Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Limping Back to Life after War
- 1 Index, Ghost, Dream
- 2 Reality, Disillusionment, Play
- 3 War Life, Life as War
- 4 Prosthetic Irony – The Ghost in the Machine
- 5 The Prosthesis and Burial, Or Caring for the Dead
- 6 Body and Metaphor
- Conclusion: Leaving the Island
- Index
5 - The Prosthesis and Burial, Or Caring for the Dead
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Limping Back to Life after War
- 1 Index, Ghost, Dream
- 2 Reality, Disillusionment, Play
- 3 War Life, Life as War
- 4 Prosthetic Irony – The Ghost in the Machine
- 5 The Prosthesis and Burial, Or Caring for the Dead
- 6 Body and Metaphor
- Conclusion: Leaving the Island
- Index
Summary
Those whom they caught in the daytime were slain in the night, and then their bodies were carried out and thrown away, that there might be room for other prisoners and the terror that was upon the people was so great, that no one had courage enough either to weep openly for the dead man that was related to him, or to bury him; but those that were shut up in their own houses could only shed tears in secret, and durst not even groan without great caution, lest any of their enemies should hear them for if they did, those that mourned for others soon underwent the same death with those whom they mourned for. Only in the nighttime they would take up a little dust, and throw it upon their bodies; and even some that were the most ready to expose themselves to danger would do it in the daytime and there were twelve thousand of the better sort who perished in this manner.
— Josephus FlaviusIn his discussion of the centrality of memory or memorising in the art of rhetoric in De Oratore, Cicero details the myth of the invention of the art of memory, or mnemonics. In the tale, the Greek poet Simonides, from the island of Keos, is performing at the home of local nobleman Scopas. Following his performance, Simonides is suddenly beckoned outside; once he is out of the house, the entire structure collapses, killing everyone inside, including Scopas, his family and all of his guests. The ensuing aftermath brought a quite unique problem, to which Simonides’ art of memory provided the solution:
When their friends wanted to bury them but were altogether unable to know them apart as they had been completely crushed, the story goes that Simo-nides was enabled by his recollection of the place in which each of them had been reclining at table to identify them for separate interment.
The myth of Simonides, which, I must admit, has fascinated me and continues to fascinate me, and of which I have written in the past in a somewhat different context, posits a few characteristics of the work of memory and how it intercedes in the work of the poet or artist. One of those characteristics is the poet’s relationship to history.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Poetic ProstheticsTrauma and Language in Contemporary Veteran Writing, pp. 164 - 198Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022