VII—

While some wounds impel interpretation, storytelling begins with an act of mourning. Benjamin chooses the story of the Egyptian King Psammenitus, related in Herodotus' Histories , to illustrate "the nature of true story-telling" (90), and it is perhaps not by chance that the story describes

the conditions in which a vanquished king begins to mourn. Beaten by the Persian King Cambyses and forced to watch the Persian triumphal procession, Psammenitus sees his daughter pass by as a slave and his son about to be executed. In the midst of other Egyptians lamenting the spectacle, Psammenitus is unmoved. "But when afterwards he recognized one of his servants, an old, impoverished man, in the ranks of the prisoners, he beat his fists against his head and gave all the signs of deepest mourning" (90). Herodotus does not explain why Psammenitus begins to mourn only when he sees his servant, nor does Benjamin explain why he chooses a story of mourning to illustrate the idea of a story's immortality. Instead, he compares the story of Psammenitus to a seed that, enclosed within a pyramid, remains fruitful and alive: "it resembles the seeds of grain which have lain for centuries in the chambers of the pyramids shut up air-tight and have retained their germinative powers to this day" (90). Unlike "information," which "does not survive the moment in which it was new," a true story "preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time" (90).

The seed, like the story, may live forever. And if the seed attains immortality through its entombment, the story's power also results from its proximity to death. "Death," according to Benjamin, "is at the very source of the story" (90): it sanctions "everything that the story teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death" (94). For Benjamin, the pyramid is to the seed as Herodotus' Histories is to the story of King Psammenitus: the book is a monument that preserves the story's life and ensures its transmission. The pyramid encloses the seed in the same way that a story encases those about whom it tells, for a pyramid, monument to death, is also the site where life is retained. A story, then, may function as the linguistic counterpart of a pyramid or tombstone: both ensure that someone, although dead, also remains alive. In both cases an intimate connection to death is the condition for longevity.

In Beloved , as in the myth of Isis, the act of mourning parallels that of storytelling. Sethe cannot begin to let go of the past until she is able to tell stories about it, and Beloved's return allows that process to begin. As a silent figure from another time and place, neither wholly alive nor wholly dead, Beloved provokes in others both the desire to tell and the need to enact what they cannot recall. She is the medium through which, in Shoshana Felman's phrase, "what is not available in words, what is denied, what cannot and what will not be remembered or articulated,

nonetheless gets realized" (267). Her ability to listen helps create the possibility of narrative. And her presence at 124 enables Sethe to move from the position of the one about whom stories are told to the active position of speaker and storyteller.

Marks give rise to stories and to trauma, although in different ways. In a community of slaves, however, they may also function as the only available symbols of identity. In Beloved marks substitute for names and sometimes supply the sole means of recognizing blood kin. In response to Beloved's questions, Sethe suddenly remembers her mother and the circumstances in which she learned how to recognize her: she remembers the brand, "a circle and cross burnt right in the skin" (61), that signifies her mother's position as a slave. And the first story she tells is of how her mother transformed the mark on her body into a name that allowed Sethe to know her. Pointing to the brand, her mother says: "I am the only one got this mark now. The rest dead. If something happens to me and you can't tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark" (61). Behind one scar are the traces of another. In Beloved's presence, Sethe begins to tell her daughters about the marks that have made her who she is. She remembers another story, told to her by Nan after her mother's death. In a language Sethe had forgotten she ever knew, Nan tells her how she received her name:

She told Sethe that her mother and Nan were together from the sea. Both were taken up many times by the crew. "She threw them all away but you. The one from the crew she threw away on the island. The others from more whites she also threw away. Without names, she threw them. You she gave the name of the black man. She put her arms around him. The others she did not put her arms around. Never. Never. Telling you. I am telling you, small girl Sethe." (62)

Nan's narrative links the act of naming to that of marking, as if to tell, or name, were to imprint one's intentions upon the body of another. "Telling," in this context, implies the power to name rather than be named, the ability to give meaning to scars rather than merely bear them.

Sethe's name, Nan says, is "the name of the black man," and in an interview Morrison explains what bearing such a name implies: "If you come from Africa, your name is gone. It is particularly problematic because it is not just your name but your family, your tribe. When you die, how can you connect with your ancestors if you have lost your

name?"^[48] If one consequence of coming from Africa is that "your name is gone," the name "Sethe" carries with it a specific legacy, for instead of signifying identity and familial relation it points to the loss of connection and the destruction of family ties. Receiving "the name of the black man" is to bear a name that signifies absence and loss. Continuing her discussion of the problem of having, or writing about, an African name, Morrison remarks that in Song of Solomon she used "biblical names to show the impact of the Bible on the lives of black people, their awe and respect for it coupled with their ability to distort it for their own purposes," and also "used some pre-Christian names to give the sense of a mixture of cosmologies."^[49] It appears that she has employed this technique in choosing Sethe's name as well, for Sethe signifies the novel's relation to a variety of religious and mythic subtexts.^[50] Mae Henderson points out that Sethe "recalls the Old Testament Hebrew name of 'Seth,' meaning 'granted' or 'appointed' . . . (Eve named her third born Seth, saying 'God has granted me another child in the place of Abel.') In this instance, it would seem that Sethe signifies the child whose life was spared or 'granted' by her mother, who did not keep the offspring of the white men who forced themselves upon her."^[51] In addition, Sethe recalls the Greek river Lethe , which signifies forgetfulness and rhymes with "death." Perhaps most importantly, however, the name links Sethe's story to that of Isis, for Seth is also the name of Osiris' brother and murderer. But if Sethe's name resembles that of Osiris' ancient enemy, what she does re-enacts Isis' role and function: like Isis, Sethe laments the dead's passing and lays them to rest. Whereas Kant, even while citing Isis' inscription, remains fixated on her veil and Derrida fears her as a murderess, Morrison performs the rites for which Isis was renowned: celebrating and burying a beloved body.

Beloved's return is the condition for that process to begin. While at the beginning of the novel the white man makes the marks that Amy, Baby Suggs, and Paul D may read but not write, Beloved's presence allows the protagonists to shift position and begin to speak, signifying the transition from reading the marks the other has made to telling the tale of that by which they have been marked. For Sethe, answering Beloved's questions about the past is "an unexpected pleasure" (58); telling her stories becomes "a way to feed her" (58). Beloved is the absent third that is missing from 124, and her insatiable hunger for stories prompts Sethe's and Denver's speech and Paul D's memory. Her presence makes it possible for Sethe

to tell the story of being black, a woman, and a mother under slavery; for Denver to reconstruct the story of her birth; and for Paul D to retrieve the feelings he had kept locked in "the tobacco tin lodged in his chest" (113), the place where a real heart used to be. Through their relation to Beloved, the past Sethe and Paul D have tried to "beat back" returns. As Paul D tells Stamp Paid, "She reminds me of something. Something, look like, I'm supposed to remember" (234).