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| Vilhelm Hammershøi, Solstråler |
"You should build a memory palace," she said one day as we sat discussing personal matters. It was eight in the evening in Sweden and late morning at her place.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Like a fixed building or place one returns to in memory... I'll send a book," she replied after a moment of thought.
"Okay," I responded, feeling tired. It had been a long day.
This was many years ago, and oddly enough, that advice and, to some extent, the book did change my life. It's an overused phrase, that something changes one's life, but the book that eventually arrived was like a key to, well, my memory palace.
The book was titled The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. Building my memory palace wasn't easy or quick, and maintaining it isn't simple either. Yet, it allowed me to construct a powerful reservoir within consciousness, functioning as an inner layer of reality. In short, it enabled me to store all the truly important long-term memories in a way that I can easily recall them. So now, I simply need to wander through my inner halls, enter the right door to access certain memory I wish to relive.
Sounds complicated? It's worth the effort. Let me explain.
The Art of Memory explains that the profound art of memory is based on a set of rules. It originates from ancient times when this art was widely used. There are two kinds of memory palaces: one useful and one that is not practically useful. Actually, ancient authors talk about useful memory palaces. The practically unuseful ones are my own extended understanding of what some of these authors are truly discussing. It's something I read between the lines. I'll come back to that. I find the practically unuseful palaces so evident and infinitely better that, for me, these are primary memory palaces, and the useful ones are secondary.
By a primary memory palace, I mean rooms the bearer has created through meditation, becoming so distinct that they are places to return to, to think and exist in, draw strength from, and indeed, place sequences from one's life that one wishes to remember in detail. A useful memory palace is merely a sort of inner archive where one stores things to remember and visits the place until it's no longer needed and allowed to fade into oblivion.
So, what is a memory palace in concrete terms?
Taken from The Art of Memory by Frances Yates, Ad Herennium (ca 86-82 BC) and Cicero's De Oratore (55 BC).
Firstly, its practitioner must construct the place (or loci, the place from which everything originates). This is done with images, memories, or fantasies. The place shouldn't have too many people unless you have an exceptional memory. Nor should it be easily forgettable. If one creates a primary memory palace, more time and energy should be devoted to it. A primary memory palace must have a permanent loci, an inner personal place from which all rooms and locations stem. That's my understanding. Whether other rooms are permanent or temporary, a fixed loci is necessary.
The permanent memory palace is thus a designation for one's inner house or place memorized in detail. Loci contain rooms where one can place things to remember. I hinted that it can be a reservoir in consciousness, meaning important inner rooms can be filled with important life sequences or loved ones whom, for some reason, one perhaps cannot meet in real life anymore.
So, the ancient art of memory didn't actually revolve around the mind's fixed memory palace but usable memory rooms through which the bearer wanders in sequences. (Probably mostly) middle- and upper-class people during the Hellenistic and Roman era memorized facts and events for work and study.
But maybe the people of ancient times used it for more than storing memories? According to Yates, some people from ancient times remembered extreme amounts of detail. Perhaps the sheer quantities of memory sequences suggest that the memory art was more than just something practical. What becomes of all this mental power people put into organizing their inner selves if not an inner layer of reality? When, for example, the unknown author of Ad Herennium writes about an inner memory palace where one walks through rooms, meets people and encounters things placed there to remember, I guess he also means that the memory palaces could be permanent inner rooms distinct from short-term usable rooms.
Cicero's De Oratore contains quite a lot of interesting information about memories. He writes (De Oratore, 1. xxxiv, 157):
"Consequently (in order that I may not be prolix and tedious on a subject that is well known and familiar) one must employ a large number of places which must be well lighted, clearly set out in order, at moderate intervals apart [locis est utendum multis, illustribus, explicatis, modicis intervallis]; and images which are active, sharply defined, unusual, and which have the power of speedily encountering and penetrating the psyche [imaginibus autem agentibus, acribus, insignitis, quae occurrere celeriterque percutere animum possint]."
This is interesting. But far more interesting is a more personal account of wandering through one's inner memory rooms. Augustine lived in the 5th century AD, a time when classical education in Western Europe was dissolving. During that time, people were moving from the ideal of logical, clear thoughts to the mystical and religious. However, during the 5th century, a learned person still knew about the classical art of memory. In a short passage in Augustine's Confessions, thoughts emerge written as clearly as before late antiquity. Most astonishing of all is that, unlike the practically oriented classical authors, he not only describes a useful memory palace but something much more profound. At least, that's what I read between the lines.
Augustine writes in Confessions, X, 8:
"I come to the fields and spacious palaces of memory [campos et lata praetoria memoriae], where are the treasures [thesauri] of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up, whatever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried. When I enter there, I require instantly what I will to be brought forth, and something instantly comes; others must be longer sought after, which are fetched, as it were out of some inner receptacle; others rush out in troops, and while one thing is desired and required, they start forth, as who should say, ‘Is it perchance I?’ These I drive away and with the hand of my heart from the face of my remembrance; until what I wish for be unveiled, and appear in sight, out of its secret place. Other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as they are called for; those in front making way for the following; and as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come when I will. All which takes place when I recite a thing by heart.
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Behold in the plains, and caves, and caverns of my memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things, either as images, as all bodies; or by actual presence, as the arts; or by certain notions and impressions, as the affections of the mind, which, even when the mind doth not feel, the memory retaineth, while yet whatsoever is in the memory is also in the mind – over all these do I run; I fly; I dive on this side and that, as far as I can, and there is no end. "
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