What's a Memory?
A small boy's question leads down a wormhole of 'sweet silent thought'
Introduction
I have been writing and posting for several years on aspects of life through the lens of great literature. Mainly poetry and novels, modern and ancient classics. This post is about what I have learnt on the process of developing a creative imagination – exactly what I have been doing by writing posts. The thought occurs that all the great creatives did not really create anything for an audience; they created for themselves, facing down their inner demons and explaining life to themselves and how they fitted in, or not. We are on the same track, identifying with this more personal drive to create. Then it hit me that we only really have our memories; everything is a function of our memories, what happened to us, and when, and how, and what we have built.
I am delighted to have been invited to Inner Life as an author. Communication cannot exist without the feedback loop being completed. Please let me know what you think!
Beginnings
Peter, my two year old grandson, is visiting from England. He is read to regularly, and this responsibility falls to me sometimes. I have therefore dug out the favourites I used to read to his mother and her brothers when they were little. Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox (illustrated by Julie Vivas) was my favourite children’s story, unparalleled by another. Wilfred Gordon is a five year old who has fun in the garden, and occasionally visits his neighbours who live in an old age home. He overhears his parents discussing one of the residents, Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, who is losing her memory. Miss Nancy is Wilfred Gordon’s favourite because she has four names like him. His mother says: ‘Poor thing, Miss Nancy, she is losing her memory.’ ‘What’s a memory?’ asks Wilfred Gordon. ‘Oh, it is something you remember’ comes the off-hand reply. But this is not good enough, and Wilfred Gordon wants to know more.
So he calls on five neighbours, all residents of the old-age home, to ask them: ‘What’s a memory?’ Miss Jordan says: ‘Something warm, my child, something warm.’ Mr Hosking says: ‘Something from long ago, me lad, something from long ago.’ Mr Tippett says: ‘Something that makes you cry, my boy, something that makes you cry.’ Miss Mitchell says: ‘Something that makes you laugh, my darling, something that makes you laugh.’ Mr Drysdale says: ‘Something as precious as gold, young man, something as precious as gold.’ So Wilfred Gordon goes home to look for memories for Miss Nancy because she had lost her own.
He finds shells he had found long ago on a beach; a puppet on strings which had always made everyone laugh; a medal presented to him by his grandfather which makes him sad; his football which was as precious and as gold; and a fresh, warm egg from the henhouse. He places all these articles onto a pannier, and climbs through the fence.
Miss Nancy is at first bemused by these presents – and then she begins to remember. She held the egg, and remembers the tiny, blue-speckled eggs she had found in a nest in her aunt’s garden. She puts a shell to her ear and remembers a journey by tram to the beach long ago. She holds the medal and talks sadly of the brother who had gone off to war and not returned. She smiles at the puppet on strings, remembering a similar one that had made her sister laugh with a mouthful of porridge. She bounced the football to Wilfred Gordon, and remembers the day she had met him and all the secrets they had told.
‘And the two of them smiled and smiled because Miss Nancy’s memory had been found again by a small boy, who wasn’t very old either.’
My eyes still itch after a few pages, and my voice clutches towards the end, even though I have read the story hundreds of times over the years. You can imagine how happy I am to be reading it again to my grandson.
Part 1 – Memories of the Journey
My thoughts on memory were brought into focus recently as I wrote a post on that timeless hero (or ruffian as some have him), Odysseus in Greek and Ulysses in Latin. You might call Homer’s original tale, The Odyssey, the first adventure story, immediately on the heels of the first war story, The Iliad.
Odysseus has inspired many people over the millennia. Poets in particular have found fertile imaginative material to inspire them. CP Cavafy’s Ithaka is a leading poem of the ‘life as a journey to be enjoyed, not as a destination’ genre.
