Mnemosyne's Realm: Crafting Memoir

Borofka, Deb Everson. (2005). Mnemosyne's Realm: Crafting Memoir (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2005). UMI 3195880.

Memoir is vehicle for re-storying a life. It is a genre which assists one in making meaning of life experiences, particularly troubling or traumatic events. This study explores the influence of the Greek Goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne, on women’s memoir. Her story can be imagined as a template for the woman memoirist which informs the content, form, and use of memoir. A visual image in the form of a Ven diagram with three intersecting circles is presented as an organizing metaphor for this work. The center of the diagram, the area where each of these three aspects overlap, is conceptualized as an imaginal field of the Other, offering an aperture which invites the reader into an Other’s experience.

The story of Mnemosyne with that of her siblings is very briefly recounted in Hesiod’s Theogony. The purpose of this dissertation is to keep the idea of the archetypal Feminine, in the persona of Mnemosyne, as an overarching metaphor while investigating women’s memoir. Mnemosyne represents one manifestation of the archetypal Feminine, a figure who presents qualities of earthiness, ephemerality, passion, creativity, and survival of trauma. She is a figure who will not forget, who will not consent to erasure.

I have chosen to focus specifically on the use of memoir as a way of healing from trauma. This trajectory is in keeping with Mnemosyne, since she was the daughter who witnessed the sexual trauma of her mother via the repressed births of both her siblings and herself. Mnemosyne’s birthing of the Muses underscores her commitment to express all the facets of personal story: grief, sorrow, joy, love, body, breath, revery, and humor. The woman memoirist follows Mnemosyne’s imaginal lineage in crafting all memoir, particularly trauma narratives. The production portion of this dissertation is a memoir, Face the Moon, Ask for Blessing, which presents an example of how one woman picked up the pieces of a childhood interrupted by trauma. This memoir demonstrates a reweaving of a mother line by imagining two foremothers, their wounds, and how their dark beauty is sung forward into succeeding generations.