Remembering the end

The story teller Illuminations Walter benjamin [XII-XIV]

The essay begins a to knead into myth and contrast between the epic poem and the modern novel. Both seem to involve memory but have different natures between them. They seem to match to Jung's description of the mind regarding the unconscious and the conscious. The epic is the unconscious while the novel is consciousness.

This is epic remembrance and the Muse-inspired element of the narrative. But this should be set against another principle, also a muse-derived element in a narrower sense, which as an element of the novel in its earliest form--that is, in the epic--lies concealed, still undifferentiated from the similarly derived element of the story. 

The need for the epic is the generative element in the novel but the novel treats this memory in such a way that transforms the story and alters it. The novel brings a theme from the first essay about collecting. The altered memory does not strive for unity of one story but takes on a collecting character involving multiple tales.

The novel is also given characteristics of time and ownership. Unlike myth, which is woven, the novel involves memories that lead to an end. The termination is final and does lead to be rewoven in a way an epic myth does.

The novelist on the other hand, cannot hope to take the smallest step beyond that limit at which he invites the reader to a divinatory realization of the meaning of life by writing "Finis."