Laudator Temporis Acti

G.S. Kirk (1921-2003), The Songs of Homer (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1962), pp. 55-56:

It is a truism that literacy saps memory. In pre-literate societies, even quite unsophisticated ones, the gift of verbal memory is far more highly developed, through constant need and practice, than in societies like our own. Even amid the present welter of letters there remain a few who can learn rapidly by heart and remember what they have learned. They are quite exceptional; and differences in the natural capacity for exact verbal memory exist even in primarily illiterate societies, where the general level is much higher. Oral poets have no doubt always been drawn from an exceptional minority, and their performance far outstrips that of those who compel our admiration by quoting a complete scene of Shakespeare. More than mere learning by heart is involved, of course; yet to assimilate an epic poem of several thousand lines, or to elabo­rate a shorter poem to something like that length by his own additions or by transpositions from other songs, is no feat for the exceptionally gifted oral singer in a largely or wholly unlettered community—as can be illustrated by specific examples from Yugoslavia or south Russia. The modern student of Homer may feel surprised about such capacities, but he must not be too incredulous.

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