La freccia e il cerchio
anno 2, numero 2, 2011
pp. 28-32

Romeo De Maio, Aldo Masullo
The invention of memory

I. Between Law and Mythology

DE MAIO

What I mean by memory is the path memory finds through the uninterrupted delivery of events, images, ideas. In such a flow, the relationship between memory and mythology is crucial, because mythology makes up a metaphoric language, which integrates and supports, and which leads elsewhere, towards the junction where reflections on memory and the spiritual essence of facts intertwine. However, mythology is in fact already consciousness! It is the channel through which we perceive, or rather feel, philosophy, before it manifests itself in a conceptual form.

MASULLO

Mythology is nothing but the ideal book in which great tales related to the origins of a civilisation are written. Mythological tales refer to a past which never passes, because – literally– it has never taken place. Such tales are moral metaphors, endlessly repeatable narratives, fairy tales. The content of myth is not the chronicle of any event, but rather encompasses admonitions or teachings which are valid at all times. Included within them are those collective experiences which have been transfigured into ideal characters, exemplary fantastic entities, timeless figures and actions. These tales, transmitted – albeit with some variation – through generations, provide the reader/listener with a mediation between the process of waiting for what is already known, and the surprise stirred by a renewed act of story-telling.

DE MAIO

But then what do you think mythology is? Some sort of sedimented memory?

MASULLO

Memory is a complex construction, and it is the work of a whole culture before being that of individuals. From this point of view, memory ends up coinciding with sedimentation, with the making of something to which many have contributed. Homeric poems, as the sagas of all civilisations, are grand memorial constructions, which never cease to communicate some sense of life, and they represent the cohesive foundation of society.

DE MAIO

It is important to widen the range of memory and include in its changing and fluid perimeter all those seemingly contradictory phenomena which are integral part of it. If it is impossible not to bring into mythology, it is necessary to emphasise that memory is the premise to all rationalistic examinations. When in the Renaissance Marislius Ficinus and Politian(us), even before Giordano Bruno, deal with the issue related to mnemonic tradition, they avoid any reflection on divinity and opt for the free dom of investigation. Memory becomes a type of mysterious writing, or at least a type of logic writing. Today, studying memory means taking into account in a critical way what has happened in two crucial moments: one is, of course, the moment of Greek Socratic-Platonic culture, when ideas became the adhesive of memory, the conjunction ring between the mythical past and present realities; the second crucial moment is Humanism, when the nature of events, which were easily interpreted through superstition or sentimentalism, began to be actually rejected or altered. These are subjects that became crucial for, among others, Lorenzo Valla, the father of modern philology, who, to quote an example, ceased to study Constantine’ s donation from the iconographic, religious or poetic perspectives. In the confirmation of assumptions, Valla prioritised reason to a radical extent. Reason’s sovereignty could no longer be questioned or avoided, and historical literature began to be read against the language of documents.

MASULLO

Romeo’s observations give me the opportunity to stress the social significance of memory. Without the ability of building memory, no society could take shape. Without archives, which are the storage places of memory, no institution would work. Before writing was invented, organised power was held in the hands of memory officers, who zealously kept in their minds the memory of meaningful events of a common past.

DE MAIO

The chief archivist. He who transmits oral memory…

MASULLO

Oral memory, which precedes the written one. Memory, in every shape, is a necessary function as regards the development and preservation of a social organism. Without it, society would lack structure and collapse.

DE MAIO

And one can never build anything, if he fails to detect the limits of memory itself.

MASULLO

But memory, as such, includes by constitution its limits. And the intrinsicness of a limit has to be identified also as regards the normative function. Here we play on the unavoidably flexible juncture between doing, acting and undergoing. I am referring, in particular, to Pindar’s nomos basileus, the “king-decree,” the fundamental law which enables and legitimates all laws. It refers to the inborn need for rules man, as social human being, has.

DE MAIO

FOne should perhaps emphasise this aspect by mentioning an event which occurred in Athens: originally, when talking about justice or law, dike, justice, was always written in capital letters. Then, with Alcaeus, dike began to be written in small letters: it was the effect of the development of human consciousness and the sign that men had created social living conditions and political inspiration.

MASULLO

Indeed. The idea of law originates in men as the idea of a limit placed in them by the gods or by fate. However, the very idea that a god (or fate) might have placed within a person the concept of limit, of a boundary reducing one’s freedom, of a proscription to go beyond, implies that one must find in oneself, in one’s own mind, the necessity of law. On the other hand, in the most famous of ancient Greek tragedies, the conflict between Antigone, who wants to bury the corpse of her brother according to the patriarchal law, and king Creon, who demands the inflexible application of the political proscription, according to which the enemy of the homeland should not receive funeral honour, is not, as many say, the contrast between natural and positive laws. After all, Antigone’s law is more positive than it is natural: it represents, in fact, the function of an in tempore social order, still devoid of any written norm sanctioned by power. It is a sacred norm that holds its place within the body of tradition. Creon represents the new idea of law as expression of a secularised society, which is no longer tribal, but has become political. After the conflict, Antigone and Creon are both defeated, at least on an ideal plane, for they are incapable of understanding the limits of their respective reasons.

DE MAIO

Antigone has always impressed me with her tragic unavoidability. Another myth comes to mind, which also concerns the concept of law, and another character with double implications: the Sphinx, symbol of mystery in Egypt and of critical reason in Greece. The Sphinx challenges whoever wants to become king of Thebes to explain to her the constitution of the state and the individual responsibility of citizens. They all fail. All of them, by providing pompous answers, see their supposed wisdom undercut. Oedipus, instead, solves the riddle expressly because he accepts the dialogue with the Sphinx fearlessly. Beyond the dramatic family tangle, which will lead him to insanity, the Sphinx recognises in Oedipus the ideal ruler, able to found his laws on reason, and more precisely on dialectic reason.
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