Aristotle and the crayfish
We went to
buy angling-worms
in a shop
clearly intended for this purpose.
And we
found what we were looking for;
fat,
squirming angling-worms,
a kind the
fish here seem to prefer.
But in the
middle of this room a large old-fashioned earthenware jar
blue, round
and full of young crayfish.
And my
young son was inconsolable
at having
to leave these wonderful creatures.
We bought
two, and released them
in our
clean, glass-clear aquarium,
where the
goldfish moved slowly and solemnly
like old
poets in a distinguished academy. And behold,
a great darkness descended upon all things:
here
expressions of opinion and discussions took place
beyond our
comprehension; only seaweed
that
floated up to the surface bore witness to
the
contention that here was secretly taking place.
On the
third day the aquarium cleared once more.
And became
as before. But no crayfish
were
visible. We decided they now
were living
like hermits, in greater wisdom,
a life far
removed from the general public
down below
the sand beds.
So it
continued for a long time, until one day
I opened my
Aristotle
and found a
very small crayfish corpse
flat as a
plant in a herbarium
precisely
in the short section where the Philosopher
talks about
memory and recollecting
the past.
And this chapter
one of the
best things
ever
written about memory,
will now
for ever be associated
with an
odour not easy to forget,
one of a
slightly rotten crayfish.
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