John Basinger, an actor and college professor widely believed to be the only person ever to have memorized all 12 books of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” — a feat he turned into a one-man show that inspired research into the workings of memory — died on May 29 in Brookings, S.D. He was 92.
His death, at a hospice facility, was from complications of pneumonia, his wife, the film historian Jeanine Basinger, said.
Throughout his life, Mr. Basinger (pronounced BAY-singer) devoted himself to pursuits that some would have dismissed as fanciful. As a young man, he walked from New York to San Francisco. He moved to Kenya on a whim, becoming fluent in Swahili after spending five years teaching at a rural school for boys.
Perhaps most improbably, he became a musician for the National Theater of the Deaf. His own hearing was not impaired, but he mastered sign language and spent decades performing with, writing for and helping run the troupe. He also taught theater, speech and sign language in Norwich, Conn., at Mohegan Community College (now part of Connecticut State Community College).
But none of Mr. Basinger’s exploits received the kind of attention he got for memorizing “Paradise Lost.” The idea came to him in 1993, after he had retired from teaching.
He began bringing a copy of the poem with him to the gym and developed a routine: He would memorize seven new lines on the exercise bike and, while lifting weights, would review the last 14 lines he had studied, leaving with a sweaty command of 21 lines of verse.
The 17th-century poem — which concerns the biblical narrative of the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve, and the promise of redemption through Christ — consists of 10,565 lines, or more than 60,000 words across 12 books.
“I knew that I wanted to do something of size and substance, perhaps not unlike Milton himself,” Mr. Basinger said in a documentary short about his endeavor, “Thus Spake John” (2008), directed by Andreas Burgess. “What was time to me? It was a gift.”
Mr. Basinger persuaded his wife to listen to him practice; in return, he gave her foot rubs as he did so. In the documentary, she recalled hearing him intone the lines “All night the dreadless Angel unpursu’d / Through Heav’ns wide Champain” about 50 times.
“Paradise Lost” is forbiddingly dense. The first sentence has six lines of prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses before a verb appears. But Mr. Basinger aimed to show that Milton’s magnum opus was compelling and dramatic. In December 2001, after eight years and 10 months of practice, he put on a marathon three-day performance at a theater in Norwich.
“Knowledge forbidden?” Mr. Basinger asked as Satan, chuckling in disbelief, during the show. “Can it be sin to know?”
The documentary called it “the first and, most likely, the last performance of its kind.”
But over the years, Mr. Basinger performed “Paradise Lost” front to back at least twice more. For a time, he also read excerpts every Sunday at a performing arts space in Middletown, Conn., where he lived.
Speaking to The Hartford Courant, he called his project a “12-step program against Alzheimer’s.” In 2010, a paper in the journal Memory concurred. The Wesleyan University psychologist and neuroscientist John Seamon and two co-authors, Paawan Punjabi and Emily Busch, argued that while Mr. Basinger had exhibited “memory virtuosity,” his story suggested that “exceptional memorizers” are “made, not born, and that cognitive expertise can be demonstrated even in later adulthood.”
The academic article inspired stories in New York magazine and The Guardian. Mr. Basinger told Connecticut Magazine, “I’m evidence that the ordinary person can do a vast amount if he or she just puts their mind to it.”
John Basinger was born Peter Reese on May 10, 1934, at a Salvation Army hospital in Chicago. His mother, Marguerite Reese, was an unmarried German immigrant who cycled through various jobs; he never learned the identity of his father.
He grew up in foster homes before being adopted at 13 by a couple in Mountain Lake, Minn. His adoptive parents, Harvey Basinger, a doctor, and Marie (Enns) Basinger, renamed him John Peter Basinger.
John graduated from Bluffton College (now University) in Ohio in 1956 with a degree in biology and mathematics. In the mid-1960s, after his stint in Kenya, he received a master’s degree in teaching from Wesleyan.
Around the same time, the university held the first public performance of the National Theater of the Deaf. Mr. Basinger had heard that the troupe was trying to figure out how to use mobile sculptures to stand in for sound; he found a way to turn them into instruments that produced music for audience members with hearing and visual effects for deaf theatergoers. He went on to join the troupe, remaining a core member for decades.
He also had a supporting role in the acclaimed 1986 movie “Children of a Lesser God,” set at a school for the deaf, and starred in a one-man film adaptation of “King Lear” called “The King” in 2012.
Mr. Basinger married Jeanine Deyling in 1967. In addition to her, he is survived by their daughter, Savannah Jahrling, and a granddaughter. The Basingers left Connecticut for South Dakota several years ago.
Although he was celebrated for his supposedly extraordinary memory, Mr. Basinger once forgot to show up for an interview with a reporter — for a story about his memory.
“I don’t have photographic memory,” he told the news website CT Insider. While the memorization did strengthen his mind, he said, the predominant feeling was having “this whole thing in my head.”
Each book of “Paradise Lost” was like a “gothic cathedral,” he said, that he could enter by closing his eyes.
“I’ll tell you,” he added, “it’s very useful at the dentist.”
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