Ithaka by CP Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laestrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laestrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
This lovely poem dispenses advice so useful to the human race we can forgive the act of dispensation! Acknowledge your original life goal – whatever it was – as having given you the journey of your life. Rich as you will be in the possession of the experiences and memories of your journey, this will temper any disappointment at the destination. And let that not matter anyway. Smile as you reflect on the wealth you have received, the sights and sounds, the beautiful vistas and sensual perfumes, the fearsome challenges you have encountered and overcome, bring them with you inside your soul. Keep your original goal in mind, but do not hurry towards it. Better in fact to be older when you reach it so that you do not expect it to make you rich. By now you understand what all these Ithakas mean. By now you realise your riches are the journey itself and its plethora of memories.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a much-loved, oft-quoted poem, Ulysses.
Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
You could become familiar with this poem by reading it aloud several times. It has an incrementally uplifting effect such that after a while your voice will become strange to you as the emotion grasps you of the intent and purpose of Tennyson’s wonderful poetry. You will discover yourself delivering an epic, in epical fashion, and tears plunging down your face.
This version of Ulysses wants to re-encounter the fearsome challenges of a journey to the west. He admits everything – his advanced age, his weakness of frame, his boredom meting out justice and social constraints amongst people who do not even know him. His comrades lurk in the wings; he points to his well-chandlered ship; he acknowledges his son, Telemachus, whose ability to do what Ulysses cannot do is clear. ‘He has his work, I mine.’ The work of the prodigal adventurer rests on the seas, on the main, in the rainstorms. Even ‘some work of noble note may yet be done/not unbecoming men that strove with Gods’. I smile, my heart rejoices at the uncovered, happy truth this hero has found.
The last six lines of the poem are a poem within a poem. They lift the prior lines – already magical and praiseworthy – to an unprecedented level of awareness, that is awareness of oneself and the position of oneself in the prevailing order.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
These lines embody the realistic vision of a person, an organisation, a state past their prime yet still vigorous. Content to admit lesser power, yet beware! Still defiant, still strong to pursue, still not giving in. These lines are often quoted, rightly so for their resonance with the core of a human being. The last time I experienced them was in a recent 007 movie, Skyfall. M, played by Judi Dench, was giving evidence at a parliamentary enquiry in Whitehall. James Bond (aka Daniel Craig) is not far away, seeking to prevent Javier Bardem’s character from blowing up the place. Before he can do so, M quotes these lines about Britain. The defiant acceptance of self (‘that which we are, we are’), acknowledging former power no longer owned (‘we are not now that strength which in the old days moved earth and heaven’), happy to admit former heroism and later weakness (‘made weak by time’), and yet, and yet…then, perhaps the most stirring line and a half in poetry:
‘strong in will/to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’
Meanwhile, Daniel Craig is running (no jet car for him this time!), sprinting to the rescue, completely embodying the strength of will - to strive, seek, find, and not to yield. I defy anyone not to be overcome here at the theatrics of Dench and Craig. We know the film is a fiction, but that does not matter. Willpower ascendent, the triumph of the human will and spirit over all manner of obstacles, that’s what matters.
Part 2 – Sessions of Sweet, Silent Thought
These two magnificent poems in Part 1 do not use the word memory. Yet this human condition suffuses the whole of both works. These poems – by doing what only poems can do, except for extraordinary speeches, that is to beckon the reader down the wormhole of her creative imagination – set the scene well for my here today discussed hypothesis: that memory is all we have, we are constructed of thousands, millions of habits, thoughts, opinions, attitudes, starting from the moment we leave the womb – and memory is the golden thread, connecting the current ‘me’ to all the past ‘mes’ that have existed. When we delve into our minds prior to the performance of an act, for instance, whether we have done it before or not, we subconsciously summon up remembrance of time past to allow us a shot at achievement. Memories become iron-clad in our systems, hold us tight when we need that support, and only surface for applause when we deliberately ‘go down memory lane’, sitting quietly with paper and pen to catch the arising memories as they like champagne bubbles surface and pop.
It is not only my hypothesis. Consider other great poets, and the wonder afforded to them by the exploration of their memories.
Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.
