal notation:
"Love serves life by making dying easier."
Credit goes to: 霁溪
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