The narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia,”

endeavoring to remember the quality of Ligeia’s

eyes: “There is no point, among the

many incomprehensible anomalies of mind,

more thrillingly exciting than the fact—never,

I believe, noticed in the schools—that in our

endeavors to recall to memory something

long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon

the very verge of remembrance, without being

able, in the end, to remember.”

Giordano Bruno, recording in De umbris

idearum (1582) the image of the first decan

of Gemini: In prima geminorum facie, vir

paratus ad serviendum, virgam habens in dextera.

Vultu hilari atque iocundo. [“In the first

figure of The Twins, a man ready to serve,

holding the verge in his right hand. His expression

full of mirth and mischief.”]