It's coming down the wire here even if it's still snowing, and this is the time of year when things start to come together and future reveals itself in hints even if it's still snowing. Sorry, that was probably redundant. One of things that I've probably brought up in these blog posts all too often is Alchemy. The idea that has plagued me, in other words it's my obsession, over the course of this semester is Alchemy. I think the fact that really gets me thinking is that in actuality Alchemy is impossible, and still some people pursue to conquer the riddle 'that lead can turn into gold.' Because it can. And, if I may step up on my soapbox here, People my concern isn't you! My dear esoteric fellow, you're smart to be here and smart enough to take a class such as this, and consider yourselves fortunate to be here even if much of it doesn't make sense of it's pertinence. You are what you remember. It's all really quite simple, but people are incredibly difficult.
Which brings me back to alchemy, of which I'm still infatuated with, and another experience, last week, when I read The Alchemist. An awesome book. Read it if you can, it'll take you less than three hours. Anyways, you guys should read it because Yates, on page 378, addresses one of the main themes within Paulo Coelho's book. Yates says, "One of the preoccupations of the seventeenth century was the search for a universal language." At this point she's addressing Bacon, Bruno, Comenius, and a few others.
And, before I move further in The Alchemist, let me talk about Yates a little bit. I heard before I picked it up that it would be a dry read, and it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I found myself glossing it many times not because I wasn't interested but when Yates is referring to three other works that I haven't ever heard of then I can't help but move on. I've concluded, as have several other patrons, that Yates book is a historical book (no duh!). It's interesting that its inspired by factual evidence from past written records. Yates time and time again claims that she never could wrap her head around artists (being Bruno, Camillo, Lull, Simonides, Aquinas, etc.) who's art she's thoroughly researched. Along with being a historical account, The Art of Memory's genre falls right into pure non-fiction, dry to the truthful bone like a lab report. It was good, though. All things considered, " I am conscious as I look back of how little I have understood of the significance for whole tracts of history of the art which Simonides was supposed to have invented after that legendary disastrous banquet." (389) Please, and pardon my mental hiccup, can we talk about this in class because I feel like I missed a big chunk of Simonides story. What banquet?
Anyways, back to Coehlo. His main character in probably his most famed book is Santiago, a shepherd boy who has set out on a journey to the Egyptian pyramids in search of a universal language, although he's quite literally searching for treasure even if there's a fine line between searching for gold or soul. How fitting that he should look for it, and he finds it on a few occasions, too. For example at at one point in the book it is shown in a scene at the market that, "...one of them had spoken Arabic and the other Spanish.
And they had understood each other perfectly well.
There must be a language that doesn't depend on words, the boy thought. I've already had that experience with my sheep, and now it's happening with people."
This whole spiel goes back to memory because beings can communicate with one another even if they don't have language. We share five senses, most of us. The sixth sense we share is that of memory. We know who we are and we act out what we've come to know. It's true, if we improvised in front of the class and I got down on four legs and bark! or ruff! then you know what I am. I'm a dog, it's simple but then again I'm only changing my appearance. That's alchemy! For example, 'buxom' was my first word on my 51-word list but, as we've learned from Yates that "the active image impresses itself best on memory, and...that intellectual things are best remembered through sensible things," (372) in my mind I wasn't thinking 'buxom-adjective-(of a woman) healthy, plump, cheerful, and lively'. No, that's silly and difficult. Instead I pictured a block of action where 'I wake up and sitting on my forehead is a pudgy cherub binge drinking paint with an aged Charlie Brown.' Okay, so that covered buxom, churl, precocity, and tinge. But it's a concise action scene jam-packed with lots of information. Point is, I didn't say what I thought, and what I thought up I thought up with an alchemically-driven imagination. Alchemy is transformation, from words into thoughts and back into a recollection of those words. It's a practice of mindful metamorphoses. Get your thinking done on the run.
Sorry, I'm off topic. I really do commend Frances Yates for her fine piece of work even if I didn't completely understand it. I figure it must be difficult for a historian to not only retrace her own steps but the steps (the biggest contributions) of others as well. I thought that her writing was clear, but it was not in order which is fine. It works, it worked because of the fact that maybe she couldn't understand what she was talking about sometimes and moved on to another topic. I do it all the time, we all do. I think, maybe, sorry if you don't think that. Which brings me to my final thought concerning Marcel Proust and his In Search of Lost Timebecause from what I'm collecting from 337 and 438 is that Proust, the autobiographer, right?, believes that if you think backwards, even from this very point, as far as you can then you can remember everything. This autobiography already sounds like a complete work of fiction! That's exactly what fiction is though, turning simple events into wonderful stories; where everyday life is far more beneficial than commonplace. Telling of a simple event is never as memorable as the most marvelous of tall tales. Tall tales, those we've all invented impressed on our imaginations, are our mind's masterpieces of alchemy. Creating a new world from the 'boring' one we live in is the purpose of alchemy, and the artists of memory are fighting through it everyday one momentous memory at a time.
I'll end with this. This is something I wrote in class one day, probably in mid-February or so:
"The real world is most fantastic when you're seeing it for the first time, and experiencing these moments are when people, the esoteric and sophisticated, transcend into a greater being. They have no ties to ignorance, vulgarity, and naivety (the intelligence's competition) when they are experiencing something wonderfully new because everything's incomparably fresh. Case in point; Live your fantasy."
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