In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.
Likewise, as Powers explains in the interview, the book's title is taken from Shakespeare's
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5:
Ghost:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
Hamlet:
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.
Marcellus:
Within My lord, my lord,--
(Excerpt courtesy of
Shakespeare Searched.)
The wax tablet and stylus were not Elizabethan inventions but had in fact been used as a temporary writing technology since
Homer's time.
