Memories on Cities, Nature and People through the Lenses of Andre Aciman - Essay Example

Memories on Cities, Nature and People through the Lenses of Andre Aciman August 3, Andre Aciman’s vision of life is a bit awkward in what he resembles out of his memories. It is all about the places of destination where he spent a great deal of his time. Definitely, Alexandria goes first in such a recollection by the author. It is a source for his passion where he is inclined to take a glimpse at the past experience which is never-ending for his entire life. Thus, the first claim of significance is that Aciman is well devoted to the value of a memory. Thereupon, in Alexandria: The Capital of Memory he states on what he gained and missed being an ordinary denizen of the city while the political conflict sprang up in his youth and what Alexandria means to him at present (Aciman 6). It is a so-called memoir represented through the lenses of the writer’s vision of sweet memories and dreams about this location. On the other hand, Aciman is sensitive to the subtle facets of his soul each time he reproduces his own vision of life and living it in close relation with the environment. Just roaming the streets of Alexandria helps the writer focus more on the way everything functions and stays in the city (Aciman 10). It is a particular way to fix the picture of the location at the writer’s specific foreshortening just in case something will change in the future. Such sweet things keep track to the writer’s appreciation of his young ages and how they went on. Besides, In Search of Blue depicts Aciman’s reasoning on the most valued features to stay in mind. It is unlikely that he is dreaming about some material amenities or some lucre. He is dedicated more to the abstract images of what he sees and what will be accumulated in his widespread mind afterwards. Flashbacks feed Aciman in his trip to Rome along with his parents. Along with Alexandria, Rome is a part of the writer’s colorful life (Aciman 24). It is all about a man living his life along and with the family at once. Aciman is open to describe the power of his feelings through the shades and hues of blue, namely: “For years this wonderful expanse of still and timeless blue, where hills and rippleless beaches seemed made to exist in memory alone, belonged nowhere” (Aciman 24). Admittedly, the writer aims at the height of his imagination while taking a look at the natural beauty of the city he lived in. Past memories presuppose the sense of living for Aciman. He takes care of each slight memory so as to keep it alive and vivid. Thus, in search of blue, Andre Aciman seems to find out the exact way of thinking about what a man can bear with him/her throughout life. In his another essay called Shadow Cities, the writer makes an attempt to bind another city to make sure a reader knows what New York means to him. The essay represents his worries about what happened to a little Straus Park just within the city (Aciman 38). He does not hesitate to come closer to the overall idea of a virtue and social responsibility of people inhabiting the city and contributing into its further development. It is all about the way Aciman once shared the significance of natural episodes within concrete jungles of today’s urbanized world. However, it does not describe him as an opponent of the city. He finds New York pretty magnificent along with its streets and avenues. Therefore, the writer’s great desire states as follows: “I wanted everything to remain the same” (Aciman 38). It is a voice of despair the writer faced in New York and realized it would never stop in the future. Everything is in the state of flux, as they say. However, Aciman behaves as a real foreigner keeping in mind the things as they were earlier. Hence, he illustrates his strict incapability to get accustomed with new names of the stores or some change to the places of sightseeing he once encountered in his life. To say more, being an adolescent, Andre Aciman obtained precious knowledge of what the world means to a man. Insofar, the essay called Square Lamartine is also a compilation of the writer’s vision of the urban sceneries (Paris), in particular memorized in close relation to the natural background of the earth at large. His ruminations on life are well amplified by French writers and poets while staying in Paris. This is why he appreciates the love for wandering through different parts of the city in order to collect some peculiarities regarding the uniqueness of that city: “Perhaps it was not even a voice but a manner of being in the world that made me love that world and, come to think of it, myself as well” (Aciman 53). This is a kind of the writer’s revelation on the significance of personal experience while getting acquainted with the enormous and inspiring representation of the city, as a source of cultural richness and aspiration. Following simple activities like “sitting on a bench and reading” made Aciman a thorough observer of where the push for change starts (Aciman 55). Such a push is a start for refreshing memories with new sweet sensations like never before. Thus, each moment is concerned with the past for the writer, and it is a great pleasure for him to speculate on his memories in light colors notwithstanding political or social conflicts that might take place at the moment (like in case with Alexandria). No wonder, Aciman follows his thoughts on the way cities should look in a quite conservative way, but his vision does not lack vividness in how he imagined possible inability to become a part of the city over and over again: “I had no way of knowing that this was only the first time I would think I was seeing Paris for the last time” (Aciman 56). It is a sincere confession in what it means to be a sensitive denizen while feeling the fragile nature of the world on the whole and each city, in particular. Finally, Letter from Illiers-Combray: In Search of Proust unites the ideas by the writer in his visual memories coming through other senses. Needless to say, he had chosen Marcel Proust due to the fact that the latter incorporates the idea of searching the lost moments of life through the reasoning on the way they went on. Collecting pieces of conversation with different persons in Paris, Andre Aciman is willing to be in times when the history was about to change significantly. Tasting and smelling the environment is what makes memories so vivid and motivating deep within one’s soul: “It is also a gesture of communion through which readers hope, like Proust, to come home to something bigger, more solid, and ultimately, perhaps, truer than fiction itself” (Aciman 67). This is where Aciman finds consolation in his awareness of that time is always running forth, and that it cannot be deviated or turned toward the most precious and valuable moment even at the warp speed of the writer’s imagination, as might be seen. What is more, in his realistic, though with tints of abstraction, vision of the city and its image in memories, Aciman can be compared to Dostoevsky’s representation of St. Petersburg. In The Double: A Petersburg Poem, Dostoevsky highlights the particularity of the city through “the dismal sound of the splash and gurgle of water, rushing from every roof, every porch, every pipe and every cornice, on to the granite of the pavement” (Dostoyevsky 36). In this vein, Aciman seems to be bound to the memories on the cities he lived in differently from Dostoevsky. Works Cited Aciman, André. False Papers. London: Picador, 2001. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Double: A Petersburg Poem. New York, NY: Kessinger Publishing, 2004. Read More