***The Greeks believed that memory was a mystic faculty, a gift of the gods. One could not sustain the delights of the stomach or be as thoroughly bewitched by the sex organs as by memory. One could use memory to retrieve the lost and reconnect with the dead. Even more astoundingly, one could lose oneself in these images. Medievals favored constructing such palaces out of memory because they wanted to contain within themselves all of God's creation, the good and the bad, the brute and gentle, ordered and visible. It enlarged their minds. "Solemn and rare memory palaces are the most moving." Cicero had written. Often the palaces took the form of churches. If those impossible cathedrals could be built on land, they could surely be built in the mind. It was a sacred obligation to build them: people had a memory of perfection, it was believed, from way back in Eden. This could be aroused through artificial means, like building churches or palaces in the mind filled with images. Memory was wisdom.***
(Extraído de "Dante In Love", Harriet Rubin)
Una pequeña alegría ya que no necesito recurrir al diccionario para leer fragmentos de "Dante In Love", aunque mi problema fue escuchar el inglés, en la gramática todo iba pavimentado, mi audición en terracería.
Pronto, con ayuda de una traductora, buscaré descubrir el enredo de la frase de Eliot que colgué en mi tesis de licenciatura en el año 2000:
Lo que llamamos el principio
es a menudo el fin
y llegar al final
es llegar al comienzo.
La casualidad me llevó a fijarme en la frase introductoria de "Lola Rennt", film alemán que vi en el lejano 2003 por afortunada recomendación:
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
Pero, no corresponde esta frase a "Little Gidding", donde hay otra versión apuntando hacia la interrogante entre el inicio y el final.
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