Time and the Horizon of Poignancy: Notes on Temporally Induced Sorrow
Identifieur interne : 000421 ( Main/Corpus ); précédent : 000420; suivant : 000422Time and the Horizon of Poignancy: Notes on Temporally Induced Sorrow
Auteurs : Michael G. FlahertySource :
- Kronoscope [ 1567-715X ] ; 2012.
Abstract
Abstract The origin of poignancy is our awareness of eventual loss due to the ephemerality of existence. Socialization produces a self that is simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one’s continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is to be aware of one’s eventual demise. Moreover, each passing moment is immediately and irretrievably lost, which can make it precious in our sight, its loss poignant when we remember that our days are numbered. I examine poignancy in everyday life and literature. The essential formula for poignancy appears to be a collision between our capacity to imagine an infinite future and the finitude of all human experience. Susan Sontag’s study of photography provides further evidence for this argument.
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DOI: 10.1163/156852412X631664
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Socialization produces a self that is simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one’s continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is to be aware of one’s eventual demise. Moreover, each passing moment is immediately and irretrievably lost, which can make it precious in our sight, its loss poignant when we remember that our days are numbered. I examine poignancy in everyday life and literature. The essential formula for poignancy appears to be a collision between our capacity to imagine an infinite future and the finitude of all human experience. Susan Sontag’s study of photography provides further evidence for this argument.</div></front></TEI><istex><corpusName>brill-journals</corpusName><author><json:item><name>Michael G. 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Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one’s continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is to be aware of one’s eventual demise. Moreover, each passing moment is immediately and irretrievably lost, which can make it precious in our sight, its loss poignant when we remember that our days are numbered. I examine poignancy in everyday life and literature. The essential formula for poignancy appears to be a collision between our capacity to imagine an infinite future and the finitude of all human experience. 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Socialization produces a self that is simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one’s continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is to be aware of one’s eventual demise. Moreover, each passing moment is immediately and irretrievably lost, which can make it precious in our sight, its loss poignant when we remember that our days are numbered. I examine poignancy in everyday life and literature. The essential formula for poignancy appears to be a collision between our capacity to imagine an infinite future and the finitude of all human experience. Susan Sontag’s study of photography provides further evidence for this argument.</p></abstract><textClass><keywords scheme="keyword"><list><head>Keywords</head><item><term>Poignancy</term></item><item><term>time</term></item><item><term>self-consciousness</term></item><item><term>sorrow</term></item><item><term>temporal experience</term></item></list></keywords></textClass></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2012">Created</change><change when="2012">Published</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><extension>txt</extension><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/14319BAC489C9925BB8F5347B37D3A048A670C8D/fulltext/txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus brill-journals not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/2.3/journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article article-type="research-article"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="e-issn">15685241</journal-id><journal-title>Kronoscope</journal-title><journal-subtitle>Journal for the Study of Time</journal-subtitle><abbrev-journal-title>KRON</abbrev-journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">1567-715X</issn><issn pub-type="epub">1568-5241</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Brill</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Netherlands</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1163/156852412X631664</article-id><title-group><article-title>Time and the Horizon of Poignancy: Notes on Temporally Induced Sorrow</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author"><name><surname>Flaherty</surname><given-names>Michael G.