Remains Of The Day

 Tagesreste

Debris of the day, or dreams, according to Freud.

It was a small mystery.  For a few days the phrase hung in the back of my mind and I didn't know why.

Remains of the day?

My Navigator kid looked it up.  I thought, and she knew that it was the title of a novel. Turns out it is the title of a book by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Kazuo Ishiguro's third novel, ''The Remains of the Day,'' is a dream of a book: a beguiling comedy of manners that evolves almost magically into a profound and heart-rending study of personality, class and culture. At the beginning, though, its narrator, an elderly English butler named Stevens, seems the least forthcoming (let alone enchanting) of companions. Cartoonishly punctilious and reserved, he edges slowly into an account of a brief motoring holiday from Oxfordshire to the West Country that he is taking alone at the insistence of his new employer, a genial American, Mr. Farraday.

***

 

1. The title The Remains of the Day came from a phrase by Sigmund Freud.

Ishiguro related that he named the novel when he was talking with a group of writers at a conference. The poet Judith Herzberg mentioned a German word from Freud's work, Tagesreste, meaning "the debris of the day." Freud used the word to refer to dreams. Ishiguro was taken with this idea, saying, "It seemed to me right in terms of atmosphere."

***

It's another one of those things.  I had an idea of what the phrase meant that had nothing to do with what the phrase meant.

My back-mind was trying to say something to me about dreams? Maybe not.

I had thought that the remains of the day were what I could salvage from the business of the day.  What was eternal and keep-able.  I felt like maybe the Spirit of Truth was trying to nudge me to pay mind to the people present and not grieve over the imperfections in style.  The phrase came to mind so many times that I knew I was supposed to extract something from it.

Sometimes this way of receiving a message works even if it doesn't comport with S. Freud's use of a phrase, which is then translated to English.  The communication worked through my inaccurate understanding and in spite of it!  

Dreams are also interesting, but for some other day.  Sigmund thought they represented wish-fulfillment.  Goodness, I think there is more to it than that!