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ABY WARBURG'S THEORY OF MEMORY

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SOMMARIO
E. C., G. E., Il ventennale di Bruniana & Campanelliana

367

una biblioteca dei destini incrociati :

aby warburg e frances a. yates

Eugenio Canone, Destini incrociati : Warburg, Yates e le immagini in

Bruno

371

Aby Warburg
Claudia Wedepohl, Mnemonics, Mneme and Mnemosyne. Aby War burgs Theory of Memory
Carmen Metta, Per una iconologia filosofica. i frammenti sullespres sione di Aby Warburg

385
403

Frances A. Yates
Lina Bolzoni, Le arti della memoria di Frances Yates
Guido Giglioni, Who is Afraid of Frances Yates ? Giordano Bruno and
the Hermetic Tradition (1964) Fifty Years Later
Ornella Pompeo Faracovi, Occasioni mancate : un dibattito su ma gia, ermetismo e rivoluzione scientifica
Armando Maggi, Frances Yates nel terzo millennio. Appunti sul suo la scito e la recezione nella cultura americana

415

421

433
443

Due testi
Aby Warburg, Manet and Italian Antiquity. Translated by Henriette
Frankfort. Introduced, edited and annotated by Claudia Wedepohl
Guido Giglioni, The Horror of Brunos Magic : Frances Yates gives a
lecture at the Warburg Institute (1952)

455

477

Unimmagine della memoria

Eugenio Canone, The secret of Shadows: un diagramma bruniano
disegnato da Frances Yates

499

studi
Luigi Guerrini, Pereira and Galileo : Acceleration in Free Fall and Impe tus Theory

513

364

sommario

Eric MacPhail, Anthropology and Anthropocentrism in Giordano Bru no and Michel de Montaigne
Andrea Suggi, Ordine della natura, giustizia armonica, libert di co scienza nel Colloquium Heptaplomeres di Jean Bodin

531
547

hic labor
note
Umberto Eco, Magia nel Rinascimento e oltre
Sara Bianchini, Montaigne e Popper. Linduzione e la scienza
Tiziana Provvidera, Kaspar Schoppe e Lipsio
Anna Lisa Schino, La scrittura obliqua dei libertini : interpretazioni ed
esemplificazioni

563
567
579

585

rassegne
Francesco G. Sacco, Telesiana : Old Texts and New Studies

595

cronache
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e la dignit delluomo. Storia e fortuna di
un discorso mai pronunciato : Mirandola-Ferrara, 24-26 febbraio 2014
(Donato Verardi)
Francesco Patrizi Philosopher of the Renaissance : Olomouc, 24-26 aprile
2014 (Dominique Couzinet)

601

603

recensioni
Una coppia seducente in una contingenza tempestosa. A proposito di un re cente libro di Paolo Galluzzi (Luigi Guerrini)
607
Calvin insolite. Actes du Colloque de Florence (12-14 mars 2009). tudes
runies par Franco Giacone (Simonetta Adorni-Braccesi)
610
Tommaso Campanella, Le Poesie, testo critico, introduzione e com mento di Francesco Giancotti (Jean-Louis Fournel)
613
Ethical Perspectives on Animals in the Renaissance and Early Modern Pe riod, ed. by Cecilia Muratori and Burkhard Dohm ; The Animal Soul
and the Human Mind, ed. by Cecilia Muratori (Armando Maggi)
615
Adriano Prosperi, Delitto e perdono. La pena di morte nellorizzonte
mentale dellEuropa cristiana (Cesarina Casanova)
617

giostra

621

sommario

365

sphaera
Ornella Pompeo Faracovi, Una nuova edizione del Centiloquio
Lucia Bellizia, Valentin Naboth. Matematico, astronomo, astrologo
Luana Rizzo, Giovan Battista Abioso e il Dialogus in astrologiae de fensionem
Carlo Piancastelli, Pronostici ed almanacchi. Studio di bibliografia ro magnola, a cura di Lorenzo Baldacchini (Gian Luigi Betti)
Astrologia e magia nel Rinascimento. Teorie, pratiche, condanne (Gian Lui gi Betti)
A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance, ed. by Brendan Dooley
(Michele Rinaldi)
Il progetto Ptolemaeus arabus et latinus (O. P. F.)

641
645

666
671

Abbreviazioni e sigle
Indice dei manoscritti (2014)
Indice dell annata xx (2014)

673
679
681

655
663
664

Aby Warburg

Mnemonics, Mneme and Mnemosyne.

Aby Warburgs Theory of Memory
Claudia Wedepohl
Summary
Aby Warburg is known for his notions about the impact of conscious and unconscious
memory on expression. Focussing almost exclusively on the physiology of memory,
without addressing mnemonics directly, this technique had however, indirectly, influenced the organisation and intellectual structure of his problem-oriented-library .
This library reflected not only the history of the visual phenomena Warburg analysed, it was also the laboratory for this analysis. Moreover, it was for Warburg a kind
of materialisation of memory, and thus, via the scholars conscious reactivation of this
memory, a reminder of self-education.

n 1952, when Frances Yates read her paper on mnemonics in Giordano

Brunos works, in particular De umbris idearum, the forty-one-year-old
scholar had been officially associated with the Warburg Institute for nine
years. 1 Already in 1936, however, two years after the Kulturwissenschaftliche
Bibliothek Warburg had moved from Hamburg to London and re-opened as
the Warburg Institute, 2 she had been introduced to Edgar Wind, then the
Institutes Deputy Director, in the house of Dorothea Waley Singer and
Charles Singer in Cornwall. 3 Only months before, Yates had begun work

Claudia.Wedepohl@sas.ac.uk
1 The paper was read on 28 May 1952 at the Warburg Institute in a series of seminars on
heresy. In October 1943, Fritz Saxl had offered Yates a position at the Institute, following the
negotiations with the University of London to become the Institutes trustee. Subsequently
Yates was made Publications Editor for the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes with some administrational tasks, but allowing plenty of time for research. See Warburg Institute Archive (hereafter wia), General Correspondence (hereafter gc), F. A. Yates
to F. Saxl, 23 October 1943.
2 The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg had been shipped to London in two different loads in December 1933 and January 1934. The constitutional meeting of the Advisory
Board of the new Warburg Institute was held on 28 February. First housed in Thames House,
Millbank, the library opened its doors to the public on 1 June 1934. About ten years later, on
28 November 1944, the Institute was incorporated in the University of London.
3 This was in November 1936. See F.A. Yates, Autobiographical Fragments, in Eadem, Ideas
and Ideals in the North European Renaissance (Collected Essays, iii), London-Boston-MelbourneHenley, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984, pp. 275-322 (314-315).

