Dictionnaire universel Larousse, Tome I, 1866, Paris.
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A MEAGER AND PAINFUL RENDERING OF NATURE
Scholars tend not to agree on the Strangford Anafi Apollo’s age. The British Museum dates it from 500BC, at the turn between the archaic and classical ages. Newton states that it exhibits “in a remarkable degree the shortcomings of the early sculptor struggling to emancipate his art from hieratic stiffness and conventionality but only attaining to a meagre and painful rendering of nature”. Conversely, Tarbell quoting Pater, refers to it “as art which has passed its prime has sometimes the charm of an absolute refinement in taste and workmanship”. But is it the statue really from the late archaic period? Kenna mentions that the Anafi Apollo temple has been dated from the 300-200BC, hence making the temple more recent than the statue that should have been its centrepiece. Is the statue really from the temple and if so, why was it archaized in its features? (Piergiorgio Pepe’s notes, based on various texts from Newton, Tarbell, Pater and Kenna.)
REMEMORY
I used to think to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place –the picture of it– stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened. (…)
Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there. By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss.” (Toni Morrison, Beloved, Vintage, 1987.)
AN OTTOMAN VIEW OF ANAFI
The Book on Navigation was originally composed in the Arabic alphabet in 1525 AD by Piri Reis and was dedicated to Sultan Süleyman I (the Magnificent). The present manuscript, made mostly in the late 17th century AD, has some 240 exquisitely executed maps. A golden-edged map of Anafi is one of them.
MEMORY
The brain simmers with activity. Different groups of neurons (nerve cells), responsible for different thoughts or perceptions, drift in and out of action, ever changing. Memories are formed from persistent changes in the strength of connections between neurons. These connections, or synapses, can be made stronger or weaker depending on when and how often they have been activated in the past. So, when a thought enters our head – coffee! – the strengthened connections funnel activity along particular neural pathways, and we free associate the thought with coffee mugs, coffee beans, a coffee date. A connection between two neurons becomes stronger when neuron A consistently activates neuron B, making it fire an action potential (spike), and the connection gets weaker if neuron A consistently fails to make neuron B fire a spike. Lasting increases and decreases in synaptic strength are called long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). There’s no doubt that these changes – referred to as synaptic plasticity – are a biological memory. At present, synaptic plasticity is the main candidate for the cellular theory behind memory, but researchers don’t yet understand how – or even if – such synaptic changes translate to the network-level alterations that underlie a memory.
Memories occur when specific groups of neurons are reactivated. In the brain, any stimulus results in a particular pattern of neuronal activity—certain neurons become active in more or less a particular sequence. If you think of your cat, or your home, or your fifth birthday cake, different ensembles, or groups, of neurons become active. The theory is that strengthening or weakening synapses makes particular patterns of neuronal activity more or less likely to occur. As a five-year-old, if given the word ‘house’, you might have imagined a drawing of a house. As an adult, upon hearing the same word you may well picture your own house—a different response for the same input. This is because your experience and memories have changed the connections between neurons, making the old ‘house’ ensemble less likely to occur than the new ‘house’ ensemble. In other words, recalling a memory involves re-activating a particular group of neurons. The idea is that by previously altering the strengths of particular synaptic connections, synaptic plasticity makes this possible. (Queensland Brain Institute, How are memories formed?)
May 2017