</given-names></name><aff><institution>Department of Sociology</institution><institution>Eckerd College</institution><email>flahermg@eckerd.edu</email></aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="epub"><year>2012</year></pub-date><volume>12</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage>90</fpage><lpage>103</lpage><permissions><copyright-statement>© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</copyright-statement><copyright-year>2012</copyright-year><copyright-holder>Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</copyright-holder></permissions><self-uri content-type="pdf" xlink:href="15685241_012_01_S08_text.pdf"></self-uri><abstract><sec><title><bold>Abstract</bold></title><p>The origin of poignancy is our awareness of eventual loss due to the ephemerality of existence. Socialization produces a self that is simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one’s continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is to be aware of one’s eventual demise. Moreover, each passing moment is immediately and irretrievably lost, which can make it precious in our sight, its loss poignant when we remember that our days are numbered. I examine poignancy in everyday life and literature. The essential formula for poignancy appears to be a collision between our capacity to imagine an infinite future and the finitude of all human experience. Susan Sontag’s study of photography provides further evidence for this argument.</p></sec></abstract><kwd-group><kwd>Poignancy</kwd><kwd>time</kwd><kwd>self-consciousness</kwd><kwd>sorrow</kwd><kwd>temporal experience</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta></front><body><p>Human beings have a uniquely temporal self-consciousness. Martin Heidegger asserts that, throughout history and across all cultural differences, we recognize that our “days are numbered” (Heidegger 1962, 466). This awareness of impending mortality makes for a fundamentally human concern with time itself. Human consciousness loops back on itself, making the individual simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. One cares for the self, which is to say that one’s feelings vary according to one’s self-perceived fortunes. The self becomes akin to a fragile but sacred object that is protected by the elaborate rituals of social interaction (Goffman 1967).</p><p>To be self-conscious is to be aware of one’s own continuity or endurance. It is but a short step, however, from self-consciousness to an awareness that the thread of one’s own life is finite. This unsettling realization brings about a common if not universal experience: “I know that I shall die and I fear to die” (Schutz 1962, 228). Alfred Schutz refers to this experience as “the fundamental anxiety.” He believes it is the engine for the social construction of reality because it motivates us to undertake all manner of enterprise in an effort to transcend our impending mortality.</p><p>There has been considerable attention to the writings of Heidegger and Schutz on the relationship between time and anxiety. In this paper, however, I will examine poignancy—a different, and neglected, aspect of self-consciousness and temporal experience. Every form of time reckoning requires the measurement of change. Sooner or later, what was, is no more. Our temporal experience involves the (often shocking) recognition that things will not, cannot, remain as they are. All being is becoming via ceaselessly creative destruction. Given that the world is constantly changing, we chronically confront the demise of everything we have known and cared for. Inevitably, then, our awareness of time provokes a sensitivity to endings and ubiquitous finitude. Everything in our experience is temporally finite. Time is not synonymous with endings or our awareness of endings, but our perception of the passage of time exposes the ephemerality of the world—not merely our own existence.</p><p>Near the conclusion of Ridley Scott’s film, <italic>Blade Runner</italic>, an android with a genetically engineered life span realizes that he is about to die (Scott 1982). He mourns the fact that all of his precious moments in time—what he has done, what he has experienced—will soon be lost “like tears in the rain.” It is a poignant scene we might say, but what do we mean with this word, and how is that meaning related to our perception of the passage of time?</p><p>The definitions for poignancy that one finds in dictionaries are quite imprecise. For example, poignant may be defined as “keenly distressing to the mind or feelings” and “painfully sharp to the emotions or senses; deeply moving” (<italic>American Heritage Dictionary</italic> 1992, 1397; <italic>Oxford Pocket Dictionary</italic> 2002, 607). Yes, distressing, painful, and moving, but why? One might conclude that poignancy refers to almost any strong emotional response, but that is not how this word is used in everyday life. A thesaurus begins with much the same flurry of imprecision but comes closer to the mark with synonyms in bold type (signifying that they are “most commonly used for the idea at hand”): “sadness, sorrowfulness, mournfulness” (<italic>Roget’s International Thesaurus</italic> 1979, x and 673). Yet there is something more specific to the meaning of poignancy—a quality these words themselves do not denote. The study of time helps us realize that poignancy represents a temporally induced sorrow.