THE PRAWN BLOG

MY TWO CENTS ON THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

As we consider cultural works that deepen our understanding of the human condition – particularly the intricate dance between happiness and suffering – I nominate Salvador Dalí’s 1931 masterpiece, The Persistence of Memory. Though small in physical dimension (barely larger than a notebook page), its surreal dreamscape looms vast, expanding into soft, malleable forms that both delight and disturb.

In reflecting on this masterpiece for Happiness and Suffering, I find that it offers a profound, albeit unsettling, meditation on time, memory, and the subjective experience of existence. These themes are inseparable from how we process joy and pain. The painting does not offer easy answers but provokes essential questions about the essence of being. Dalí employs what he called a “paranoiac-critical” method – a Surrealist technique in which the artist induces a paranoid state to generate multiple, shifting interpretations of forms. He describes his canvases as “hand-painted dream photographs,” inviting viewers into a realm shaped by subconscious associations rather than shared reality.

In The Persistence of Memory, the rugged coastline of his Catalonian home dissolves into something uncanny. Clocks droop like cheese left in the sun, draped over a dead olive branch, a strange block of stone, and a fleshy form often interpreted as a self-portrait of Dalí himself. This dreamscape logic destabilizes the ticking clock – our most basic metric of daily life – and asks: Where is happiness in a world where time itself turns fluid? At first glance, the painting’s barren terrain and its iconic melting clocks seem to defy logic, yet they tell a story of transience and transformation. 

The clocks, distorted and fluid as if made of wax under the relentless heat of time, evoke the sensory intensity of hedonic happiness – a fleeting, dazzling pleasure like the immediate gratification of our desires. However, their very malleability suggests that such pleasures are transient, a soft veneer overlaying deeper currents of emotion. This visual metaphor transitions into a more complex emotional landscape when we consider the stoic aspect of happiness, as defined by Daniel Haybron. The stoic perspective emphasizes a serene, enduring inner state – a calm, reflective acceptance of life’s ebbs and flows. In Dalí’s work, the quiet decay of the landscape and the persistence of certain elements speak to this inner, subtle condition.

The surreal distortion of familiar objects mirrors the inner transformation that occurs when one learns to accept suffering as part of one’s emotional continuum. The calm, distant sea and the soft gradient of the sky hint at a baseline emotional steadiness that can persist even amid turmoil, suggesting an “inner harmony” that research indicates is key across cultures. More compellingly, the painting champions the persistence of memory itself. Even as clocks melt and time distorts, memory endures. This subtle suggestion aligns with the concept of eudaemonic happiness, which transcends momentary pleasure by emphasizing the integration of past experiences – joys and sorrows alike – into a coherent, meaningful self.

Could Dalí be suggesting that meaning resides not in the passage of time, nor solely in fleeting pleasures (which consumer culture often pushes via the "hedonic treadmill" effect) but in the subjective richness of memory and the inner world of dreams and the unconscious? The act of painting, the struggle to wrestle subconscious images into existence, may well represent a behavioural response to transform potential suffering into creative output. The secularization thesis tells us that as societies modernize, religious institutions lose their explanatory power over suffering and happiness, yielding to secular, rational structures such as the modern state.

Charles Taylor’s work argues that this shift entails not the disappearance of belief, but the differentiation of religion from other societal spheres – law, science, and politics – transferring faith to a private sphere. In Dalí’s landscape, there are no church spires or divine presences to govern time; instead, clocks melt in a stark, sun-bleached terrain, invoking Einsteinian relativity rather than religious order. Ants feasting on one clock reinforce this post-religious vision: decay and entropy replace spiritual redemption, underscoring suffering as an inescapable, secular condition. Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method mirrors the secular project of employing formal rationality to explain human experience, yet it also exposes its limits.

The painting becomes a critique of modern institutions that promise to organize happiness through reason alone: when time liquefies, the viewer experiences existential anxiety rather than comfort. By removing divine certainties and subjecting time to dream logic, Dalí both enacts and questions the secularization of suffering and happiness. The social contract is the idea that individual’s consent – overtly or implicitly – to relinquish some natural freedoms in exchange for the protection and benefits of civil society. This compact defines rights and duties: citizens obey laws and norms, while governing bodies guarantee security and order.

Without such mutual consent, Hobbes warned, we risk returning to a “war of all against all”, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Dalí’s scene of melting clocks dramatizes what happens if collective norms dissolve: time itself – our most fundamental civic framework – becomes fluid and chaotic. Because social contracts are not set in stone but continually renegotiated, Rousseau emphasized that sovereignty resides in the “general will,” which requires constant reaffirmation by citizens. These contracts include both formal rules (legislation, constitutions) and social rules (customs, norms) that together sustain societal cohesion.

Dalí subverts this stability: by liquefying clocks, he visualizes the breakdown of formal timekeeping, prompting viewers to question the authority and permanence of any institution that claims to organize human life. This rupture forces us to confront how easily the promise of happiness – derived from predictable order – can slip into suffering when our agreements fail. Suffering permeates the canvas, though not always explicitly. It appears in the decay symbolized by the ants swarming over the one un-melted watch – ants that Dalí regarded as powerful symbols of decomposition and death. We also witness it in the dead olive tree, a once-potent emblem of wisdom now rendered barren.

