memory, muses, lethe

Music
Sophocles, tr. Reginald Gibbons

By Memory's daughters,
the Muses,
Forgetting,
named Lethe, is hated
And not to be loved.
O for mortals, what
Power there is in songs,
What greatest happiness
That can make bearable this
Short and narrow channel of life!

appeared in Poetry, March 2007




This poem really made me wonder what the Greeks were onto, in terms of the relation of art to memory. Could art really have as simple a definition as "that which is worthy of memory"? That, of course, brings up the inevitable question "to whom?" Or is art whatever is remembered? And what is the difference between remembering and memorizing?

The Koran is memorized, times tables, baseball stats, but in oral tradition were things memorized or remembered. Etymologically remember implies re-put-together, re-created every time. What are the implications?

Poetry is one of the arts that can be remembered and recreated as a whole. You can remember a painting, but you can't recreate it. You can talk about it, but you don't have to talk about poetry, you can just recite it and let the listeners decide for themselves.

Oh, and I wonder what the relation is between Lethe and lethal.