</p><p>Sorrow commonly connotes a sense of loss. With poignancy, what one grieves for is the loss of time itself. Poignancy is our emotional response to the disagreeable fact that all forms of existence are fleeting. It is occasioned by our self-conscious perception of endings and finitude. As such, poignancy is also revelatory; it discloses the central features of our temporal nature. In the harsh light cast by poignancy, we can see that all human endeavors have been allocated only a certain amount of time. It marks the always imminent loss of existence due to the implacable workings of temporal processes. Our capacity for poignancy is indicative of a creature that ruefully contemplates the limits imposed upon its own life, but self-consciousness coupled with an awareness of finitude leads to unwelcome insight. Poignancy reveals time is running out.</p><p>Anxiety and poignancy are distinct, but related, forms of human experience, and it is no coincidence that they share certain features in common. Like anxiety, poignancy is an emotional response to our perceived circumstances, and, like anxiety, poignancy reveals something essential about our temporal nature. There are, however, crucial differences. Anxiety is a variation on worry or fear, whereas poignancy emerges from a sense of loss or sorrow. Moreover, the temporal focus for anxiety is primarily what may transpire in the future, while poignancy is typically a reaction to what has been lost in the recent or distant past. The flowers, which were so beautiful only yesterday, have now withered. One can be anxious about something that happened in the past, but, in such cases, one is mainly concerned with the possible ramifications of that event in the future. Still, this is an analytical distinction. In everyday life, anxiety and poignancy may approach each other when, for example, one anticipates finitude or loss.</p><p>There is much to be gained from the study of poignancy. It is, of course, an intriguing subject and intrinsically worthy of investigation, but it also unveils the social construction of human nature (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 48). An exploration of poignancy shows us how self-consciousness is expressed in temporal and emotional experience. The analysis of poignancy helps us understand our enduring fascination with monuments, mementos, photography, and film. Ultimately, the study of poignancy confirms the inescapable centrality of time in human affairs.</p><p>In the balance of this paper, I assemble a general formula for poignancy from a number of concrete instances in everyday life and literature. I then assess the validity of this formula in photography, where we can examine the fit between this general formula and Susan Sontag’s independent and insightful observations. The paper concludes with some directions for future research.</p><sec id="B10.1163_156852412X631664_001" sec-type="head1"><title><bold>Formulating Poignancy</bold></title><p>Within the context of social interaction, the self is conscious of a sequence of fleeting expressions, gestures, and utterances—each with its own dying trajectory marked by a beginning and ending. This stream of experience is always perceived to fall away from oneself toward the horizon of oblivion. Will anyone ever look at me like that again? Likewise, the interpersonal encounter as a whole begins and ends in often ritualized fashion, which is epitomized by the hello and goodbye that punctuate a conversation. Endings, especially, are handled with some delicacy. In multiple languages, “expressions for goodbye offer the hope that the other person will travel or fare well” (Boinod 2006, 10). We do not abruptly end a conversation or leave someone’s presence unless we are thoughtlessly or pointedly rude. Ending one’s involvement with another person (even temporarily) is fraught with symbolic implications for mutual respect in interpersonal relations. Will I ever see that person again? Each moment is irretrievably lost, which makes it precious in our sight, its loss poignant precisely because we know our days are numbered. “<italic>Farewell</italic> is the song Time sings,” writes Margaret Atwood (Atwood 2009, 365). It is not an anxious tune but a poignant one. We are anxious about many things, but we experience the certainty of loss in the formal properties of every conversation.</p><p>Our memories of conversations and relationships are often tinged with a poignant sense of regret. It is, for instance, only some time <italic>after</italic> the quarrel has ended that we think of the perfect retort, thereby experiencing what the French refer to as <italic>l’esprit de l’escalier</italic> (i.e., the wit of the staircase). We have missed an opportunity. Bitterly, we realize that the past cannot be replayed. A father drops his daughter off at high school during her senior year. He is not fond of this task because the students who drive their own cars are quite reckless. Still, as he watches his daughter trudge toward class, he suddenly disregards the chaotic scene to focus poignantly on the fact that there will not be many more moments like this one. The falling away or ending of each scene in the drama of everyday life foreshadows a final curtain call, but it is not his eventual death that he mourns; rather, it is the end of a touching, if often frustrating, episode in his life. This father anticipates an unrecoverable loss. In contrast, an old man who contemplates his own sexual history looks backward, but with comparable effect: “Poignance overwhelms my sensual memories” (Hoagland 2003, 58). John Engels specifies the governing principle: “Precisely to the degree that you have loved something . . . you are punished by time” (Engels 1998, 62).