Mnémosyne

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani makes Mnemosyne the central figure of the cycle "Benefits and Misdeeds of Amnesia" (2020), where he presents her as the divinity of memory1. He stresses that she belongs to the Titanides, as a daughter of Ouranos and Gaia, and so comes before the Olympian order of Zeus2. He draws on Diodorus, according to whom she gives beings their names and invents reasoning: she is therefore both memory and language3. This union of memory and words keeps returning afterwards, in his sessions on Hölderlin as well as in sessions from 2022 and 20234. He places her at the boundary between logos and myth and recalls that one drinks from her spring, after the water of Lethe, in order to remember5. She is the mother of the nine Muses, whom she had with Zeus, having given herself to him entirely6. He compares her to Erda, mother of the Valkyries7, and to Minne. The cycle also takes up the theme of a "public and private Mnemosyne".

1. 1#2 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...23 Oct 2020 · 2:37
2. 2#2 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...23 Oct 2020 · 10:15
3. 3#2 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...23 Oct 2020 · 24:35
4. 4Dominique Pagani - Hölderlin, poésie et politique19 Mar 2022 · 1:20:57
5. 5#2 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...23 Oct 2020 · 1:04:47
6. 6#4 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...13 Nov 2020 · 1:24:49
7. 79 #15 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?18 Feb 2021 · 38:52

Summary produced automatically from 20 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.