Memory note3/14/2023 ![]() We can find examples of this kind of remembering in the Odyssey in such contexts as, firstly, when Odysseus, his son Telemakhos, and Eumaios κοίτου τε μνήσαντο καὶ ὕπνου δῶρον ἕλοντο, “they both thought of their bed and took the gift of sleep” ( Odyssey 16.481) - that is, they go to bed (cp. ” Bakker’s examples of this sort of memory include those where the warriors in the Iliad “remember battle,” that is, they prepare to fight valiantly, where there is no question of recalling something past or retrieval of a piece of knowledge. Moreover, according to him, this is “the most characteristic Homeric usage of the root –μνη. It is not even something mental, nor with a hint of a reference to a past time. Ī different object of remembering, according to Bakker, is a concrete aspect of the physically experienced present. Here for Penelope, remembering and longing, not forgetting and grief are inextricably tied together, and states of mind in the present. ![]() When she remembers Odysseus, she always experiences grief, longing for what she has lost, and this grief is unforgettable, alaston, from the same root lath– that Bakker mentions as the notional opposite of mnē– for remembering. Further, the reason for which she asks Phemios to cease from his song is that it always distresses her heart, since to her, most of all, comes unforgettable grief (ταύτης δ’ ἀποπαύε’ ἀοιδῆς / λυγρῆς, ἥ τέ μοι αἰὲν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι φίλον κῆρ / τείρει, ἐπεί με μάλιστα καθίκετο πένθος ἄλαστον, “but cease from this mournful song, which always distresses the heart in my breast, since upon me most of all came unforgettable grief,” Odyssey 1.340–342). She is not merely recalling information - the name of her husband or what he has done - but acutely experiencing a further mental state, longing for him. Beginning with states of mind in the present, then, when Penelope is distressed at the bard Phemios’ singing of the Achaeans’ return home from Troy, she says τοίην γὰρ κεφαλὴν ποθέω μεμνημένη αἰεὶ / ἀνδρός, “for I long for such a head, remembering always the man” ( Odyssey 1.343–344). While Bakker draws his examples of this kind of memory from the Iliad, I turn to the poem of memory, the Odyssey, to illustrate memory a) with a present reference and b) implying action. He argues that memory in Homeric poetry, while providing access to an ontologically prior reality, is also a dynamic cognitive operation in the present, to do with “the activation of the consciousness.” He notes that Consequently, the concept of memory within ancient Greek epic appears to be significantly different from ours: our dominant medium of communication is writing, and so our concept of memory is connected to the storage and recall of stored information, and as such, is “a matter of the past.” Bakker points out that our concept of memory is inapplicable to cultures where myth and epic are living realities, where speech and performance, not writing, are the dominant medium of communication. He, among others, has noted that the meaning of memory as a concept is tied to the intellectual habits and routines of the culture to which it belongs, or more precisely, to its dominant medium of communication. ![]() I begin with Egbert Bakker’s analysis of memory in Homeric poetry.
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