Re. Speak, Memory

[jbor]

I actually looked up the translation I have when this was mentioned. It 
begins

"Sing to me of the man, Muse ... "

and recaps at line 11-12:

"Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will -- sing for our time too."

The subject of wonted inspiration here is surely not the self, as in
Nabokov's autobiographical recollections, but Odysseus. It seems to me that
the "Muse" in this instance would have been Calliope, Euterpe or Clio rather
than Mnemosyne, their mother.

best

----------
Thomas Eckhardt:

> The word used in the first line of the Odyssey is "mousa", a term that just
> means "Muse", if I am not mistaken. The beginning of Homer's epic is a
> typical example of what the OED describes as follows: "In classical poetry
> the Muse is often invoked or referred to as if only one Muse were
> recognized. Hence often in modern poetic use." Memory would have been
> "Mnemosyne", which in Greek mythology is the mother of the nine Muses.
> Although Nabokov does not verbatim quote the beginning of the Odyssey, the
> title of his book is a traditional invocation of the Muse, and the phrasing
> inevitably points to the passage in Homer (which usually is translated into
> English as "Tell me, Muse").