Volume 35, Number 3 · March 3, 1988
Rescuing the Past
By Willibald Sauerländer
Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography
by E.H. Gombrich
University of Chicago Press, 376 pp., $29.95
Over the threshold that leads to the library in the Warburg Institute at Woburn Square in London looms the word 'Mnemosyne,' memory. The inscription reminds the visitor that the books awaiting him inside are not dead containers of neutral information but voices from the past, reminders of sunken and often faraway traditions. For more than forty years the Warburg Institute has been part of the University of London and its name ranks high today in academic life. But even now this astonishing collection of books and pictures—a sort of Noah's Ark for Mneme in the deluge of modern forgetfulness—bears the mark of Warburg's peculiar genius, of his imagination, his restless curiosity, and also his idiosyncracies. The word 'Mnemosyne' written over the entrance door in London sounds an unintended but distinct biographical undertone. The long shadow of Aby Warburg remains very present among the shelves of the library, which had first been his personal instrument for exploring the secrets and above all the darkness of the past.
Review, 3679 words
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