</p><p>An awareness of eventual loss and finitude is inherent in human self-consciousness, which makes for our obsession with time. In addition, social experience is saturated with provisional endings that poignantly foreshadow mortality. Not only is conversation suffused with such premonitions, but also larger and more enduring forms of social interaction. In her novel, <italic>The Time Traveler’s Wife</italic>, Audrey Niffenegger’s character, Henry, laments the unwelcome finish of an exciting spectacle with wording that is poignant, not anxious: “We dance, Iggy Pop sings, and sadly, inevitably, after three encores, the concert finally ends” (Niffenegger 2003, 438). Each comma in that sentence catches at a doomed effort to delay the inevitable moment when the house lights come on to signal that there will be no more music tonight. Similarly, our scholarly gatherings are organized to fit within a standard temporal trajectory; a conference begins with a reception and ends with a banquet. There is a tragic arc to this narrative. We are constantly reminded that it is all temporary, including our vaunted careers. Mark Fidrych was voted Rookie of the Year as a young pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, but he played only a few seasons due to an injury, and he was 54 years old when he died. In his obituary for Fidrych, Nicholas Dawidoff ruefully notes that “any great athlete’s career represents a life span in miniature, an early lesson in mortality” (Dawidoff 2009, 24). Conversations, concerts, conferences, and careers all come to a poignant close. In so doing, they presage the ending of all endings which is, of course, our own always untimely death.</p><p>For self-conscious creatures like ourselves, death may be the ultimate concern, but it is certainly not the only one. The central issue is not the tragic fact that people die but that everything ends, from the most minute gesture to multigenerational endeavors. Our favorite restaurant closes. It was the setting for our first date and subsequent anniversaries, but we can never go there again. A commercial enterprise started by one’s grandparents is sold to make room for competing corporate interests. That business put food on the table for multiple generations of one’s family, but now it is gone. Poignancy has its origins in our plaintive perception that time changes everything and that nothing lasts. With a great deal of money, you can endow the construction of a university building with your name on it—thinking, perhaps, that this edifice will resist the ravages of time. In the not too distant future, however, that building can be razed to make room for a bigger building, funded by a larger donation, from someone with a different name. We are encompassed by disintegration and discontinuity despite our every effort to leave a lasting legacy. This observation may invoke anxiety, but it is much more likely to create a moment of recognition that these changes are a portent of what is in store for us, for the world, for everything we hold dear.</p><p>One’s experience of poignancy is often personal, even subjective, but not invariably so. It is not uncommon for one’s sense of loss to be shared by others. Consider, for example, our response to a vanishing way of life. Formerly vibrant, a social or collective entity ceases to exist. With others, we grieve its extinction. We may be members of that community; it may be our way of life that is moving toward oblivion. Beloved artifacts will be entombed in museums; cherished cultural practices will become the memories of elderly relatives. Or, from an outsider’s vicarious perspective, we may simply share an appreciation for that uniquely charming culture. It is, after all, only a matter of time before the rest of us cling to a vanishing way of life. Either way, it is <italic>we</italic> who mourn its imminent demise. The last stand is a kindred phenomenon. Here, the poignancy of shared fate is reduced to its very essence. A position on the battlefield must be held at all cost. A fort or community is besieged. Retreat is unacceptable; escape is impossible. Undoubtedly, the people in question are doomed. Ancient Hebrews at Masada committed mass suicide rather than surrender to Roman legionnaires. Defenders of the Alamo elected to fight and die instead of surrender to the Mexican army. Those who make a last stand choose to do so, but their choices are constrained by a shared commitment to their own cultural heritage. Poignantly, their decisions demonstrate that there are some things more important than life itself.