In my experience assignments involving memorization are frequently met with a chorus of groans. While my instinctive response to such uncouth clamor is to fire back some form of “No griping allowed!”, I realized that since we’re in the business of developing human character, exploring the basis of the clamor would be worthwhile.
Imagine you are traveling down a road. The day is sunny, spirits are light, joy aboundeth. Suddenly you come upon a concrete wall in the middle of the road. It is, unfortunately, unscaleable, and extends infinitely off to your left. On your right, however, a handy opening appears. Huzzah! But as you begin to walk through the gap, you find there is a deep chasm, which any attempt to jump across would mean inevitable death. A wise counselor suddenly appears out of the pages of folklore and presents you with two options. You could clench your fists and punch the concrete wall until at some uncertain point in the future you break through, and continue on your way with broken knuckles and a broken spirit. Alternatively, you could take the lumber that is lying conveniently nearby and create a clever makeshift bridge to get across the chasm. The choice is obvious: build a bridge. Yet when it comes to memorization, many folks decide battering the concrete wall with their fists is the way to go. I think they must not see the convenient pile of lumber.
The truth is that real memorization is fun, and false memorization is ruinous. By false memorization I mean rote repetition of sounds till an achingly long sequence is deliverable to a tyrant taskmaster, the only hope being to adequately recite then jadedly abandon the whole thing forever. False memorization is like punching the wall, except you are punching your brain instead of concrete. Knuckles are safe, but brain is bruised. Not good. While pain in other circumstances is a sign of exercise making us stronger, the pain of false memorization stems from pointless drudgery. Repetitio est mater studiorum, yes, but drudgery est mater rebellium. Moreover, this false memorization kills the life of the words by turning them merely into a list of meaningless sounds, reducing the task to pointless busywork that should be forgotten as quickly as possible, so as to prevent further brain damage. Thus all good teacherly intent behind memorization assignments is emphatically defeated. If we’re going to be the wise old counselor, we can just say “memorize this”, but pointing out the gap-lumber-bridge option would be helpful to lost travelers.
Real memorization, unlike the wall-punching kind, is creative, personal, and fun. It is creative because you have to build bridges. It is personal because you’re the only one who can build those particular bridges. It is fun because a) creativity and personal invention are fun, and b) how you built the bridge is a secret from your audience.
The odd thing about bridges is that we easily focus on the empty expanse we wish to traverse and forget about the delightfully solid pieces of ground on both sides. After reading a poem once, or better yet, reading and hearing it aloud, we actually have solid pieces of ground. Our memory has already retained some words and images. For example, you might not be able to repeat verbatim the story of the wall and the chasm and the wise old counselor, but you can certainly remember the setup, the basic images, the sequence, and the choice proffered. We think we haven’t memorized a poem only because we run into some gaps that our brains can’t immediately cross. If we recognize, however, that we already know some of the poem, and just need to bridge the gaps, we can lay out our lumber and scratch some architectural designs in the dirt and go about the business of creating.
So what are these bridges of which I so glibly speak? They are deliberately chosen sounds, images, and associations that evoke the next word. Since poets constantly play with both images and sounds, options will not be in short supply. Lumber is plentiful. I’ll draw examples from the first four lines of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme…
The high vocabulary, archaic “canst” and “thus,” complex and lengthy sentence structure (the above sentence is only half done) might make the prospect daunting. Still, just hearing those lines the first time you probably got a permanent image of “bride,” “silence,” or “time,” “flowers,” “tale,” “rhyme,” and maybe a few others. I’ve taught this poem for years, and I’ve yet to encounter a student who didn’t get the first five words on the first try. So let’s say you get the first five, and can’t remember the next word, and let’s say you’re building an image-based bridge. The fun part comes in here, because the image you pick doesn’t have to have anything to do with the poem itself yet, and so the audience doesn’t see what you’re doing behind the scenes, so to speak. So you start from “bride of,” because that’s the side of the chasm you’re standing on, and trying to get to “quietness.” Get your image of a bride in your head, and picture her telling all the bridesmaids to be quiet. Now you’ve got an image bridge from “bride” to “quietness.” Personally, I tend to use sound association rather than images when I am memorizing, so here’s a sound option, too. “Bride” has the long “i” sound, and so does “qui-etness.” If you got the “bride” sound, you’ll get that next “i” sound. Whichever you chose, image or sound, as you recite, the word “bride” will now evoke the next word, “quietness.”
In building these bridges you’ve been both creative (you made something that wasn’t there before) and personal (it relies on your signature instincts and imagination). When you’ve built all your bridges, you’ve got the poem. You might teeter-totter at times, or decide you need a different design, or tear your hair out at some particular chasm, but you’ll be moving along through the poem. Each successive crossing of that bridge will go more smoothly, until you no longer even need to notice the bridge and can pay attention again to the joy abounding around you. You’ll become free to deliver it with increasingly detailed and subtle delivery. No monotone mindlessness for you.
Real memorization has one other delightful effect. It gives confidence. Even though it is a copy of someone else’s words, you’ve made the poem yours, you own it, and you can proudly give your creation to others. When you create art or make a detailed imitation of a great work, you want to show it to everyone, have it on display in the library or the gallery wall. You’ll remember the poem, be proud of what you’ve done with it, and enjoy sharing it with others. And at the same time you’ve got it in your pocket. Later, maybe even years later, it will be much easier to recall and much more rewarding to interpret. You’ve escaped the concrete wall with knuckles and brain unscathed, and traveling again on your way, you see the world around you in a new and exhilarating light.