I saw The Great Gatsby on the weekend, and I’m quite excited about it. I was glad to hear the director say that living to repeat the past is quite impossible, but I have to admit that Fitzgerald’s suggestion is quite fascinating, even if it seems wrong-headed. Since time points forward for us except when indexing thoughts and media, we never look into the past, even relativity doesn’t permit that in any direct sense. The past is read-only. Our minds can survey the times that already happened, and we commonly assume that it is unhealthy to dwell in the past excessively.
That’s what the novel is about, at least. It is a fascinating attempt by a character to live out his own religion not so much in a quest for spirituality, but in a quest for something he feels a need for in his life. Since life is very much about needs, this opens the question of in what contexts it becomes important or relevant to recreate the past.
One recreates the past whenever one tries to preserve love. Love only happens in an instant, and the spectacle of couples trying to preserve their custom of alliance with each other is clearly one in which reproduction of the past plays a big part. That is “Great” Gatsby’s great insight: That the moment of memorializing love, in essence attempting to make it eternal, is the reproduction of, and return to the past through repetition.
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