</p><p>Communities lionize those who sacrifice themselves in this fashion. Monuments and other forms of collective commemoration mark them as heroes. These memorials are, themselves, sites of special poignancy. In his book, <italic>The Human Organization of Time</italic>, Allen Bluedorn tells a story about visiting the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D. C. “Two of my wife’s high school classmates had been killed in Vietnam,” he writes, “and she wanted to see their names on the monument” (Bluedorn 2002, 200). He is only accompanying her, and he knows no one whose name is carved on that wall. Yet, when she finds the name of one of her classmates, it is a “profoundly moving” moment for him, as well. Moreover, when he tries to discuss this incident in class several years after the fact (ironically, as an example of collective commemoration), he finds that he is overcome by emotion: “I described the monument and then started to describe my wife pointing to her classmate’s name on the wall—and I had to stop. That scene was just too poignant in my mind’s eye” (Bluedorn 2002, 200). By definition, monuments are meant to protect collective memory from the erosion of time. Tacitly, however, they testify to the fact that heroism does not exempt us from our ultimate destiny as temporal beings.</p><p>The trappings of privilege and authority are meant to invoke a sense of inevitability and continuity. There is, in other words, a temporal subtext to power and prestige. This is how it has always been, proclaims the aristocracy, and this is how it will always be. Nonetheless, the unavoidable transience of power and prestige is an enormous theme in literature. A classic example is Percy Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias” (Shelley 1970, 550). At the outset, “a traveler from an antique land” tells us that “two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.” Nearby and nearly buried by shifting sand, “a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” suggest that these ruins represent someone who was at the pinnacle of power. The inscription on the pedestal confirms that, once upon a time, it was a tremendous monument to arrogance: ‘“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’” Yet Shelley’s next line renders the judgment of irony on this boast: “Nothing beside remains” and all around this “wreck” and “decay,” he adds, “the lone and level sands stretch far away.” Yet how can we sneer at Ozymandias while clinging to our own trophies? His hubris must not be allowed to obscure the general point that, in our own lives, those things of which we are most proud are also poignantly perishable.</p><p>Inescapably, human self-consciousness confronts what Joseph Conrad refers to as “the evanescence of all things” (Conrad 1950, 149). There is, then, a horizon of poignancy around our every gesture, utterance, memento, and accomplishment. By virtue of self-consciousness, we are painfully aware of these things falling away, leaving us with an exquisite sensitivity to time and a poignant sense of impending loss. The horizon of poignancy is near or far but always visible, albeit more acutely perceived at particular stages in the life course. Conrad argues that “the mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future” (Conrad 1950, 106). With this unique mental capacity, we can imagine eternity, but all we ever experience is ephemerality and finitude. With his insight, we can formulate a general recipe for poignancy: the infinite collides with finitude; a limitless human imagination contemplates the limits of its own existence. Zora Neale Hurston offers a concordant variation on this formula in her mournful observation that we are all destined to have our “dreams mocked to death by Time” (Hurston 1998, 1). When our limitless dreams collide with the finitude of time, the result is a temporally induced sorrow.</p><p>Cultures vary in their appreciation for poignancy. For Americans, our Declaration of Independence enshrines “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our “unalienable rights” (<italic>Constitution of the United States</italic> 1966, 78). We strive to be happy and are apt to think that something is profoundly wrong when it eludes us. Not surprisingly, our pharmaceutical industry has had great success at defining any shade of melancholia as a medical problem that can be cured with a pill. The cultural context is very different in Japan where, according to Kathryn Schulz, “Buddhism has encouraged the acceptance of sadness and discouraged the pursuit of happiness” (Schulz 2004, 40). Consequently, our pharmaceutical industry has encountered difficulty with marketing its wares in Japan. Perhaps because of their Buddhist stoicism, the Japanese have cultivated an aesthetic outlook on the experience of poignancy. This outlook is apparent in their word <italic>aware</italic> (ah-<italic>wah</italic>-ray), which Christopher Moore defines as an appreciation for the ephemeral beauty of the world:</p><disp-quote><p>The seasons change, the cherry blossom gently falls. . . . <italic>Aware</italic> is that poignant sensation one has of time passing, of the inevitable cycle of life and death. From the noun comes the idiom <italic>mono-no-aware</italic>. Roughly translated as “enjoying the sadness of life,” it’s that bittersweet, vaguely poetic feeling you get around dusk. (Moore 2004, 87)</p></disp-quote><p>From this aesthetic perspective, poignancy becomes the mournful feeling one seeks or indulges in so as to experience a sophisticated, if painful, insight.