SIMONIDES REDIVIVUS, SIVE ARS MEMORIAE, ET OBLIVIONIS, (QUAM HODIE COMPLURES PENITUS IGNORARI SCRIPSERUNT) TABULIS EXPRESSA

Lipsiae [Leipzig]: Impensis Thomae Schureri Bibliopolae Lipsiensis, 1610. FIRST EDITION. 200 x 160 mm. (8 x 6 1/4"). 10 p.l., 1-36, 36-118, [9], 1-63, [1] pp.
20th century olive green paste paper boards, smooth spine with green morocco label. With full-page woodcut of the Ages of Man and half-page illustrated with woodcuts of instruments. Verso of title page stamped in red ink: "Duplicate / ex-libris Bernard Zufall." Young, p. 48; VD17 23:245729R. See also: Pethes, "Cultural Memory Studies," pp. 69-70; and Manusco, "Los límites de la mnemoteca," in Acta psiquiatrica y psicologica de America Latina, 60(4), pp. 217-218. ◆Trivial rubbing to joints and extremities, leaves a shade less than bright (due to paper quality), but a very fresh and otherwise fine copy.

Putting a significant twist on the long-accepted system of the so-called "loci" or "memory palaces" used to store and recall information, this is a very rare copy of a book that combines in a novel way how to remember as well as how--and why--to forget! In what seems to border on paradox, Pethes explains: "Bruxius introduces an integrated 'Ars memoriae et oblivionis'" ("the art of memory and forgetting") by using "a comprehensive set of forgetting techniques" to form a "system of rhetorical memory sites and images. They consist in a reversal of memory techniques: i.e., the annulment of the constellation of 'loci' and 'imagines.'" Crucially, rather than recommending familiar sites such as palaces, fortresses, or cities as loci for memory storage, "Bruxius recommends loci that are either characterized by solitude or insignificance or are populated by people with various ailments." Furthermore, "images are to be selected which--insofar as they are solid objects--have been carelessly produced or damaged; are fleeting and unstable from the outset, such as wind or water; or in the case of groups of people, members of an exiled people." Mancuso points out that Bruxius' "most original contribution is a novel chapter on the 'art of forgetting,'" in which the author "warns us that 'remembering and preserving each thing and each event could become a curse' ceasing to be 'a divine gift and becoming a disease' because 'the ability to leave the past behind is also a divine gift.' Memories, Bruxius insists, 'serve us but they also weigh us down.'" We know that our author Adam Bruxius (fl. 1604-25) was a doctor of medicine in the Paracelsian tradition at the court in Köthen (north of Leipzig) and that he authored other alchemical, Rosicrucian, and occult works, all of them now very difficult to obtain. Our copy, in unusually good condition, comes from the library of magician and memory expert Bernard Zufall (1894-1971), known as the "Human Encyclopedia." Zufall amassed the largest known collection of books on mnemonics, in excess of 1,000 titles, which (except for duplicates like the present volume) he donated to Yale University..