… Speak, Memory: A review of All That Will Be New: Poems. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The fine arts of their nature depend upon the act of sublimation or transformation. Our ancient ancestors expressed this by proclaiming Mnemosyne (Memory) the mother of the nine muses (the inspiring goddesses of the fine arts). Events occur in time; no sooner do they appear from the nonexistent future and manifest themselves as the present than they have already been carried off into the nonexistent past. Sunk as we are in the mutability of things, existence is momentary and thinner than the glassy surface of a pool of water. Before we can touch its sheen, we have already broken it. Thus it is, Hesiod and Homer, Plato and St. Augustine, all teach us that Memory allows what passes away to be gathered up and held together. Memory gives to what is always dissolving a place of timeless stability; it is from that deep and invisible place that the muses draw forth materials that will, finally, inspire the artist to give them manifest and permanent form. The arts give to passing events the permanent form of a story; they give to invisible, elusive ideas and wisdom permanent expression; they allow even the most evanescent of passions to strike us with an everlasting note.
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