</p><p>Societies respond to it in divergent ways, but the existential recipe for poignancy is everywhere the same, regardless of whether one’s culture treats it as a medical or aesthetic issue. Moreover, there is some irony in the fact that our attention to endings and finitude helps us fathom the origin of poignancy.</p></sec><sec id="B10.1163_156852412X631664_002" sec-type="head1"><title><bold>Our Fascination with Photography</bold></title><p>There is a photograph of Robert F. Scott and four of his fellow explorers shortly before they died during a terrible blizzard while returning from the South Pole in 1912. There is also a photograph of John F. Kennedy that was taken roughly ninety seconds prior to his assassination on November 22, 1963. In this photograph, his convertible was only a block from Dealey Plaza, where Lee Harvey Oswald waited for him. And there is a photograph of several anonymous people in midair as they fall past the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Moments earlier, they had jumped from windows because they were trapped by flames that had engulfed the floors beneath them. All of these people died soon after their photographs were taken, but, in itself, that does not set them apart from the rest of us. The people in every photograph are already dead or soon will be.</p><p>Photographs of human beings have an intrinsically poignant quality that is derived from their capacity to seemingly preserve a moment “forever.” Most paintings do not have the same impact on a viewer, but the <italic>vanitas</italic> tradition is a noteworthy exception. “<italic>Vanitas</italic> is the Latin term for ‘vanity,’” writes Henry Sayre, “and <italic>vanitas</italic> paintings, especially popular in Northern Europe in the seventeenth century, remind us of the vanity, or frivolous quality, of human existence” (Sayre 2003, 53). Typically, still life paintings depict various pleasures that life has to offer: beautiful flowers, delicious food, valuable possessions, and so forth. In the <italic>vanitas</italic> tradition, however, an unusual item is added to this assemblage:</p><disp-quote><p>The key element in a <italic>vanitas</italic> painting . . . is the presence of a human skull among these objects. The skull reminds the viewer that the material world—the world of still life—is fleeting, and that death is the end of all things. Such a reminder is called a <italic>momento mori</italic>—literally a “reminder of death.” (Sayre 2003, 53)</p></disp-quote><p>Paintings in the <italic>vanitas</italic> tradition draw attention to the transience of our lives. Photography has a comparable effect on the viewer, but without recourse to overt symbolism.</p><p>I have suggested that poignancy is a prevalent, perhaps universal, response to the ubiquitous perception of loss and finitude in human experience. This is, of course, a difficult matter to resolve with any certainty. So far, I have supported my argument with only a smattering of examples from everyday life and literature, but a claim of this magnitude requires systematic support from a dispassionate source. For further evidence, then, let us turn to Susan Sontag’s influential study, <italic>On Photography</italic>, which offers an opportunity to examine whether the preceding analysis helps us understand our fascination with nostalgia, antique objects, and the mechanical recording of visual images (Sontag 1977).</p><p>There is a distinctive relationship between an event and a photograph of that event. Sontag notes that “after the event has ended, the picture will still exist, conferring on the event a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed” (Sontag 1977, 11).</p><p>Through the preservation of these often mundane moments, photography protects us from a chronic sense of loss. The public quickly recognized that, temporarily at least, photographs safeguard our accomplishments from the remorseless erosion of memory. Predictably, Sontag finds that “memorializing the achievements of individuals considered as members of families (as well as of other groups) is the earliest popular use of photography” (Sontag 1977, 8). Without photographic preservation, the accomplishments of loved ones are apt to fade from our memories under the ceaseless onslaught of new experiences. Since its invention, photography has been a principal form of mnemonic weaponry in our war with time.</p><p>Yet what is preserved in these images? According to Sontag, “despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth” (Sontag 1977, 6). Nothing more than a version of events is recorded in these documents. The resulting picture is an artifact of decisions concerning light, color, distance, orientation, composition, and so forth. In short, photographs do not simply depict what transpired; they are products of a creative process. Elaborating on this point, Sontag asserts that “photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal” (Sontag 1977, 9). Photography does not capture “the” event because there is no single perspective on that event. Its capacity to preserve our experience may be chimerical, but, as temporal beings, we find that promise irresistible.