bruniana & campanelliana, xx, 2, 2014

386

claudia wedepohl

ing on a translation of Giordano Brunos Cena de le Ceneri, which she was

planning to publish together with an introduction to the text. 1 As she recalls later, she wanted to offer a new interpretation of Brunos bold defence of the Copernican theory. Yet neither Yatess translation of Brunos
Cena nor her long Introduction were ever published : her piece had initially
been rejected by Cambridge University Press and later she had changed her
view on the subject. Edgar Wind, however, read it and agreed emphatically with several of Yatess new theses, in particular that Bruno did not
die as a martyr of modern science ; 2 nonetheless, he criticised her main
thesis that Bruno had sympathised with the medieval Catholic tradition.
Indeed, his letter of response after reading Yatess Introduction to Brunos
Cena reveals Winds effect on Yatess fundamentally new and subsequently
successful approach to Giordano Brunos thought : after stressing the impact of pagan mysticism on Brunos believes (for example the sympathising with worshippers of Dionysos), resulting in a conviction that dogmatic
Catholics considered heresy, Wind suggested to replace Yatess opposition
between a reactionary Renaissance and a somehow progressive, scienceoriented Middle Ages with another, namely, a mystical or allegorical
interpretation of Christianity versus a literal or rational one. According
to Wind, this could explain Brunos method , which resembled so strikingly that of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola :

the same fight against the literal-minded grammarians and mathematicians, the same
glorification of enthusiasm and heroic virtue, the same ironic use of imagery, the
same insistence on the esoteric character of the mysteries, and last but not least
the same display of mnemotechnics : which is really based on the use of a very few
fundamental schemes of translation from which the most extraordinary number of
propositions can be derived. Pico printed 900 theses which he offered to defend publicly without any aid to his memory. But the mere statement of the themes induced
the Pope to interfere, to accuse him of heresy and to make him publish an apology (in
which he actually retracted nothing). 3

The theory Wind sketched in the long letter to Yates of September 1938 anticipates the argument of his most famous book, the Pagan Mysteries in the
Renaissance of 1958. Moreover, by stressing although just in passing the
significance of allegory for Giordano Bruno, he points into the same direction as Aby Warburg had done about ten years earlier, when he had tried
1 Ibidem, p. 312.
2 Wind suggested the publication of revised parts of her Introduction in the Institutes
new Journal, see ibidem, p. 314. Cf. F. A. Yates, Giordano Brunos Conflict with Oxford, Journal
of the Warburg Institute , iii, 1939, pp. 227-242 ; The Religious Policy of Giordano Bruno, ibidem,
iv, 1940, pp. 181-207 ; The Emblematic Conceit in Giordano Brunos De gli eroici furori and in the
Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences, ibidem, vi, 1943, pp. 101-121.
3 wia, Papers of F. A. Yates, Correspondence, E. Wind to F. A. Yates, 4 September 1938.

aby warburg s theory of memory

387
to grasp Brunos role as a moral reformer whose ideas were supposedly
instrumental for the turn from Renaissance humanism to the Enlightenment. Warburg never succeeded in formulating his insights into Brunos
role ; they must be reconstructed from jottings, sketchy notes and allusions
in his correspondences. There is no doubt, however, that Bruno was for
him the same hero of freedom of thought whom Yates mentions in her
1952 paper, a scholar who accepted the new findings of science in his day
and build upon them an original thought structure . 1 Warburgs accompanying bold theory that both mythology and allegory were seen from the
perspective of psychology structurally similar to the natural sciences and
could thus be considered their precursor remained likewise undeveloped
Yet the structure of his library reflects precisely this idea. 2
Already back in Cornwall, Edgar Wind had encouraged Yates to use the
resources of the library of the Warburg Institute for her studies on Bruno.
She does not seem to have followed this suggestion before May 1937, when
she attended a seminar at the Warburg Institute. On that occasion she must
have been introduced to the library by Saxl, immediately perceiving the
guiding principle as entirely new in her own words : designed to present the history of culture as a whole the history of thought, science, religion, art and to include in this the history of imagery and symbolism . In
another account, she characterises the library of the Warburg Institute as
devoted to the history of symbolism and imagery integrated with general
history, in short Warburgian history . 3 Although Yates only admits implicitly how much her work on Bruno owed to Winds criticism and advice,
she acknowledged that Warburgs library changed her approach to Brunos
philosophy fundamentally. 4 Conspicuously, her characterisation of the librarys nature that I have just quoted resembles Edgar Winds description
of 1935 :

Within the specialised field of cultural history and psychology which is circumscribed
by the Survival of the Classics , the Library endeavours to be encyclopaedic ; i.e. it
interconnects such seemingly independent subjects as the history of art, of science, of
superstition, of literature, of religion, etc. [] Accordingly, the system which follows
is calculated to satisfy two needs in addition to those of unambiguous identification :

1 wia, Papers of F. A. Yates, 25.B.i, (Giordano Bruno), Warburg Institute, 28 May 1952, f. 2.
Cf. C. D. Johnson, Memory, Metaphor and Aby Warburgs Atlas of Images, Ithaca, NY, Cornell
University Press, 2012, pp. 194-229.
2 Cf. C. Wedepohl, Mnemosyne, the Muses and Apollo : Mythology as Epistemology in Warburgs Bilderatlas, in The Muses and Their Afterlife in Post-Classical Europe, ed. by K. W.
Christian, C. E. L. Guest, C. Wedepohl, London, The Warburg Institute, 2014, pp. 211-270
(213, 217-228).
3 Yates, Autobiographical Fragments, pp. 313, 315 (with Yatess emphasis).
4 Ibidem, p. 313 : I must have written the Introduction [to Brunos Cena, c.w.] before I had
begun to learn anything from the Warburg Institute .

388

claudia wedepohl

1. To make interconnections easily visible. 2. To supply a sufficient system of control

[]. 1

Most interesting is the fact that Wind emphasises the librarys encyclopaedic structure relating to the central theme, namely, the Afterlife of Antiquity, here and later called Survival of the Classics . Choosing the term
encyclopaedic highlights the idea of an entity, a microcosm, in which
the user is guided by the logic of a system rather than the mechanics of a
catalogue. 2 The library is thus perceived as a coherent microcosm. When
Saxl together with Gertrud Bing normalised Warburgs system from 1920
onwards, they had to invent a new, flexible classification as they realised
that [n]o existing system of classification would apply . 3 The classification
system they invented for Warburgs microcosm is hierarchical. This hierarchy is both conceptual and historical. It resembles a tree-shaped structure,
leading from the general to the specific. 4 As with the technique of memory,
the spatial arrangement of knowledge thus aids the retrieval of information.
Indeed, Orientierung not only became one of the four major organisational
categories of the collection but also its guiding principle. 5
In a general statement about his ambition to build a library, made on 6
August 1925 before an audience made up of people involved in both the design and the execution of the new library building, Warburg stressed that
he was determined to facilitate finding the right book for both scholars
and non-scholars . 6 He added that his guiding model for such facilitation
namely, finding publications on similar topics in different formats and from

