Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0498: Memorize “Hélas!” by Oscar Wilde

Episode Date: February 3, 2016

This episode presents a method for memorizing “Hélas” by Oscar Wilde. I also recommend resources that can be used to quiz on the poem for thorough memorization. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 498. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. An enormous number of readers and listeners have expressed interest in memorizing poetry. And in fact, our poetry course is actually expected to be opened at least the first few lessons started being dripped out, as early as one or two weeks from now. So stay tuned for that.

Meanwhile, in this episode, I'm going to present Elas by Oscar Wilde. This is one of my favorite poems by Wilde, mostly because it's so melancholy and depressing. My life is just so happy that I like to depress it once in a while to keep things in balance. So even if you don't like this stuff, I love this stuff. And basically what I'm going to do is it's a really short poem, and I'll use the technique that I always talk about in these episodes, but I'm going to demonstrate it with some mnemonics, some visual mnemonics. So there are theoretically two stanzas, and one of them is eight lines, and one of them is six lines, and we'll use one keyword per line. But I've divided it into three

parts because eight keywords would be too many to review at once. So basically three general palace locations. Now the palace locations that I'm going to use are actually going to be in a fish tank because that's the first thing that I thought of. So we'll use a fish tank and we'll start on the lid, on the top of the lid of the fish tank, outside the fish tank to begin because it's sort of an aquarium. Then we'll go inside the fish tank to around the surface of the water, both above and just below the surface.. Then we'll go inside the fish tank to around the surface of the water, both above and just below the surface. And then we'll go to the very bottom of the fish tank for the third part. And each of these will have four or six words. Okay, now the poem, again, it's pretty

melancholy. And the idea is somebody has spoiled his life and he's looking back on it in that way. So the first four lines are, to drift with every passion till my soul is a stringed lute on which all winds can play. Is it for this that I have given away mine ancient wisdom and austere control? If you didn't hear the rhymes, it's a little bit complicated. So it's A-B-B-A. Soul rhymes with control, and play rhymes with away. Now we're going to use our key words to create some images on top of the fish tank. So the fish tank has, let's see, the one corner of it is kind of sharp, and that will be the passion. So we're going to imagine the corner of the fish tank scratching passionately against a wall. And then we have loot. So the ventilation cracks in the top of the tank might be strummed like a

loot. And then given away is our next keyword, and it's represented by given, but we have given. And so there's a big hole in the top of the tank where there's actually, you know, it's where you feed the fish, but the cap that you normally plug up there is missing. So it's been given away. And then austere. And I'm thinking of the light or the, you know, the light that sticks up above the fish tank that it holds a light bulb, obviously. And you think austere. And I'm thinking of steering something. So if I wanted to turn the fish tank around, I would grab that and turn it. And to make the image even stronger, I'll put two horns on the thing. If I wanted to turn the fish tank around, I would steer it with those two horns and I'd grab them and turn it, kind of like you would steer a steer if you were, you know, wrestling a cow or something. Now we want to make sure that these four keywords are in order. We have passion for the corner, and then we have loot, and given away, and then steer.

So thinking of those from left to right if possible. Now, I'm going to present the lines. I'm going to separate them a little. You wouldn't do this if you were professionally delivering it. I guess I'm professionally delivering it, but for the purpose of memorization, not for presentation. So the first one is passion. So we're thinking of drifting around with the passions. To drift with every passion till my soul.

And so that's the first line. And then the lute is a stringed lute on which all winds can play. To enhance the imagery, you might have the wall representing a soul being scratched, and then the lute, the cracks in the top of the fish tank, kind of making the sounds of notes as the wind is blowing through them. So, to drift with every passion

till my soul is a stringed lute on which all winds can play. Is it for this that I have given away? And you see that that rhymes with play. And then the next line is with the steer, mine ancient wisdom and austere control. Next, going inside the fish tank, let's look at the surface of the water. On the surface, there's a paper floating there and that paper represents reflection but in kind of the opposite way that you might

think if you look on top of the paper there's writing but if you're the fish looking from underneath there's writing on the bottom of the paper as well so So it's been written twice. So think twice written. The line is, Methinks my life is a twice written scroll. Next we encounter the fish who has little whiskers. So it's like he's trying to be a man, but he's really just looking more like a boy because he can't really grow a mustache because fish aren't very good at that. So that's boyish. And the line is scrawled over on some boyish holiday. Next, we have a complicated word, which is virile. And that's sort of a poem that is an obscure French type of poem. So this is a strange keyword, but if you can memorize it and find some way to

remember virile and associate that with the fish's fin, then that'll help you remember the keyword of the next line, with idle songs for pipe and virile. And then the final word here is on the fish's tail, which is severely damaged and marred. and so the keyword is mar, which do but mar the secret of the whole. So remember that inside the fish tank so far we have twice written, boyish, virile, and mar. So Methinks My Life is a twice written scroll, scrawled over on some boyish holiday, with idle songs for pipe and virile, which do but mar the secret of the whole. Now going down to the bottom of the fish tank, we come to the best part of the poem, and we'll start with trod. So there are two shoes at the bottom of the fish tank, and there are some plants planted in the shoes.

So you think of trod with the shoes, and then the plants are growing out of these. Now the tops of the plants are very light and bright, and they dance around. And so think heights or sunlit heights. So these two lines are trod and heights, and they are, surely there was a time I might have trod the sunlit heights and from life's dissonance. And the thing is, this complicated poem gives, you know, that phrase, because it's well written, that phrase there, and from life's dissonance, doesn't make sense without the context. It is completed by the next line. And that next line, the key word is cord.

So we're actually going to have a harp as the main feature of this fish tank. So we add the shoes, then you go up to the plants, the heights, and then you have the harp for striking a chord surely there was a time i might have trod the sunlit heights and from life's dissonance struck one clear chord to reach the ears of god so that's that future imperfect conditional kind of regret that he's having. And so again, those three lines are trod, heights, and cord. Surely there was a time I might have trod the sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance struck one clear cord to reach the ears of God. Now, if we go down to the base of the harp, as beautiful as the harp is, it seems to be, I don't know, somehow perverted because the harp is like it's been growing out of a skull.

It's reaching out one eye and out the mouth. So there's a skull down there at the bottom of the harp. But then spilling out of the skull's mouth is some honey, which is a little bit weird. And so the keywords here are dead and honey. So he asks, is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod, I did but touch the honey of romance. So he's saying this little temptation that I had, did that kill that whole opportunity? So is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance. And then the last word is inheritance.

And that's really abstract and it depends on how you want to represent it. But you have this whole fish tank as your oyster or your kingdom, so you can put the inheritance wherever you want, whatever that image is going to be. So the keyword is inheritance. Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance. And must I lose a soul's inheritance? It'll take more review of these keywords and in particular more listening

to this poem and reciting along with it while thinking of your keywords in the memory palace, but I'm glad that I've been able to take this opportunity to give you kind of an example of what a memory palace for a poem like this might look like using something as spontaneous as a fish tank palace that I improvised. If you want some better thought through mnemonics for memorizing poems, we're creating and releasing a course for memorizing 80 poems. It's called Accelerated Poetry, and it'll be out pretty soon. We're going to start releasing the memorization materials and the materials for specific poems so that you can do this systematically.

And so just go to masterofmemory.com slash poetry to learn about that. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.