catapult magazine

catapult magazine
 

Vol 1, Num 4 :: 2002.10.25 — 2002.11.07

 
 

How to see dead people

A ghostly guide to apparitions and phantoms in film and literature

Memory and The Books of the Dead

 

TO THE READER

 

THIS FIGURE, THAT THOU HERE SEEST PUT,
IT WAS FOR GENTLE SHAKESPEARE CUT;
WHEREIN THE GRAVER HAD A STRIFE
WITH NATURE, TO OUT-DO THE LIFE:
O, COULD HE BUT HAVE DRAWN HIS WIT
AS WELL IN BRASS, AS HE HATH HIT
HIS FACE; THE PRINT WOULD THEN SURPASS
ALL, THAT WAS EVER WRIT IN BRASS.
BUT, SINCE HE CANNOT, READER, LOOK,
NOT ON HIS PICTURE, BUT HIS BOOK. BEN JONSON.

 

It might seem odd, at first, to speak of books this way; but in the Western world, they bear a striking resemblance to ghosts. Just as phantoms are lingering images of those who have passed away, so the written word preserves absent ones. Just as ghosts haunt the living, so the writings of the early Greeks continue to haunt the Western world. Just as ghosts don’t let us forget, so books confront us with our past and remind us of our history.

For some thinkers in Ancient Greece, the preserving power of books seemed contrary to nature. Freezing one’s thinking into thoughts went against the constant flow of life. As they saw it, the spoken word was life itself, was the spirit of the living, breathing person. What frightened them about books was that one’s spirit, one’s thoughts, could be preserved in written form, outlasting the life of the speaker.

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