PARTISAN REVIEW
413
MEMORIALS
One after the other, if they are not wholly lost, our inten–
tions, unless they started that way, turn into legends. On the other
side of their effects we walk on, thinking we know. And they, whom
we continue to address and refer to as though their presence were
something that we understood perfectly and could take for granted,
leave us without our so much as noticing. Yes, sometimes most of
them will be gone at a time, while our activities continue without
them. And then they will return across great distances, like the in–
fluences of planets, and even when they are reborn in something
very like the old forms it is probable that we will not recognize them,
any more than we did the last time. It is this aspect of existence that
- without our meaning it - our monuments commemorate.
After each war the men from the memorial companies tour the
little towns. On their arrival the custodians of the locally accepted
intentions welcome them. These neighborhood officials, thoroughly
rehearsed, impress themselves once again, in a manner that has ac–
quired its own rough ritual, with the superstitions that they now
be–
lieve were the intentions (including their own) underlying the recent
conflict, and with the feelings which, in consequence, they had en–
couraged themselves to profess. They are scrupulously mindful of what
they take to
be
the intentions of their neighbors, hereby to be com–
memorated - the
grief
of widows and bereaved mothers, the proud
and vengeful wrath of fathers, the as yet undeveloped but indubitable
gratitude of children. Insofar as their combined means
will
allow–
and this is not something over which any of them would wish to be
sparing, or would admit to such a wish if he felt
it
-
they want an
object that will express all of these things clearly, changelessly and
in perpetuity. In this spirit they approach the latest catalogs.
Also
they have piously
in
mind what they take to have been
the intentions of the young men who went away and died. Quite
as much - more so -than the actual features of their faces (though
