The autobiographical nature of the Memoirs of the Oratory
Above all, DB did not want to outline his own life story,
but the story and identity of the Oratory:
Initial inspiration
Those for whom it existed
Positive and negative circumstances
Distinctive elements of method and mission
Characteristic features
The MO is different from earlier accounts
These latter concentrated on the motives and events tied to a “Catechism class” which became the “Oratory”: purpose, spelling out, activities, workers, results;
They were meant for authorities and the public, supporters and benefactors;
Without any connection with the author’s inner story.
In the MO, at the level of narrative, the story of the Oratory is connected with the inner story
of the narrator
and of disciples who would continue the work
from the past and take it forward
And it has a normative function
The “beloved Salesian sons”
“forbid that these things be made public during my lifetime or after my death”
Then:
Handing on an intimate family heritage (shared by author and readers)
Formation and animation, a mission, identity, method.
DB brings in those who benefit from these adventures in the Memoirs: He has them play an active part
In as much as they are disciples who share the perspective in which he places the story of how he sets up an identity;
In as much as they are partners whom he asks to accept his view of the facts (historical and personal, real and poetic)
The presence of the readers affects DB’s narrative (he converses with them)
“It will be a record that will help people overcome problems... by learning from the past”
“it will serve to make known how God himself has always been our guide”
“it will give my sons some entertainment, to be able to read about their father’s adventures…”
The motivation for writing is more necessary and internal to the text than something “literary”
He refers to things “outside the text” as is characteristic of this genre (autobiography)
A complex, articulated and evocative construction,
that goes beyond the description of the Oratory (a work with its own purposes and method);
It is a kind of theological-ideological viewpoint,
that sets the birth of the Oratory within an inner and “spiritual” (vocational and missionary) range of events
The MO begins with DB’s birth:
A providential perspective on history
A personal event is filled with meaning that transcends its particular details.
Beyond the writing there is God who governs the individual’s and society’s history with a view to salvation, giving rise to vocations and inspiring ‘journeys’,
But there is also a human being telling the story
Second beginning: the dream at 9 years of age (detailed and dramatic account)
Inserted into the text as the real beginning of ‘memory’ for the Oratory
He decides to break it up into subdivisions of a decade each
The dream at 9 years of age:
Anticipates meanings, strategies, structures;
Offers the outline for rhetorical organisation of the MO according to the intentions of the author
The encounter with Bartholomew Garelli: At the chronological and symbolic centre of the MO (2 decade, ch. 12)
The orphan lad from Valsesia (3rd decade, ch. 7)
Concludes the narrative span already foreshadowed in the dream at 9 years of age…
3rd decade, Ch. 8: narrative is broken, seems to vary with respect to the unity of the preceding composition.
Plot and intrigue are lacking:
A series of events ordered chronologically, but without the narrative weave,
And without the personal and intimate involvement of the earlier account;
narrative vignettes with less significance for the Oratory vocation (weak ending: Grigio).
Autobiographies: effort to provide unity and meaning, historical sense, to experience
DB, starting from perspectives that guided him at the time
Reconstruction of facts from the past attributing meaning to them
Reveals to us and himself how much he has been helped or hindered as he develops his oratorian calling
And how many experiences became part of his awareness and method
DB transforms the revisited experience into a resource which allows him to construct a spiritual and pedagogical “way of knowing” for his readers
Complex dynamics of memory, selection and interpretation of facts, their organisation into a plot, according to some superior and meaningful unity
Filtering of events, in the reconstruction of a part of life around the unifying core of his Oratory vocation/mission
An awareness “at a second level”: the return to the steps he took in recognising meaningful connections and the harmonious outcome of the various elements
It is a work of self-formation, in which DB:
perceives the events of the past in a different way and acts on them,
i.e. reconnects them to the history of the Oratory
And organises them around this unified meaning,
In fact gives new content to events experienced which did not have that global perception
The process of SELECTION is put into place:
With regard to FACTS
Selecting those most significant for the overall meaning and discarding others
For their SIGNIFICANCE
By interpreting them from a theolgocial point of view and according to concerns that moved him at the time
A process of ORGANISATION of events according to the weight given to each in the reconstruction of the overall unified design
From this planning arises the plot, and the way it is woven to control the narrative strategy of his account
A retrospective view revealing the intimate connection between events experienced at different periods in time (narrator's infancy, youth, maturity and present)
He favours the story’s point of arrival, gives meaning to all episodes by organising them into an intelligible whole
At the conclusion of the narrative the text of the MO seems to us to be
a continuous search for and highlighting of foreshadowed elements of the Oratory’s characteristic features
in weaving an existence that the author feels is marked by a divine call
(situations anticipating the Oratory; characters who represent the Oratory’s style and method)