1 E. Wind, The Warburg Institute Classification Scheme, The Library Association Record ,
4th series, ii, 1935, pp. 193-195 (193).
2 According to Saxls account, however, Warburg had little of the scholar whose brain
holds a neatly arranged encyclopaedia of learned literature . See F. Saxl, The History of Warburgs Library (1943/44), in E. H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg : An Intellectual Biography (1970), 2nd
edition, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1986, p. 328.
3 Ibidem, pp. 325-338 (331).
Architektur, Ein4 See T. v. Stockhausen, Die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.
richtung und Organisation, Hamburg, Dlling und Galitz, 1992, pp. 75-90 ; G. Bing, The Warburg Institute, (originally published in The Library Association Record , 4th series, I, 1934, pp.
262-266), Reprint for private circulation, 1934, p. 7.
5 When the library was properly catalogued between 1920 and 1924, the users orientation
was supported by a three-part colour system on the spine of each book (in addition to the
three-letter class-marks), see Stockhausen, Die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, pp.
76-81.
6 wia, I.10.4.1, Draft letter regarding the aims of the new library building to R. Fick, f. 1 :
Damit der Weg zum Buch leichter, sowohl fr den Gelehrten wie fr den Laien zu finden
sei . Not only the shelving of bound off-prints at designated places, but also the major project
of the early 1930s, the Bibliography of the Survival of the Classics (Bibliographie zum Nachleben der
Antike) as a bibliographical foundation for the work of the Institute was born out of this
spirit. See Saxl, The History of Warburgs Library (1943/1944), p. 335.

aby warburg s theory of memory

389
different disciplines had always been the systematic order of bibliographies, reference books and handbooks. In short, for Warburg, every publication had its notional place. 1 Not the title but the content of a book should
determine its place. Affinity was the rule resulting in a scheme known as
the law of the good neighbour . 2 The philosopher Ernst Cassirer would
later say that in its organisation and its intellectual structure the Library
embodies the idea of the methodological unity of all fields and all currents
of intellectual history . 3 In other words, the idea of the library was reflected
in its form. And in this manner the form or structure of the library acquired
an epistemological value. 4
The same counted for the virtual library Warburg constructed over the
years in his continuously growing collection of index card boxes (Zettelksten). According to Saxl this vast card-index had a special quality , different
from the collection of books :

[T]he titles noted down were those which had aroused Warburgs scholarly curiosity while he was engaged on a piece of research. They were all interconnected in a
personal way as the bibliographical sum total of his own activity. These lists were,
therefore, his guide as a librarian ; not that he consulted them every time he read
booksellers and publishers catalogues ; they had become part of his system and scholarly existence. [] Often one saw Warburg standing tired and distressed bent over his
boxes with a packet of index cards, trying to find for each one the best place within
the system ; it looked like a waste of energy. [] It took some time to realise that his
aim was not bibliographical. This was his method of defining the limits and contents
of his scholarly world and the experience gained here became decisive in selecting
books for the Library. 5

Due to the librarys origin, its several nucleuses corresponded with Warburgs studies. His personal fields of interest and needs remained structuring elements until his death ; from the early 1920s, however, the hand-over
to Fritz Saxl as acting director (due to Warburgs illness) and the increased
public use (after the foundation of the University of Hamburg in 1919) de

1 wia, I.10.4.1, Draft letter regarding the aims of the new library building to R. Fick, f. 6.
2 See ibidem, p. 327. Gertrud Bing (The Warburg Institute, Reprint for private circulation
1934, p. 7) explains this system in as : The classification is anything but indifferent. The manner of shelving the books is meant to impart certain suggestions to the reader who, looking
on the shelves for one book, is attracted by the kindred ones next to it, glances at the sections
above and below, and finds himself involved in a new trend of thought which may lend additional interest to the one he was pursuing .
3 E. Cassirer, Dedication letter to Aby Warburg, in Idem, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1925), transl. by M. Domandi, Oxford, Blackwell, 1963, unpaginated pages before table of content : [...] den Gedanken der methodischen Einheit und des menschlichen Zusammenschlusses aller Gebiete und aller Richtungen der Geistesgeschichte .
4 Cf. M. Jesinghausen-Lauster, Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form. Der Kreis um die kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg ( Saecula Spiritalia , xiii), Baden-Baden, Koerner, 1985,
p. 101.
5 Saxl, The History of Warburgs Library (1943/1944), p. 329.

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claudia wedepohl

manded a more objective structuring system than Saxl had found and described for the time before the outbreak of the First World War :

Every progress in his [Warburgs, c.w.] system of thought, any new idea about the inner relation of facts made him regroup the corresponding books. The library changed
with every change in his research method and with every variation in his interests.
Small as the collection was, it was intensely alive, and Warburg never ceased shaping
it so that it might best express his ideas about the history of man. 1

The result was initially a compromise. To describe the special character

of Warburgs library, neither being a small specialist nor a universal library, Saxl created, possibly influenced by Ernst Cassirers philosophy of
symbolical forms, the category of a problem-oriented-library (Problembibliothek, Problemsammlung or Problemgebude). Accordingly, he spoke about the
interdependence of problems , problems that were ideally self-evident to
anybody who engaged with the shelves of the library. 2
Frances Yates was apparently fascinated by the concept of this library ;
now and again she mentions it in her autobiographical accounts, as, for example, in the speech she delivered in 1978 in Pisa on the acceptance of the
Premio Galilei :

Aby Warburg who founded this institute and his library in Hamburg, arranged his
books after the manner of a Renaissance library, reflecting through the subjects of the
books, the place of man and his studies in the universe, a kind of continuation in Warburgs mind and library of the macrocosm-microcosm theme. Working within this
library on some quite particular and detailed subject, all the resources of the library
were brought to bear on it history of religion, of science, of art, and so on. This was
an absolutely new revelation to me accustomed as I was to working within the English tradition of Renaissance studies, a tradition mainly literary or factually historical.
In that library I could start from the subjects that interested me and be let thence into
some much vaster and deeper understanding of history, of the history of ideas and
images, which began gradually to dawn on me, though I did not understand it. []
Warburg had been particularly interested in Giordano Bruno. I was shown the Bruno
section and began to learn how to expand from that into other sections. It is one of
the principles of that library that enquiry into a specific subject leads, through the arrangement of the books, into other fields. Much of this is now a familiar technique but
in those days it was new, utterly new to me and intensely exciting. 3

