Parade of ghosts: buildings & their echoes

Abstract

At the centre of this personal essay is my effort to understand the impact of buildings on literature, and the impact of literature on buildings. What happens when the built environment is drastically altered? How does memory mediate between what used to be there and what replaced it? I have drawn from personal experience, ancient myths and modern fairy tales, seeking to highlight both the intimate and the universal voice about places and the memories of those places. Piecing together personal narrative in prose and poetry with passages from classic and modern works, I endeavor to create an openended collage of words and virtual images that help readers navigate their own oceans of memory and architecture. I am inspired by the work of other authors who animate the page, letting words and thoughts come in and out of focus. Among them are the American author Carole Maso (The Art Lover, 1990; Ava, 1993); the Canadian classicist and poet Anne Carson (If not, winter: Fragments of Sappho, 2003; Nox, 2010); the German academic and author W.G. Sebald (The Emigrants, 1996; Austerlitz, 2001); and the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle (Take Care of Yourself, 2007; The Address Book, 2012).