Memory is a strange thing, its triggers and manifestations random and unpredictable. The vast complexity of the human brain has a lot to answer for.
Why, for example, can I recall what it felt and smelled like to apply linseed oil to my Slazenger cricket bat in August 1975, but not what I did last Tuesday? What possible explanation can there be for my ability to recall at will the names of people I haven’t seen or thought of for thirty-five years, but not the name of the person I’ve just been introduced to? How come I can go for months without so much as a sniff of an embarrassing memory and then BAM! – all my life mistakes are there, crowding into my head, baying for attention, and then playing in HD surround-sound in a never-ending, looping playlist of burning chagrin and shamefaced humiliation?
Bloody hell, brain.
Sometimes, though, just sometimes, it comes up trumps, serving up memories to inspire feelings of joy, uplift and comfort. Yesterday was one of those times. It didn’t quite come out of the blue, but its effect was startlingly vivid.
Behold: the first page of Asterix the Gaul.
What was it that triggered the memory, so visceral and yet so brief? I remember all the Asterix books from my childhood, even to knowing the layout of some of the pages off by heart. I’d read them over and over again, losing myself in the splendid, joyful illustrations, relishing the silliness of the names (Getafix, Vitalstatistix, Unhygienix, Cacofonix, Crismus Bonus, Infirmofpurpus, Squareonthehypotenus, Mykingdomforanos, and many many more – thank you thank you Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge for your supreme translation), and savouring the many and ridiculous puns, even though I didn’t understand them all (it took me years, decades in fact, to work out that the fortified Roman camp ‘Totorum’ was a play on ‘tot o’ rum’. Duh.) And I’d read some of them quite recently, as part of the ongoing project loosely entitled ‘Persuade Your Child To Love The Same Things You Grew Up With (see also Winnie the Pooh and Tintin, among others).
But there was something about this page in particular, on display at the excellent exhibition devoted to the work of René Goscinny at The Jewish Museum, that dumped me back in 1975 as surely as the aforementioned linseedy whiff.
Maybe it’s Obelix, not yet as corpulent as in his prime (albeit already with a chest that has slipped just a bit) and carrying a menhir that is distinctly the wrong shape; or perhaps it’s Asterix’s jaunty whistle, the first of many; or the column of Roman soldiers peeking out from behind a tree. Or just those words, preface to hours of childhood happiness: ‘All of Gaul is occupied. All? No. One village…’
It’s all there in that first page. And with sight of it I’m back in the bedroom of my childhood. It’s probably a darkening Sunday afternoon in November, with all that entails – encroaching gloom, homework and piano practice yet undone, the school week a glowering, shapeless monster looming large in my mind, paralysing thought and deed.
I can see the circular indentations where the feet of my chair have dug into the lino, smell the dust burning off the old two-bar heater in the corner, taste the mashed banana with soft brown sugar and cream I’ve just had to keep me going till supper time (oh my chicken Kiev, my Findus Crispy Pancakes, my potato croquettes of yesteryear!)
I can hear the slightly distorted countdown music of the Top 40 playing on my tiny, tinny tranny. I’m probably lying on my stomach on the bed, idly picking at a corner of wallpaper, peeling little slivers of it from the wall. A pool of light spills onto the page in front of me.
And then, just like that, the feeling’s gone, and I’m back in a gallery in Camden, vaguely wondering where Oliver’s gone. He skipped the ‘Goscinny’s early years’ bit of the exhibition, no doubt looking for those familiar images, jumping to the main event – his love for Asterix and chums inculcated by me, Brainwash Dad, from an early age. Now I can’t find him.
I look round the corner, and there he is, slumped in a bean bag, ensconced in a display copy of Asterix and Cleopatra, pretty much ready to stay until they kick him out at closing time. Just as it should be.
The cycle continues. Memories, as they say, are made of this.
Me too. I read my Tintin & Asterix copies till the spines fell off.
I was ten when Dad came home with the first Tintin we saw. He had found it in a bookshop in Sydney while away on a conference . My brother and I read it together and then took it in turns to read it again and again. It was so far removed from a tiny community on the edge of the desert that it seemed impossibly romantic to us!
I share your enthusiasm for Asterix, Lev. Having initially been captivated by reading them in the original French, I was even more impressed when I read them again in English, for you are absolutely right in paying homage to Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge for their brilliance, which goes far beyond translation; indeed, there were occasions when their version actually improved on the original, e.g. in their choice of name for the little dog Idée Fixe (= Obsession), which they rendered as Dogmatix. Sheer brilliance!
I have never met Anthea Bell, although I did know Derek, who was a lecturer in French at Leicester Polytechnic, and also one of my team of Assistant Examiners when I was Chief Oral Examiner in French at O and A Level for the AEB. Sadly, he died about five years ago, although he was a little bit younger than me.
yes, the brain is downright odd! great blog, Lev
Asterix led me onto many other fine cartoons, including, Snoopy, B.C., The Wizzard of Id and so on.