The vast, empty space and the unsettling tranquillity hint at an emotional emptiness, evoking a state of negative affective construal where one feels pervasively trapped in unpleasant circumstances. The distorted clocks serve as a metaphor for this negative affective construal. They suggest that when we are engrossed in joy or purpose, time flies; yet in suffering, moments stretch into eternities. This idea resonates with accounts of altered time perception during intense periods of depression, where days or weeks blur together while individual moments of discomfort seem everlasting.

Such disruption is central to the praxis theory of suffering, which suggests that engaging with our pain – and accepting its transformative potential – is key to personal growth. Art therapy research shows that creating imagery helps externalize and process traumatic recollections. Further deepening this view, the painting introduces a trauma and memory perspective discussed by Coetzee and Rau. Just as memories can blur and morph with time, so too can the marks of trauma both fade and persist. The central, distorted figure – possibly Dalí himself or a symbol for humanity – appears boneless and washed ashore, burdened by a melting clock.

This image encapsulates the overwhelming psychological weight of memory and experience, evoking the paralysis or hopelessness that sometimes accompanies profound existential dread. Yet even within this portrayal of despair lies the possibility of resilience – the ability to adapt and develop coping mechanisms amid suffering. Burnout is now recognized as an occupational incident stemming from prolonged, unmanageable workplace stress characterized by exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy. Dalí’s drooping clocks serve as a surreal metaphor for this exhaustion: they appear spent, unable to hold their shape, much like office workers whose energies have been depleted by relentless demands.

The recent trend of quiet quitting, where employees do no more than the bare minimum required, further exemplifies a collective refusal to overextend oneself – a psychological withdrawal from the “game” of overwork. In Dalí’s dreamscape, time itself has “quietly quit,” slumping into the landscape, forcing us to confront the suffering hidden beneath expectations of constant productivity. In workplaces, the politics and our managers often glorify hustle culture, stereotyping the “ideal worker” as tirelessly engaged. But quiet quitting reveals how misrecognition of labour’s toll can aggravate suffering, turning dedication into disappointment.

Dalí’s imagery enacts a radical politicization of time: by disfiguring the ultimate tool of scheduling, he lays bare the costs of valuing profit and output over human well-being. The painting invites viewers to rethink the figures we construct around work and play and to acknowledge that true happiness cannot flourish under perpetual stress over work. Dalí hijacks the universally understood symbol of the clock, destabilizing its assumed neutrality and exposing the social functions it serves – enforcing punctuality, productivity, and the commodification of time.

Stuart Hall’s cultural theory reminds us that culture is a “critical site of social action” where power and ideology are contested; meaning is not passively received but actively encoded and decoded by audiences. Dalí’s work performs an intrinsic analysis: it enters the logic of time itself and highlights the contradiction between the promised order of industrialized time and its lived instability. Critical art theory argues that art’s autonomy under capitalism allows it to both participate in and challenge dominant systems; by formally exaggerating clocks into soft, melting objects, Dalí unveils how cultural production both reflects and shapes our experience of power and suffering.

The Persistence of Memory remains widespread in popular culture – reproduced in memes, films, and advertisements – precisely because it resonates. It speaks to a collective unease with the institutions that promise happiness but often deliver anxiety. In challenging familiar visual codes, Dalí invites an involuntary stance toward the cultural frames we dwell in and the social orders we silently uphold. In crafting this analysis, I have endeavoured to bridge abstract theoretical concepts about happiness and suffering with the tangible, surreal imagery on Dalí’s canvas. The barren landscape and malleable clocks are not only metaphors for the fluidity of time but also for the dynamic relationship of emotions in our lives.

The vivid sensory pleasure of the melting clocks serves as a bridge from the hedonic to the stoic, guiding us through a layered understanding where immediate gratification meets a deeper, purpose-driven calm. By drawing explicit parallels between theoretical definitions and the visual motifs of The Persistence of Memory, Dalí creates a dialogue between art and human experience. The hedonic impulses – fleeting external gratifications – stand in contrast to the stoic resilience that nurtures an enduring inner core. Meanwhile, the pursuit of eudaemonic happiness reminds us that fulfilment comes from integrating all aspects of our experience, weaving together joy and sorrow into a cohesive narrative. 

The painting subtly challenges the notion that happiness or suffering can be contained or measured solely by external standards; instead, it sets our internal state as the true shaper of reality. It's also worth considering the "paradox of happiness," where the relentless pursuit of happiness can sometimes lead to frustration and dissatisfaction. Dalí's painting, with its unsettling imagery, doesn't offer a simplistic vision of happiness, perhaps hinting at the complexity of this pursuit. Embracing acceptance, acknowledging the full spectrum of emotions, both positive and negative, might be a more sustainable path to well-being than constantly chasing an elusive ideal of happiness.

The Persistence of Memory does not offer a roadmap to happiness or a simple cure for suffering. Rather, it forces us to challenge the subjectivity of our core experiences through a reflective, almost philosophical lens. It captures the multifaceted relationship between happiness and suffering, challenging us to reconsider our definitions of well-being. The painting argues that our internal state shapes our perception of time, loss, and meaning. It suggests that suffering arises from the tension between our inner selves and the demands of an unyielding external world, while true happiness might be found not in escaping this tension but in understanding the persistent, peculiar landscape of our minds.

For its enduring power to reconfigure happiness and suffering and provoke essential human questions to deepen our understanding of both time and memory, The Persistence of Memory richly deserves to be discussed when speaking about Happiness and Suffering.