Again the word memory is not used but everything Shakespeare refers to is summoned to his mind by memory. Without it, these sessions of sweet silent thought could not exist. Then observe his mastery of his own creative imagination. The expressive statements he writes (Beethoven made music, Picasso painted), the musicality of his iambic pentameters, his wisdom in his account of a woe he has moaned at before – and now repeats the moan, and pays the debt of the pain of his memory again! The memory of his friend brings solace, only that memory. A man such as this will be sore accustomed to tear-laden kerchiefs. His writing captures the ineffable sadness of memory, its everlasting disappearance in reality, its eternal presence in our minds. Shakespeare is lost in remembrance of things past and the other solaces of ‘that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude’ which so fired the imagination of another William, Wordsworth this time.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Shakespeare’s sessions of sweet silent thought become here moments of vacant reflection, flashing upon an inward eye which is the bliss of solitude. Wordsworth’s memories are sweet beyond the saying. They generate the immense power and coverage of his creative imagination. Also writing here as did Shakespeare - and some two hundred years later so a more modern timbre to the language – the situation is identical. Sitting alone, perhaps a quill in hand, no other distraction, these giants of literature open themselves to their inner eyes. They see there reflected images of times past – and then create the most gorgeous poetry known to man. This must be where true creative imagination has its birth.
We are all, all of us, all of the time (nearly) creating in our imaginations dreams, fantasies. inspirations and aspirations, seeking (this is my hypothesis) to secure meaning in a complex life not easily understood. Our aim is to to link learning with outcomes, to demonstrate to ourselves that we matter. These ‘visions of alternatives’, of ‘might-have-beens’ can only originate from our memories, those shifting, evanescent, opaque sentiments in our mind’s eye. There is nowhere else they can come from. Nowhere.
And reflection, fantasy-creation, ‘images-in-the-mind’ building, storyboarding, these are the processes that form the birth of the creative imagination – expressing itself in the myriad of creative formulations such as art, drama, literature, music, song, sculpture, dance, architecture, film, and photography, and many more formats. All these formats that we enjoy for the stimulation of our minds and hearts come from our memories which are our sole contextual references.
Is this really what all literature is about? All memory, and dreams, and creative thought? All manner of achievement, of derring-do and dangers faced? All types of sadness, despair, distress at something not achieved, perhaps something of unkindness and hurt caused? Poetry certainly deals with these zones of life in an unerring fashion, straight to the heart of it, no elephants in the room, just - boom!
Part 3 – Memory Joggers
This topic came to my imagination very recently when I received from a marvellous friend an anthology of poetry titled The Book of Dog Poems (Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Dog-Poems-Ana-Sampson/dp/1786279436). Very accessible, I gobbled it down in less than two days, bringing to mind all the characteristics of our dog, Duffy (who is she named after, I wonder? 😊), a chocolate miniature poodle with a personality the size of the Sydney Opera House.
On reading the poem here, I first thought of my school where I encountered the hero, Odysseus, next of university and writing essays a bit like this post, and lastly of poetry reading down the years and all the cross-references and overlaps and connections. It was quite a thought experiment and when I surfaced after say thirty minutes of daydreaming, I knew I would write about it. I trust I am not belabouring a point, yet my process in the previous sentence was no different to that of the giants just quoted. My contribution here is paltry…yet it is MY creative imagination at work just as their sonnets and poems were theirs! This is what we do, how we create, no matter our level of inspiration or artistry.
Here is the poem.
Argos by Alexander Pope
When wise Ulysses, from his native coast
Long kept by wars, and long by tempests toss'd,
Arrived at last, poor, old, disguised, alone,
To all his friends, and ev'n his Queen unknown,
Changed as he was, with age, and toils, and cares,
Furrow'd his rev'rend face, and white his hairs,
In his own palace forc'd to ask his bread,
Scorn'd by those slaves his former bounty fed,
Forgot of all his own domestic crew,
The faithful Dog alone his rightful master knew!
Unfed, unhous'd, neglected, on the clay
Like an old servant now cashier'd, he lay;
Touch'd with resentment of ungrateful man,
And longing to behold his ancient lord again.
Him when he saw he rose, and crawl'd to meet,
('Twas all he could) and fawn'd and kiss'd his feet,
Seiz'd with dumb joy; then falling by his side,
Own'd his returning lord, look'd up, and died!
