Simon Critchley - Memory Theater

NECRONAUT

A term derived from the Greek for “corpse” or “dead” (nekros ) and sailor ( nautes ) to describe a being concerned with navigation and mortality. It also describes a member of the International Necronautical Society, founded in 1999 in London. Such members are legion.

CLEMENT ROSSET(1939–)

A French philosopher and author of many short, scintillating books, notably The Real and Its Double and The Principle of Cruelty . A joyfully tragic thinker whom the protagonist encountered at the University of Nice, teaching ancient Greek and Roman materialism.

BERT VAN ROERMUND(1947–)

Actually not an architect, but a Dutch legal philosopher and professor at Tilburg University.

ANDRÉ SCHUWER(1916–1995)

A Dutch philosopher who taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, ordained as a priest in the Franciscan order in 1943. He was a proponent of phenomenology, especially the writings of Husserl and Heidegger, and a person of great wit and kindness.

SIGER OF BRABANT(1240–1284)

The most radical of the Paris Averroists, who proposed the separation of the truths of philosophy, as articulated by Aristotle (who else?), from the experience of faith. After being forced to flee Paris for sanctuary in Orvieto, Italy, he was stabbed to death by his secretary.

SIMONIDES OF CEOS(556 BCE — 468 BCE)

Greek poet, noted for his lyrics, elegaics, and epigrams, and inventor of the mnemonic technique behind the idea of the memory theater.

SOPHOCLES(497/6 BCE — 406/5 BCE)

The great Attic tragedian who needs no gloss, but here are translations of the two fragments quoted above:

1. “A man is nothing but breath and shadow.”

2. “But no falsehood lasts into old age.”

RUDI THOEMMES

Purveyor of rare books concerned with the history of ideas. Based in Bristol, England.

TILBURG

A peculiarly ordinary, indeed rather plain, city in the southern Netherlands. It was once famous for its manufacture of woolen goods.

“TIMOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME”

“The fear of death confounds me,” a repeated refrain in a beautiful poem by the Scottish poet William Dunbar (1460–?) called “Lament for the Makars.”

LA TRAPPE

A highly intoxicating Trappist beer fabricated in several varieties in De Koningshoeven Brewery, Netherlands.

UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX

Established in 1963, Essex is a small, architecturally brutal, but once intellectually beautiful and vibrant place. The protagonist in Memory Theater had been an undergraduate and PhD student before becoming a teacher in the Philosophy Department. He left in 2003.

FRANCES YATES(1899–1981)

Dame Frances Amelia Yates was an English historian of great distinction who taught and researched for many years at the Warburg Institute of the University of London. In addition to The Art of Memory (1966), her major works include Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972). Although what is sometimes termed “The Yates paradigm” has been contested, for example by Paolo Rossi in Logic and the Art of Memory (1983 [first published in 1960]), for exaggerating the “occultism” and “Jungianism” of the mnemotechnic systems she studied, Rossi goes on to conclude, “Dame Frances Yates was not only a scholar of the highest level, she was also an extraordinary person.” The protagonist would concur with this judgment.

YNWA

“You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a show tune by Rodgers and Hammerstein from Carousel (1945). It became the club song and anthem of Liverpool Football Club (est. 1892) after the release of a 1963 cover of the song by the Merseyside band Gerry and the Pacemakers. The song has been known to move grown men to tears.

ZHUANGZI OR CHUANG TZU(369 BCE — 286 BCE)

The philosophically most interesting and linguistically unsettling of the classical Chinese thinkers. His book, also called Zhuangzi , is composed around a core of seven “Inner Chapters” and is a principal source of Daoism. The core idea is that everything should be allowed to behave in line with its nature, which is consistent with the notion of wu wei or “non-action,” which does not mean doing nothing but doing only that which accords with the way in which a thing truly is. Do nothing and leave nothing undone.

VIGLIUS ZUICHEMUS(1507–1577)

The Latin name of Wigle Aytta van Zwichem, a Dutch statesman and jurist of great intellectual renown who held powerful political positions in the Netherlands and was a friend of Erasmus.