1 Ibidem, p. 327.
2 wia, I.8.2, F. Saxl, Bericht ber die Bibliothek Warburg und ihre Entwicklung zu einem ffentlichen Forschungsinstitut, f. 2-3 ; Idem, Die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg
(1930), in A. Warburg, Ausgewhlte Schriften und Wrdigungen ( Saecula Spiritalia , i), ed. by
D. Wuttke, 3rd revised edition, Baden-Baden, Koerner, 1992, pp. 331-334. Cf. JesinghausenLauster, Die Suche nach der symbolischen Form, pp. 101-103.
3 F. A. Yates, Speech on the Acceptance of the Premio Galileo Galilei, in Eadem, Renaissance
and Reform : The Italian Contribution (Collected Essays, ii), London-Boston-Melbourne-Henley,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, pp. 3-4.

aby warburg s theory of memory

391

Aby Warburg who never explained the system he had conceived and devised in other than general terms would probably have liked Yatess comparison of its nature with a Renaissance library. Perhaps he was not even
aware of this analogy that derived, on the one hand, from the simple practicality of inventing a logical organisation for a growing private library
(initially without a proper catalogue and thus without class-marks), and,
on the other, from Warburgs fundamentally humanistic and therefore
universal approach to the cosmos of knowledge. He once said that his specific type and method of research was the realisation of Vicos idea. 1 But
as often was the case, he did not feel any need to go further and explain
his understanding of this idea . In her introduction to the Warburg Institute of 1934, written to explain its concept to a British audience, Gertrud
Bing, then Assistant Director, stressed, like Yates, the traditional aspect of
the Institutes methodologically trans-disciplinary approach by mentioning the revival of the old idea of the Universitas Litterarum, last realized
in the eighteenth century . Moreover, she described the nature of Warburgs library as a hybrid of a laboratory and a museum. By choosing the
latter term she, too, underscored the holistic character of its structure as
a microcosm. 2
That Warburg was indeed interested in sixteenth-century notions how
macro- and microcosmic analogy structured knowledge and thus the human brain rather than the human body can be gleaned from documents.
In a letter of 18 November 1923 to Saxl, written when Warburg was still hospitalized in Ludwig Binswangers sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, he refers to
Giulio Camillos Lidea del theatro (the title wrongly quoted as Teatro della
idea della pittura and the author being confused with the Milanese mathematician Camillo Agrippa) as a work that shows the afterlife of a perfect
hermetico-astrological system of the universe . 3 Despite the confusion and
the lack of any further reference to Camillo, we can assume that Warburg
knew the meaning of his theatre , that it was an allegory of all human
knowledge structured in such a way that the recollection of information
could be facilitated through the use of images. 4

1 wia, gc, A. Warburg to A. Giesecke at Teubner, 4. March 1925 : [] dass man von
unserer neuen Forschungsrichtung die eigentlich eine Idee von Vico verwirklicht, Kenntnis
nimmt, [...].
2 Bing, The Warburg Institute, Reprint for private circulation 1934, pp. 4-5.
3 wia, gc, A. Warburg to F. Saxl, 18 November 1923 : Wrde gern wissen (schrieb es
auch m[einer] l[ieben] Frau), ob der Camillo Agrippa der Verfasser des Teatro della idea della
pittura ist (das wir besitzen). Wre hchst willkommen, weil darin ein perfektes hermetisch
astrologisches Weltsystem nachlebt .
4 Camillo (also known as Delminio) is known to have used a proper three-dimensional

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An obvious indication that Warburg saw his own library in the same
tradition of mnemonic devices is the inscription he wanted to be carved
into the wall over the entrance to his purpose-built new library, reduced
to one word : mnemosyne. While the blueprint of the new building was being drafted, Warburg must have sent a letter to the classical historian Erich
Ziebarth, enquiring if the name Mnemosyne featured in Greek inscriptions.
Although Ziebarths reply of 13 June 1925 was disappointing, since the addressee did not know of a single example, Warburg held on to his plan. He
asked his friend, the well-known architect and managing director of the
city of Hamburgs department of construction, Fritz Schumacher, to produce a sketch for an inscription bearing the word. 1 The design he received
was indeed later carved into the lintel of the foyer at Heilwigstrasse 116 in
Hamburg. 2 As a reminiscence of this mnemosyne-inscription, Gertrud Bing
ordered a similar inscription for the lobby of the new library building in
Woburn Square in London that opened in 1958.
Warburgs decision to use a term from classical mythology as a motto
and a leitmotif for both enterprises that dominated his last four years the
library and the Bilderatlas demonstrates his belief that the origin of the
sciences was to be found in mythology and in its allegorical exegesis. The
term mnemosyne itself, however, heavily charged with meaning, only appears fairly late in Warburgs work, and its sudden emergence seems to
have a symbolic meaning with respect to his discovery of the epistemological role of mythology. The first instance where I have come across the term
is on one of the sheets of a thick, sketchy notebook from Kreuzlingen, dated
11 April 1924. The sheet is titled Mnemosyne and Symbol . Its first line refers to Cassirers presence in Kreuzlingen that particular day. This strongly
suggests that the ideas Warburg jotted down on this page originated in the
long-awaited, very first personal exchange with the philosopher who four
and a half years earlier had been appointed to the chair of philosophy at
the newly founded University of Hamburg. Moreover, the notes also prove
that Warburgs theory of memory was not inspired by writings about the
classical art of memory associated with rhetoric, but by theories developed
by contemporary neurophysiologists. We know that he first learned about
these theories more than 30 years earlier when he heard Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), an expert in the study of memory, reading psychology at
Berlin. At that time Warburg must have read ber das Gedchtnis als allgemeine Funktion der organisierten Materie (On Memory as a General Function of

miniature of a theatre to explain his technique. Cf. F. A. Yates, The Art of Memory (1964), London, Pimlico, 2008, pp. 135-167.
1 wia, gc E. Ziebarth to A. Warburg, 13 June 1925.
2 wia, gc F. Schumacher to A. Warburg, 11 August 1925.

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393
Organised Matter) a lecture by Ewald Hering (1834-1918), published in 1870. 1
Borrowing from the terminology of this German neurophysiologist, Warburg turned the notion of memory as a function of the brain the brain
being defined as organised matter into a general model for his own
theory of memory, both individual and collective. This is the context in
which the new four-floor library building became the materialisation of the
concept Warburg had been contemplating for some time.
In the preparatory notes for his well-known lecture on the Snake Dance,
delivered in April 1923, one year before his meeting with Cassirer, Warburg
dictated that with the instruments of his library he was trying to answer the
problem Hering had been formulating so well with his coinage memory
as organized matter . 2 This note refers to the title of Herings lecture, but
Warburg neither explains the implied analogy between the structure of the
library and the structure of the brain, nor does he say what he considers
Herings particular problem . 3 Since Hering discusses the inscription of
memory on the cerebral or nervous substance and its function with regard
to reproduction, his problem must have been, in Warburgs view, the
lawful interdependence between physiology and psychology, or, as Hering
says, matter and consciousness. 4 Since most processes of memory are unconscious, Hering argues, memory must be material in its nature : a kind
of genotype inscribed in the nervous substance and passed on from generation to generation. It is this particular aspect of the neurophysiology of his
day that Warburg adopted.

