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All things are inherently fragile, no matter how permanent and indestructible they may seem. Being mortal, we can only preserve our health, our very lives, for a circumscribed span of time. But what of our works—our languages, our communities, our arts and sciences, our institutions, our families? And what of our earth, its forests, rivers, mountains, skies, and oceans? How long can they, fragilities themselves if surely longer lived, be preserved?
The writers in Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue come at these and similar questions from a host of perspectives. In one story, a methodical archaeologist and a scavenger of architectural remnants approach the preservation of abandoned asylums using very different methodologies. In another, a starving geobotanist rides out the Siege of Leningrad in the Plant Institute cellar, where 370,000 types of seeds from around the world are stored, refusing to eat any of the rare potato exemplars he himself collected. An essay laments the rapid extinction of dialects—we lose a dozen or two languages a year—as a means of spurring us to find ways to salvage them. A memoir recounts the efforts of a caseworker to help the homeless find sanctuary off the streets. A collage of mostly unpublished letters, diaries, scrapbooks, FBI files, and other documents preserved in the archives of William Gaddis brings the author of The Recognitions to life in a vivid, unique way. Here are meditations on the preservation of friendship and family, of memory and bodies, of literature kept alive through the gift of translation. And here is my interview with novelist Richard Powers, in which we talk about trees and their majestic, magical contribution to preserving life on earth—an essential role that humankind continues to ignore at its own peril.
If the theme of preservation seemed significant last year when we began assembling this issue, it now seems of paramount importance—an imperative that must be embraced far beyond this specimen notebook you hold in your hands.
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Cover art by Ivan Bilibin (Askold's Grave by Vertovsky A.N. scenery design; "Coast of the Dnieper"). © Federal State Budget Institution of Culture, A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow.
Palace of Rubble