</p><p>Without a camera, our experience streams by us with no way to grasp a particular moment, savor it, keep it. What is worse, our memory of these moments swiftly erodes as sand falls from the top chamber of an hourglass into the bottom. Sontag observes that a camera “allows one to linger over a single moment as long as one likes” (Sontag 1977, 81). Thus, she quotes Hart Crane in his review of work by Stieglitz: photography’s promise is “‘the moment made eternal’” (Sontag 1977, 65). Yet despite its apparent validity, this statement reveals a central irony: as I dwell on that photograph, it does not age, but I do. The allure of photography is fraudulent; the aspirations it arouses are never quite realized, leaving us with a sense of disillusionment. Instead of stopping time, the photograph gradually becomes a totem to nostalgia, poignant longing for lost youth, and mournful thoughts about how much time has passed. The genie grants our wish, but we do not get what we wished for.</p><p>Photographs document our dispossession of time. As Sontag puts it, “to look at an old photograph of oneself, of anyone one has known, or of a much photographed public person is to feel, first of all: how much <italic>younger</italic> I (she, he) was then. Photography is the inventory of mortality” (Sontag 1977, 70). Photographs do not represent the triumph of technology over time; they merely remind us, poignantly, of the ephemerality in our lives. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, a belief that one matters, and strong feelings are connected to one’s continued existence. “As the fascination that photographs exercise is a reminder of death,” writes Sontag, “it is also an invitation to sentimentality. Photographs turn the past into an object of tender regard, scrambling moral distinctions and disarming historical judgments by the generalized pathos of looking at time past” (Sontag 1977, 71). Even when we look at old photographs of dictators and criminals, we are less concerned with their misdeeds than with the poignant feeling that time has slipped away from us.</p><p>Photography is a useful source of evidence because it exemplifies something of general significance but, by the same token, something diffused and harder to see: our touching tendency to romanticize the past. For example, an automobile that was not impressive when it was new becomes a prized possession once a certain number of years have passed (despite the fact that it now lacks up-to-date technology). Sontag points out that, with their undertones of “mortality” and “transience,” photographs foster “romanticism . . . about the past” (Sontag 1977, 67). By definition, antiques survive an interval of time that we have lost, that mythic and bygone era when things were better than they are now. In kindred ways, writes Sontag, “photographs actively promote nostalgia” (Sontag 1977, 15). They induce longing for that day or decade which is not longer with us. She describes photography as “an elegiac art” because “most subjects . . . are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos” (Sontag 1977, 15).</p><p>Sontag brings us to the crux of the matter when she avows that “all photographs are <italic>momento mori</italic>” (Sontag 1977, 15). More than clocks, calendars, or any other technology, photography taps a wellspring of temporal poignancy. Sooner or later, photographs archive delightful experiences that have ended or beloved people who are no longer with us; photographs circumscribe temporal territory that we enjoyed but cannot revisit. Sontag perceives that “precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt” (Sontag 1977, 15). Photography reminds us that “everything is perishable” (Sontag 1977, 80). In so doing, Sontag argues, it offers a “poignantly reductive way of dealing with the world” (Sontag 1977, 80). With that telling phrase, she offers independent confirmation of a temporal framework for poignancy.</p><p>Sontag’s testimony is not unambiguous. In one passage she refers to photography as “a defense against anxiety,” but, as we have seen, by far the weight of her analysis concerns poignancy and pathos (Sontag 1977, 8). On balance, her findings suggest that poignancy is more prevalent than anxiety in one very large field of human experience. Still, we must acknowledge that our self-consciousness and fascination with time make for a spectrum of different emotions, and our interpretive framework must accommodate this variation.</p></sec><sec id="B10.1163_156852412X631664_003" sec-type="head1"><title><bold>Conclusion</bold></title><p>In her novel, <italic>Life Before Man</italic>, Margaret Atwood describes the thoughts and feelings of a character whose friend has committed suicide. This character is astonished to see that, unlike her friend, she can go on with the mundane tasks in her life, and find satisfaction in doing so:</p><disp-quote><p>But she’s still alive, she wears clothes, she walks around, she holds down a job even. She has two children. Despite the rushing of wind, the summoning voices she can hear from underground, the dissolving trees, the chasms that open at her feet; and will always from time to time open. She has no difficulty seeing the visible world as a transparent veil or a whirlwind. The miracle is to make it solid.