1 wia, iii.37.1, Ebbinghaus, Psychologie, Vorlesung an der Berliner Universitt, ss 1892, f. 20v.
Herings original title is ber das Gedchtnis als allgemeine Funktion der organisierten Materie
(Vortrag gehalten in der feierlichen Sitzung der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften
in Wien am xxx. Mai mdccclxx) Leipzig, 1870. His essay has been translated into English at
least twice, first as On Memory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter by Samuel Butler as
Chapter 7 in Idem, Unconscious Memory, introduction M. Hartog, 4th edition, London, 1922,
pp. 63-86, and later as On Memory as a General Function of Organised Matter, in Idem, Memory.
Lectures on the Specific Energies of the Nervous System, 4th edition, Chicago-London, 1913, pp. 1-28.
I will be quoting from the latter translation.
2 wia, iii.93.4, Preparatory notes for the lecture, f. 34 : Das von Hering so glcklich formulierte Problem Das Gedchtnis als organisierte Materie soll mit den Mitteln meiner Bibliothek
beantwortet werden, und ebenso durch die Psychologie des primitiven d.h. des unmittelbar
reflektorisch und unliterarisch reagierenden Menschen einerseits begriffen werden sowie andererseits durch den bewusst sich der geschichteten (geschichtlichen) Formation seiner eigenen und seiner Vorfahren Vergangenheit erinnernden historischen und zivilisierten Menschen . Cf. A. Pinotti, Memorie del neutro. Morfologia dellimmagine in Aby Warburg, Milan,
Mimesis edizioni, 2001, pp. 149-151 ; Idem, Materia memoria : Aby Warburg e le teorie della mneme, in Lo sguardo di Giano : Aby Warburg fra tempo e memoria, ed. by C. Cieri Via et al., Turin,
Nino Aragno, 2004, pp. 55-78 (55-68).
3 Already in a terse note of 1902, Warburg referred to Herings lecture. See wia, iii.2.1, zk
Ae[sthetik] Aphorismen, no. 426, dated 13 March 1902.
4 E. Hering, On Memory as a General Function of Organised Matter, p. 6.

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For the comparison between memory (Gedchtnis) and the instruments (Mittel) of his library , it is probably indicative that Warburg modified Herings only vaguely remembered title. By replacing function of
(Funktion der) with as (als) he subconsciously changed the sense to memory as organised matter . Indeed, this pseudo-title is reminiscent of mnemonics as a technique to recall encyclopaedic knowledge. Yet only in the
very last paragraph of his lecture does Hering refer to the oral and written
literary traditions, the storage of all human knowledge, or the memory of
mankind. Without being processed by individual memory, he argues, this
collective memory would be meaningless :

Oral and written traditions have been called the memory of mankind and this conception is true. But there is another memory, which is the reproductive faculty of the cerebral substance. Without it, all written and oral language would be empty and meaningless for later generations ; for, if the loftiest ideas were recorded a thousand times in
writing or in oral traditions, they would be nothing to brains not disposed for them.
They must not only be received, they must be reproduced. If increasing cerebral potency were not inherited simultaneously with the inward and outward development
of the brain, with the wealth of ideas which are inherited from generation to generation, if an increased faculty for the reproduction of thought did not devolve upon
coming generations, simultaneously with their oral and written traditions, scripts and
languages would be useless. 1

In this statement Hering demands the reactivation of collective memory

through continuous reproduction. Such reproduction is either triggered by
a stimulus in such a way that memory of past experiences (inscribed and
unconsciously stored on the nervous substance) is either unconsciously revived or consciously activated. In this process, memory (Gedchtnis) is the
function of either the brain or its mirror, the library, as organised matter that activates reproduction. 2 The fact that, while hospitalised in Kreuz

1 Ibidem, p. 23 (Hering, ber das Gedchtnis als allgemeine Funktion der organisierten Materie,
p. 21 : Man hat die mndliche und schriftliche berlieferung das Gedchtnis der Menschheit
genannt, und dieser Spruch hat seine Wahrheit. Aber noch ein anderes Gedchtnis lebt in ihr,
das ist das angeborene Reproduktionsvermgen der Gehirnsubstanz, und ohne dieses wren
auch Schrift und Sprache nur leere Zeichen fr das sptere Geschlecht. Denn die grten
Ideen, und wren sie tausendmal in Schrift und Sprache verewigt, sind nichts fr Kpfe, die
nicht dazu gestimmt sind ; sie wollen nicht blo gehrt, sie wollen reproduziert sein. Und
wenn nicht mit dem Reichtum der von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht berlieferten Ideen auch
der Reichtum innerer und uerer Entwicklung des Gehirns fortwachsend sich vererbte,
wenn mit dem schriftlich bewahrten Gedanken nicht auch das gesteigerte Vermgen zu seiner Reproduktion auf die kommenden Geschlechter berginge, so wren Schrift und Sprache umsonst ).
2 Cf. Pinotti, Materia memoria : Aby Warburg e le teorie della mneme, pp. 58-59. Warburg
also refers to Herings work by quoting the conscious or unconscious function of memory
together with the term organised matter , e.g. wia, iii.2.1, zka Ae[sthetik] Aphorismen, no.
355, dated 4 April 1897 : Der Hintergrund verhindert die individualisirende loslsende Differen

aby warburg s theory of memory

395
lingen, Warburg pondered precisely the question of how memory functions in the transformational process from impression to expression is documented in another note :

The question is : how are verbal or visual expressions generated, according to which
aspect or sensation, consciously or unconsciously, are they stored in the archive of
memory and do laws exist according to which they are inscribed an re-activated ? 1

Although Warburg had no technical answer to this question, he translated

what he learned from the publications of neurophysiologists into a cultural
theory. His main point of reference was the alleged difference between the
products of so-called primitive compared to those of presumably civilised people. Yet this opposition of primitive versus civilised reflected at the same time different stages of evolution. The evidence Warburg
had gathered through his anthropological studies seemed enough to reconstruct, on the one hand, a psychology of primitive men , namely, of
someone with no literary education whose reaction is driven by reflex ,
and, on the other, of civilised men , namely those who are conscious of
the historical dimension of both their own descent and that of their ancestors. 2 Warburgs simple conclusion was that [w]ith primitive men the image activated by memory provokes a religious act, with educated men the
desire to record . 3 In the same sequence of thoughts he recorded his wish
to capture the purpose of his library in the title of a Collection of Documents Regarding the Psychology of Human Expression . 4
For Saxl it was important to stress that Warburg always wanted the student who used his library to perceive the essential forces of the human
mind and its history ; further : Books were for Warburg more than instruments of research. Assembled and grouped, they expressed the thought of