Isn’t that lovely? Here are the lines translated, The Odyssey, Book XVII, line 300:
…There lay the hound Argos, full of vermin; yet even now, when he marked Odysseus standing near, he wagged his tail and dropped both his ears, but nearer to his master he had no longer strength to move. Then Odysseus looked aside and wiped away a tear…
What causes Odysseus to shed a tear? Is it the sad sight of his much-loved hound in desperation, close to the end of his life? Or the memory of the dog as a puppy, a puppy Odysseus will have started to train before the call came to join the fleet bound for Troy? Or is it simply remembrance of things past?
Back to Argos, the faithful hound, the only sentient being to recognise Odysseus on his return to Ithaca to reclaim his life, his wife, his fealty from his people. And Argos can hardly see him yet with over twenty years having passed since Odysseus left, something in his aura perhaps, his voice, his smell – how do our dogs know us? Whatever it was, Argos crawled over to his lord, licked his feet lovingly, and died. The fidelity lies beyond words. How must the lord have been, of what character, to inspire such love, such memory, such devotion?
The last poem on the theme is modern. Michael Collier is an American poet and creative writer, educated in Phoenix, Arizona, and has several books of poetry and anthologies to his name. Classically schooled, he beds much of his creative work in ancient mythology. And…you will see from this poem here, also titled Argos as was Pope’s, he has interesting insights into how we read – the same story of returning hero, faithful dog - and weep! Akin to the two Williams quoted earlier, whom I likened to every mortal soul in a wistful remembering and encounter with things past, things lost, never to be retrieved.
Argos by Michael Collier
If you think Odysseus too strong and brave to cry,
that the god-loved, god-protected hero
when he returned to Ithaka disguised,
intent to check up on his wife
and candidly apprise the condition of his kingdom
so that he steeled himself resolutely against surprise
and came into his land cold-hearted, clear-eyed,
ready for revenge, then you read Homer as I first did,
too fast, knowing you’d be tested for plot
and major happenings, skimming forward to the massacre,
the shambles engineered with Telémakhos
by turning beggar and taking up the challenge of the bow.
Reading this way you probably missed the tear
shed by Odysseus for his decrepit dog, Argos,
who’s nothing but a bag of bones asleep atop
a refuse pile outside the palace gates. The dog is not
a god in earthly clothes but in its own disguise
of death and destitution is more like Ithaka itself.
And if you returned home after twenty years
you might weep for the hunting dog
you long ago abandoned, rising up from the garbage
of its bed, its instinct of recognition still intact,
enough will to wag its tail, lift its head, but little more.
Years ago you had the chance to read that page more closely
but instead you raced ahead, like Odysseus, cocksure
with your plan. Now the past is what you study,
where guile and speed give over to grief so you might stop
and desiring to weep, weep more deeply.
Is Michael saying in this last stanza the more we rush through life, the more we miss? Only in our reading, or in everything we experience? ‘The past is what you study’ sounds identical to what I said a few moments ago about everything bedded in memory. The need to weep may be at the moment of experience, but is more likely to be at the moment of memory, of what you study, what you reflect upon.
Of course, we can merely forget. And never go into remembrance of times past. The days, our histories, our stories, will become superficial then, all colours filtered out as the context of our lives – where we live and cry – is bleached away. But I cannot end there.
Memory is perhaps uniquely human. The sessions ‘when oft upon my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood’, let the memories flow over you, let these times be ‘the bliss of solitude’. Let your ‘heart with pleasure fills, and dance with the daffodils’. Please - cling to those ‘sessions of sweet, silent thought’ for therein lies all the richness of all the memories of all the world.
Part 4 - Afterword
We have considered in this post the overlapping themes of memory, its store of rich context available to all of us, and the heightened emotions we experience when we concentrate hard to remember and reflect. Creative imagination is the release button for individual expressions of wonder, awe, insight…into our meaning and purpose on earth. I cannot see how it can be otherwise.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these six magnificent pieces of literature. There are over 200 posts on my website where you can subscribe for access.
