FRANCES YATES (1899–1981)
Dame Frances Amelia Yates was an English historian of great distinction who taught and researched for many years at the Warburg Institute of the University of London. In addition to The Art of Memory (1966), her major works include Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972). Although what is sometimes termed “The Yates paradigm” has been contested, for example by Paolo Rossi in Logic and the Art of Memory (1983 [first published in 1960]), for exaggerating the “occultism” and “Jungianism” of the mnemotechnic systems she studied, Rossi goes on to conclude, “Dame Frances Yates was not only a scholar of the highest level, she was also an extraordinary person.” The protagonist would concur with this judgment.
YNWA
“You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a show tune by Rodgers and Hammerstein from Carousel (1945). It became the club song and anthem of Liverpool Football Club (est. 1892) after the release of a 1963 cover of the song by the Merseyside band Gerry and the Pacemakers. The song has been known to move grown men to tears.
ZHUANGZI OR CHUANG TZU (369 BCE — 286 BCE)
The philosophically most interesting and linguistically unsettling of the classical Chinese thinkers. His book, also called Zhuangzi, is composed around a core of seven “Inner Chapters” and is a principal source of Daoism. The core idea is that everything should be allowed to behave in line with its nature, which is consistent with the notion of wu wei or “non-action,” which does not mean doing nothing but doing only that which accords with the way in which a thing truly is. Do nothing and leave nothing undone.
VIGLIUS ZUICHEMUS (1507–1577)
The Latin name of Wigle Aytta van Zwichem, a Dutch statesman and jurist of great intellectual renown who held powerful political positions in the Netherlands and was a friend of Erasmus.