zirung indem er gleichzeitig oder gleichrumlich die bewute oder unbewute Function der Erinnerung (organisirte Materie) zur Umfangsgestaltung weist .
1 wia, iii.93.4.1, Preparatory notes for the lecture, f. 33 : Die Frage ist : Wie entstehen
die sprachlichen und bildfrmigen Ausdrcke, nach welchem Gefhl oder Gesichtspunkt,
bewusst oder unbewusst, werden sie im Archiv des Gedchtnisses aufbewahrt und gibt es
Gesetzte, nach denen sie sich niederschlagen und wieder heraus dringen ? .
2 Ibidem, f. 34 : [...] und [soll] ebenso durch die Psychologie des primitiven d. h. des unmittelbar reflektorisch und unliterarisch reagierenden Menschen einerseits begriffen werden
sowie andererseits durch den bewusst sich der geschichteten (geschichtlichen) Formation
seiner eigenen und seiner Vorfahren Vergangenheit erinnernden historischen und zivilisierten Menschen .
3 Ibidem, f. 34 : Beim primitiven Menschen fhrt das Erinnerungsbild zur religisen Handlung, beim zivilisierten zur Aufzeichnung .
4 Ibidem, f. 33 : Eine Urkundensammlung zur Psychologie der menschlichen Ausdruckskunde . The term Ausdruckskunde is pleonastic. He must have intended to say Ausdruck .

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mankind in its constant and its changing aspects . 1 It is thus quite plausible
that Warburg who made psychology the very first sub-section of the floor
that was dedicated to dromenon had Herings theory of reproduction
in mind when he decided to inscribe the entrance to his library with mnemosyne, the ancient term that refers in the first instance to the human faculty to call something to mind, and only in the second instance to its personification, as the name of the female Titan who gave birth to the nine Muses.
Edgar Wind is the only of Warburgs contemporaries who interprets this
inscription. He stresses its twofold meaning for everybody who passes the
threshold as a reminder to the scholar that in interpreting the works of the
past he is acting as trustee of a repository of human experience , and recalling that his experience is in itself an object of research, that it requires us
to use historical material to investigate the way in which social memory functions . Wind adds that for Warburg [e]ach discovery regarding the object
of his research was at the same time a self-discovery. Correspondingly, each
shattering experience which he overcame through self-reflection became a
means of enriching his historical insight . 2 In this way Wind clearly stresses
a didactical, even psychagogic reading of the inscription, presumably by invocation of the mother of the Muses also in the tradition of calling the act
of studium, metaphorically, a service to the Muses. 3 In one of his own last
statements about the nature of his library, presented in a speech given in
July 1929 at a doctoral ceremony, Warburg refers to his motto mnemosyne by
calling the institution a filter system for retrospective sober-mindedness ,
whose mission was to prevent the chaos of unreason . 4 The inscription
thus seems to prove that Warburg adopted not only Herings terminology
but also his theory about the mechanism of reactivation of memory. With
it he was clearly addressing the individual just as Hering speaks about the
individuals conscious and unconscious memory.
Furthermore, Warburg turned Herings theory into a metaphor for conscious and unconscious collective reproduction, for example, for the formation of style (Stilbildung). 5 Hence, whilst for Hering matter (Materie) is

1 Saxl, The History of Warburgs Library (1943/1944), p. 327.

2 E. Wind, Warburgs Concept of Kulturwissenschaft and its Meaning for Aesthetics, in Idem,
The Eloquence of Symbols : Studies in Humanist Art, ed. by J. Anderson with a biographical
memoir by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 21-35 (26).
3 Cf. wia, gc, A. Warburg to k.b.w., 21 May 1929.
4 Ibidem, iii.112.4, Drei-Hte-Abend, f. 14. Cf. R. Kany, Mnemosyne als Programm. Geschichte,
Erinnerung und die Andacht zum Unbedeutenden im Werk von Usener, Warburg und Benjamin,
Tbingen, Niemeyer, 1987, pp. 177-178 ; Idem, Lo sguardo filologico : Aby Warburg e i dettagli,
Annali della scuola normale superiore di Pisa (Classe di lettere e filosofia) , 3rd series, xv.3,
1985, pp. 1265-1283 (1279-1280).
5 wia, iii.111.1, Lecture for Handelskammer, f. 23a : Die Bilderreihe, die ich Ihnen heute Abend zeigen durfte, mchte letzten Endes das Rtsel der Gedchtnisfunktion formulie

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always the individuals cerebral or nervous substance as bearer of memory,
for Warburg it becomes the artefact or any other product of culture as the
brains output. Thus, when he calls, for example, the memory of antiquity a function of organised matter , 1 matter is taken in a literal sense.
The technical term function was instrumental for Warburgs definition
of the role of the symbol as a phenomenon of expression halfway between
an image (meaning an effigy) and an abstract sign. He was apparently convinced that the symbol or symbolic form helped reactivate the collective
memory. 2 In order to trace this evolution, we need to look back at the first
lines on the note sheet with the title Mnemosyne that he recorded on 11
April 1924 after a conversation with Cassirer. These lines read : Symbol as
function of the social memory between kinesis and theoria . 3 Not only is
this his very first known mention of a so-called social , that is, collective or
cultural memory (a concept which dominated Warburgs later work), 4 but
Warburg also tries to capture the idea that every symbol preserves a memory of the experience that gave rise to it. His implied notion that a symbol
qua symbol is neutral in meaning is similarly important. Accordingly, the
function of the symbol is the potential of its latent, energy-laden state,
that is to say : only when the symbols appropriate meaning is activated and
the potential energy is released through an act of memory, as when a human being in a critical moment recalls his or her experiences in a former

ren. In der mnemischen Funktion trifft das Wunder der Konstanz mit dem ebenso groen
Wunder der Wandlung zusammen. Das bildhafte Element in seiner nachprgenden Gewalt
aus dem objektivierenden Erhaltungszustand der Ueberlieferung herauszuholen und es [zu]
vertauschen mit dem durch Augenblicksreiz hervorgerufenen Bilde, Gleich<... ?>setzung ist
Magie, die bisher unbekannte Gesetze des Ablaufs offenbart, wenn man ihr mit dem Rstzeug der historischen Verflechtung von Wort, Bild und Handlung gegenbertritt. Der Historismus steht heute nicht hoch im Kurs : lculte de incomptence und die Verehrung der
leiblichen Gegebenheit als Brgschaft seelischer Qualitten haben das Wort. Einer solchen
Narzissitt, hinter der der missverstandene Rousseaux [sic] steckt, stellt die Bibliothek den
Versuch entgegen, auf die Funktion des europischen Kollektivgedchtnisses als stilbildende
Macht hinzuweisen, indem sie die Kultur des heidnischen Altertums als Konstante nimmt.
Die Abweichungen der Wiedergabe, im Spiegel der Zeit erschaut, geben die bewusst oder
unbewusst auswhlende Tendenz des Zeitalters wieder und damit kommt die wunschbildende, idealsetzende Gesamtseele an das Tageslicht, die im Kreislauf von Konkretion und
Abstraktion und zurck Zeugnis fr jene Kmpfe ablegt, die der Mensch um die Sophrosyne
zu fhren hat .
1 wia, iii.55.4.3, Ninfa fiorentina, f. 1 : Erinnerung an die Antike als Funktion der organisirten Materie . Cf. Pinotti, Materia memoria : Aby Warburg e le teorie della mneme, p. 57.
2 Cf. wia, iii.2.1, zk Ae[sthetik] Aphorismen, no. 252, dated 1 March 1892 : Die als symbolisch
bezeichneten Vorgnge bezeichnen die aus dem gnzlich unbewuten Zustand beginnende
objektivirende Function unserer Erinnerungsbilder als subsumirende Eindrcke .
3 wia, iii. 93.12, Notebook Kreuzlingen, f. 72 : Symbol als Funktion des sozialen Gedchtnisses zwischen Kinesis und Theoria .
4 Cf. Gombrich, Aby Warburg : An Intellectual Biography, pp. 238-259.

