("Dante's Virgil was wrong," he thinks, "to tell him that there is no greater sorrow than to remember past happy times when one is in misery. Memory is a solace").
For the first half of the epic, Aeneas wallows in uncertainty and misery, beholden to the memory of his beloved homeland and deferring to the judgment of his father.
Every Christmas, I try to create the warmest, coziest home for my family, to erase the memories of misery and loss that I experienced in my youth.
In reminding us that the art of catastrophe is often a device for banishing the memory of human misery, Sebald's short book is a plea to restore the moral dimension of ruins.
Then, after Arjen Robben has missed from the spot in extra-time, Drogba kept his nerve after Ivica Olic and Bastian Schweinsteiger had failed in the shoot-out to ensure Chelsea erased the memory of their misery in 2008 by conquering Europe for the first time.
The "misery memoir", aka the "misery market".
The Palestinians' second intifada has been one of the most self-defeating strategies in memory, bringing death and misery to Palestinians and no political gain.
Savouring the memories, living with the misery, not bucking up, may be the path that suits some.
Sandemose went to sea in his teens, jumped ship in Newfoundland, and worked in a lumber camp before returning to Denmark with memories of violence and misery to write stories influenced by Jack London and Joseph Conrad.
These, altogether, are as Messager suggests in her own title (Plaisir/Déplaisir) the moments and memories of pleasure and misery on which women's lives--and the lives of those close to women--are constructed.
