Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 335.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 08:52:23 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: a parable of preservation
Northrop Frye, in his undergraduate lecture course from which The Great
Code came, once recounted the story in Jeremiah 36, in which the Lord
instructs the prophet to "take a scroll and write on it all the words that
I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the
day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today". He gets a scribe,
Baruch son of Neriah, who duly writes down what Jeremiah dictates --
probably on papyrus, Frye remarked. The scroll is read to the people. The
king, Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, hears about this and sends for the
scroll. Jehudi son of Nethaniah son of Shelemiah son of Cushi brings it
into the king's presence and begins reading from it. "Now the king was
sitting in his winter apartment (it was the ninth month), and there was a
fire burning in the brazier before him. As Jehudi read three or four
columns, the king would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into
the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire
that was in the brazier." Consider, Frye said, what has been preserved: not
the king or his palace or any of his works, rather the insubstantial words
written on one of the least permanent materials available.
There' s more to the story: "Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it
to the secretary Baruch son of Neriah, who wrote on it at Jeremiah's
dictation all the words of the scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah had
burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them." But this
serves the point I wish to make about cultural memory and its means. It
would be better for us all, would it not, if we thought about digital
preservation and the digital library (whatever that is) with a critical
sense of irony. "Learning", Gregory Bateson remarked, "leads to an
overpacked mind. By return to the unlearned and mass-produced egg, the
ongoing species again and again clears its memory banks to be ready for the
new." (Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill NJ: Hampton Press,
2002, p. 45.)
Comments?
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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