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state of evolution, is that person able to bestow a positive or negative value

of expression on the symbol. 1 In other words, exposure to any symbolic
artefact constitutes an unmediated encounter with original phobic and irrational memories embodied in what Warburg calls expressive values (Ausdruckswerte). 2 In order to illustrate the critical moment, Warburg used the
metaphor of a pendulum, swinging in the whole spectrum of mental states
from a condition of empathetic passion, in which a subject can identify with
an object ( kinesis ), to a condition in which the subject distances itself from
the object and see it in abstract terms (theoria). The subjects self-consciousness, as well as the historical circumstances in which the moment of reflection happens, determine a fixed point in this imaginary spectrum. 3
These ideas stand in a long tradition in which mnemosyne is regarded
as a predisposition towards cognition, whether it is cognition of divine
knowledge (the highest form of self-awareness) or experience (the cultural memory of humanity). What is clear, however, is Warburgs interest in
the materialised memory of a primal experience, handed down to posterity
by artefacts the equivalent to the material memory of the cerebral substance. How could these artefacts, he asks, operate as a function of social
memory ? In order to answer this question, Warburg turned to the theories
of the relatively unknown zoologist Richard Semon (1859-1918) about which
he probably learned through a newspaper article of 1908. 4 Semon, one of
the followers of Ewald Hering, is an important figure for the beginnings of
the study of human memory and its hereditary mechanisms. He developed
a theory of mnemic biology, coining the still common Hellenism engram.
Engram is derived from the Greek verb engraphein and means literally some

1 wia, iii. 93.12, Notebook Kreuzlingen, f. 72 : Die katalytisch gespannte Neutralitt [des
Symbols] wird durch Erinnerung an d[ie] Antike zu polarer Umlagerung gefhrt . Cf. Pinotti, Memorie del neutro, pp. 185-199.
2 Cf. E. Wind, Introduction, in A Bibliography on the Survival of the Classics, ed. Warburg Institute, i, London-Toronto-Melbourne-Sydney, Cassell and Co, 1934, pp. v-xii (vii) : The history of civilisation does not simply roll off but it is subject to constant crises, and its decisive
events often are pauses of reflection which precede the risk of action. Here memory must
assert its constructive power. Memory which revives and re-interprets traditional symbols
calls for reflection or instigates action and thus effects periodic reversions .
3 Ibidem, pp. vii-viii : In the critical moment before the deed the remembered symbol
works as model or as a warning, in the pause of doubt as a spur or rein. Memory Mnemosyne is thus the central philosophical problem for the historian of symbols : not only
because she herself is the organ of historical cognition, but because she represents, as it were,
the reservoir of those powers which are released in a given historical situation .
4 For Warburgs reading of Semon see Gombrich, Aby Warburg : An Intellectual Biography,
pp. 241-243 ; Kany, Mnemosyne als Programm, pp. 175-178 ; Pinotti, Memorie del neutro, pp. 149168 ; Idem, Materia memoria, pp. 53-78. Warburg kept a newspaper article about a review of
Die Mneme by Francis Darwin (to whom the English edition was later dedicated) in his Zettelksten. See F. Darwin, Habit Illustrated by Morphology, Science , 1908, pp. 385-396. Warburg acquired Semons book in the same year 1908.

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thing that is inscribed. This inscription, Semon argued, preserved the effects
of certain stimuli applied to the irritable organic substance . 1 Semons idea
of an imprint of everybodys perceptions and thoughts on the nervous substance brings to mind the impressions from seal rings in a block of wax ,
to which both Plato (Theaetetus, 191A-E) and Aristotle refer. Aristotle associated memory (mneme) in this regard with imagination (phantasia). He writes
about that kind of memory which becomes the human faculty to produce
an image of what is to be memorised : a mental picture, derived from sense
perception, which can later be recollected (De memoria et reminiscentia, 449b450b). He assumed that a stimulus triggered the production of such an image (for which he uses the metaphor of an imprint by a seal ring), facilitated
by the imagination. Probably alluding to these concepts in an implicit way,
Semon held that a stimulus could provoke an alteration in the nerve tissue
and thus activate a process in the organism which he called energetic . He
was convinced that such alteration would ultimately lead to morphological mutations which he called engraphic modifications . 2 To define the
presumed physiological alterations, that is, a capacity of after-effects of
stimulation as part of a complex unconscious memory, Semon used another Greek term : mneme. 3 Mneme, the sum of all engrams, was for him an
organic plasticity that allowed the preservation of the effects of experience,
linking the past and the present in a seamless living bond. Of particular interest for Warburg, however, was Semons theory of the mechanisms that
would awaken the mnemic trace or engram out of its latent state into one
of manifested activity . Semon called this process ecphory . 4
Warburg borrowed all three terms Semon had used or coined, that
is, mneme, engram and ecphory, for his own theoretical vocabulary. 5 This
shows that he adopted also Semons theories and terminology to express
aspects of cultural heritage : artefacts became visual forms of the engrams
or according to Warburgs own neologism dynamograms (Dynamogramme). An energy-laden dynamogram corresponded to the latent neutral symbol, functioning as a material trace of social memory. The visible
traces of past human experience in their entirety, the genotype which
Warburg called mneme, consisted of a pool of prototypes pathos formulae
(Pathosformeln) and symbols alike, laden with psychic energy that had
come down to us via imagery from a somewhat vaguely defined antiquity . Whereas for Warburg the ability to live, relive and express fundamental emotional experiences was indeed innate, the selection of proto

1 R. Semon, The Mneme (1904), London-New York, George Allen and Unwin, The Macmillan Company, 1921, p. 11.
2 Ibidem, p. 12. Cf. pp. 17-23.
3 Ibidem, p. 12.
4 Ibidem. Cf. pp. 138-148.
5 See e.g. wia, iii.12.12, Bilderwanderung bis Eckener, Mnemosyne, Logik, Ghirlandaio, f. 49 :
[M]otorisch gesteigerter Expressionismus durch Ekphorie der Vorprgungen .