</p><p>She thinks with anticipation of her house, her quiet living room with its empty bowls, pure grace, her kitchen table. Her house is not perfect; parts of it are in fact crumbling, most noticeably the front porch. But it’s a wonder that she has a house at all; that she managed to accomplish a house. Despite the wreckage. She’s built a dwelling over the abyss, but where else was there to build it? So far, it stands. (Atwood 1979, 301-302)</p></disp-quote><p>Whatever we do, whatever we build, it will not last forever. “So far” is as long as anything ever “stands.” Given the ubiquity of transience and finitude, our lives are lived over the abyss of time. The beautiful and beloved things of this world are torn down to make way for novelty and improvisation. Delight must be indulged during its all too ephemeral recognition. Unavoidably, we are always making a last stand in the whirlwind of constant change.</p><p>Our response to this existential plight is often, perhaps typically, one of poignancy—a mournful feeling that acknowledges our quintessentially temporal character. When we turn our gaze toward that which we value, we are inevitably struck by its provisional qualities. We must find meaning, beauty, and even joy in that which is only temporary. Our desire for more time is repeatedly thwarted by the limits imposed upon all forms of existence. There is a temporal quandary at the heart of the human condition. With our unique capacity for self-consciousness, we can imagine continuity and even eternity, long for it, but never realize it within the confines of human experience. Instead, there is a horizon of poignancy that surrounds our every act, our every perception—every moment of our lives. The contours of human experience are fundamentally shaped by this ongoing collision between our infinite imaginations and our finite existence. From the briefest sensation to contemplation of the most enduring of our social institutions, the horizon of poignancy leaves us with a pervasive sense of impending loss. This unresolvable tension between our minds and our world leaves us wondering about what might have been. Why not dismiss what is lost in favor of a blissful look forward to a future of infinite possibilities? The evidence suggests that there is a retrospective bias in the anchoring of self-consciousness and identity. We can never be certain about what lies over the horizon, but we do know, and are often deeply attached to, what we are about to lose.</p><p>Like a presentation, like a conference, all human enterprise comes to a self-consciously poignant conclusion. Ultimately, Conrad is right when he calls us the “playthings of Time” (Conrad 1950, 154). But, of course, a conclusion is not only poignant, because it may also serve as a springboard for our next endeavor. A different feeling accompanies our identification of new directions for future research. Other emotions offer intriguing opportunities for temporal analysis. It would appear that anger and embarrassment are predominantly concerned with the past. The future is the focus of anxiety and dread, while envy and jealousy seem to be primarily phenomena of the present. In short, the ending of this paper points toward a broader question than the one with which we began: How are various emotions or feelings structured by the tenses of time? 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Socialization produces a self that is simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one’s continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is to be aware of one’s eventual demise. Moreover, each passing moment is immediately and irretrievably lost, which can make it precious in our sight, its loss poignant when we remember that our days are numbered. I examine poignancy in everyday life and literature. The essential formula for poignancy appears to be a collision between our capacity to imagine an infinite future and the finitude of all human experience. Susan Sontag’s study of photography provides further evidence for this argument.</abstract><subject><genre>Keywords</genre><topic>Poignancy</topic><topic>time</topic><topic>self-consciousness</topic><topic>sorrow</topic><topic>temporal experience</topic></subject><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Kronoscope</title><subTitle>Journal for the Study of Time</subTitle></titleInfo><titleInfo type="abbreviated"><title>KRON</title></titleInfo><identifier type="ISSN">1567-715X</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1568-5241</identifier><part><date>2012</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>12</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>1</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>90</start><end>103</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">14319BAC489C9925BB8F5347B37D3A048A670C8D</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1163/156852412X631664</identifier><identifier type="href">15685241_012_01_S08_text.pdf</identifier><accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="Copyright">© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</accessCondition><recordInfo><recordOrigin>Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</recordOrigin><recordContentSource>BRILL Journals</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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