Memory has the voice. Some remarks about Wysoki Zamek by Stanisław Lem
Wysoki Zamek by Stanisław Lem The Lviv High Castle is the return to the writer’s childhood. The memory is Lem’s guide and his method of analysis of the past. What the writer is most interested of, is the memory itself: its working, its existing and its power. Lem finds out that memory is the great and mysterious power, an autonomic power that is not under man’s control. The writer calls memory his enemy and his friend — to show that in this human capacity there is something that belongs to the human and at the same time that is against human because time is always against human. T h e c h i l d w h o h e w a s — is the second, equal subject of the book which is quite different of other memories because not facts, not events, even not relatives are important in this story. The experiences of time and partially — of space and the efforts to describe them are the right subject of Lem’s quasi-autobiographical story.