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types, the mnemosyne as Warburg saw it was controlled by will. This,

again, illustrates the speculative process behind his idea of inscribing the
entrance to his library with mnemosye. What is more : the inscription also
invokes the goddess that might help the activation of memory and its reproduction.
Many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philologists and historiographers interested in mythology as a type of structural anthropology had
stressed that the notion of a specific faculty in the human mind was the
principal meaning of Mnemosyne. 1 Warburg was certainly familiar with this
common notion, which was well suited to his own idiosyncratic vocabulary. Yet he had, presumably, developed his ideas on these topics with Cassirer, who held that it was always assumed that the essence of each mythical figure could be directly learned from its name . 2 Two months before
travelling to Kreuzlingen to meet Warburg, the philosopher had addressed
the doctrine of the intimate relation between names and essences, and of
their latent identity as a methodological principle in his lecture on Language and Myth (Sprache und Mythos) at the Bibliothek Warburg. 3
Further proof that the conversation with Cassirer was at the origin of
Warburgs decision to appropriate the term mnemosyne to denote a specific
faculty of the mind can be found in the marginal notes to a passage in his
personal copy of Cassirers Sprache und Mythos, published in 1925. 4 Cassirers
passage refers to Hermann Useners theory of the momentary god (Augenblicksgott) with which Warburg had been familiar since attending Useners
lectures at the University of Bonn in 1886-1887. Cassirer argued that [t]he
image of the momentary god, instead of merely preserving the memory
of what he originally meant and was a deliverance from fear, the fulfilment of a wish and a hope persists and remains long after that memory
has faded and finally disappeared altogether . 5 Cassirer thus presents his
own explanation of Useners notion of the Augenblicksgott as a so-called Urphnomen, describing the gods emergence in a moment of despair as an act
of objectifying a subjective affect, of discharging emotional tension and of
transforming it into the figure of a daimon or demon. The processes which

1 C. v. Weizscker (s.v. Mnemosyne, in Ausfhrliches Lexikon der griechischen und rmischen

Mythologie, ii.2, ed. by H. W. Roscher, Leipzig, Teubner, 1894-1897, col. 3076) writes that the
term was in the first instance a nomen appellativum rather than a nomen proprium and, if used
as a personification, never lost its meaning of memory. Cf. S. Eitrem, s.v. Mneme, in Paulys
Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Alterthumskunde, xv, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1932, cols 2257-2258,
and s.v. Mnemosyne, cols 2265-2269.
2 E. Cassirer, Language and Myth (1925), trans. by K. Langer, New York-London, Harper
and Brothers, 1946, p. 3.
3 Ibidem. Cf. wia, gc, F. Saxl to A. Warburg, 20-21 February 1924.
4 wia, iii.3, Warburgs personal copies. Cf. Kany, Mnemosyne als Programm, p. 179.
5 Cassirer, Language and Myth, pp. 35-36.

aby warburg s theory of memory

401
one presumes followed were a dissociation of this particular impression
from the universality of daily experiences and its concretion in the form of a
god by giving it a name. 1 The genesis of myths was at Useners time considered key to understanding the original linguistic meaning of divine names,
and even if the Augenblicksgott owed his or her existence to an instantaneous
and palpable situation, the meaning of the gods name became objectified
in order to form a structured cult. What Cassirer is describing obviously
corresponds to Warburgs concept of the creation of symbols somewhere
between the concrete and the abstract. 2
By 1925 mnemosyne had clearly become a catch-phrase in Warburgs vocabulary. Collective memory seemed a precondition for the production,
perception and study of culture. Once he had discovered it, Warburg almost immediately transformed the term, which carried with it an allusion
to the mythological and etymological roots of memory, into an umbrella
description of his new enterprises, not only the move and institutionalisation of his private library, but also the concept of his similarly didactic Bilderatlas, which would serve as an inventory of pre-coined classical forms
that impacted upon the stylistic development of the representation of life in
motion in the age of the Renaissance . 3 The term mnemosyne was, in sum,
heavily charged with meaning. It was a substitute for the complex idea of
survival in any creative human act, both individual and collective, an act so
difficult to characterise that Warburg struggled to describe it in anything
other than metaphorical terms. The terms mneme and mnemosyne seemed
extraordinarily suitable, thanks to their origin in the concept of mythology,
as a pretext of psychology, yet at the same time they also forged an important link between his thinking and the most recent methods of neurophysiological science.
When reading Yatess Art of Memory, one wonders why Aby Warburg,
whose attention was more and more drawn to the mechanics of memory,
omitted the reception of the theory of memory and the interest in its origin in classical mnemonics among humanists, in particular Giordano Bruno. Apart from the supposedly unconscious adoption of its rules for the
structure of his own library, this chapter in the Afterlife of Antiquity was and
remained seemingly a blind spot in Warburgs field of interest despite his
apparent knowledge of Giulio Camillos work. In her paper, Yates won

1 Ibidem, pp. 29-30.

2 R. Kany (Lo sguardo filologico : Aby Warburg e i dettagli, Annali della scuola normale superiore di Pisa [Classe di lettere e filosofia] , 3rd series, xv.3, 1985, pp. 1277-1281) was the first to
link Warburgs reading of the pagan gods and their names as symbols with Useners concept
of the Augenblicksgott.
3 A. Warburg, Introduction to the Mnemosyne Atlas, transl. by M. Rampley, in Idem, The
Absorbtion of the Expressive Values of the Past, Art in Translation , i, 2009, pp. 273-283 (277).

402

claudia wedepohl

ders why Brunos exploration of astrological images as devices of memory,

in particular the 36 decans of the sphaera barbarica as listed in the Picatrix
(which Warburg had rediscovered), remained unnoticed by Boll, Gundel,
Warburg and Saxl. It is certainly true that they remained unnoticed and not
consciously omitted. Yet at least for Warburg Bruno was first and foremost
the above-mentioned reformer, most of all through his Spaccio de la bestia
trionfante ; a reformer of superstitious beliefs that were based on the literal
rather than allegorical reading of the star signs and constellations. In this
way Warburg was inspired by the views expressed by Cassirer in his Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (The Individual and the
Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy) of 1925. For both scholars Brunos moral
consciousness was supposedly the predisposition for the ability to comprehend [natures] infinity and its incommensurability . 1

1 Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, p. 129.

c o mp osto in car atter e dan t e m on ot y p e d a l l a

fabr izio serr a editor e , p i s a r oma .
stamp ato e rileg at o n e l l a
t ipog r afia di ag n an o, ag n a n o p i s a n o ( p i s a ) .

*
Dicembre 2014
(cz 2 fg 3)

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