Vesna Acevska, Writer and Language Editor, INI

 HISTORY AND LITERATURE

 1. Unity of Style. At the beginning they were one, literature and history - without literary history. The versed testimony of Gilgamesh’ deed at ancient Ur, the cosmogenic Mahabharata, Theogony, Shahnama and Kalevala, the grandiose Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, Heroditus’ History, the parabolic Bible and many other works, were and still are an inexhaustible treasury of fascinating myths, tales, events and stories, inherited from the depths of past and from the best of ancestors. Such works are more than just highly documented art, focused at demystifying the origins of world and man, at discovering the foundations of society, decrypting causes and occurrences, and illuminating generators of advancement. They are more than a colourful chronology of streams of continuous political, religious, ideological or national fight for power and freedom; much more than comprehensive catalogue of culture: they are dramatic testimony of man’s powerful drive towards the unreachable. In narrower frames, they are a precious record of events and clashes in the past, and an illuminating description of cultural traditions and facts. When I mention this, I have in mind the famous beginning of Herodotus’ History, which clearly sets author’s intention: “This is a historical overview of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, written to protect the minimization of humanity’s products, so that great and miraculous deeds, both made by Helenes and by Barbarians, could not be forgotten, and last, inter alia, to explain why wars occurred between Helenes and Barbarians.”

              Many fruitful remnants of such stylistic unity between history and literature have been saved for the present. They have long ago found place in many historical chronicles and biographies, official and non – official scripts, which tell successful and less successful intentions of an imaginary supremacy, and always justified by facts on a hereditary or some moral “law” or by unavoidable battles fought in the name of pure “truth”. Naturally, they are present to an extent relevant to authors’ intentions and proportionate to their talents and preparations. 

                Also, abundant with stylistic elements are those writings that we consider documents, wherefrom the unusual speech of writers echoes. Some are full of life and vibrant, with various eloquent characters arising from court and police records. Among them, is the record of court proceedings against famous French poet and outlaw Vuillon, in which the defender managed to save himself by bribing and as reported, by providing a convincing description of priest’s bad moment of fury and carelessness which caused him fall onto Vuillon’s wretched dagger and inflicted death upon himself. After the proceedings, Vuillon disappeared and nobody knew of his whereabouts. Some assumed that he ended up on gallows.

The quality stylistic features contain certain memories of important characters and events. Right after they appear, hungry inquisitors get hold of them and do not let them off until the last letter had been laid down on page. The British statesman, Winston Churchill, one of the main protagonists of the Second World War, with an undoubtfull role in the defeat of fascism, in 1953 won the Nobel prize for literature, for his memoirs “The Second World War” wherein he displayed stylistic skills and great sincerity in storytelling. If Churchill the historian presented his significant and beautiful work to literature, in return, the well-known international writer, Marguerite Yourcenar, complemented history with her splendid “ Mémoires d’Hadrian”, which won undivided critical appraisal as being more authentic record of the life and time of the great emperor than the existing historical documentation used by the author. It is necessary to point out at this stage the multi – volume “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy and “And Quiet Flows the Don” by M. Solohov, excellent literary histories on two separate and big wars, and containing abundant data from historic documents and authentic testimonies. These and many other important literary works based on historic themes, especially great novels from the period of literary classicism and realism, use history as supplementary literature helping historians to abundantly illustrate times and sequences of events to their students. But in many other aspects, the process of separation had begun. History drifted towards truth, distilled through scientific filters, while gradually phasing out its stylistic literary features. Contrary to this, the belle literature, also named literature, continued to dismantle anything that prevented it from attaining the very own essence, and focused on artistic truth.

                 2. Definition and position. If, according to its oldest definition, history is a good teacher of life, literature is the ‘belle” teacher. Hence, nicely written history is the beautiful, good and favourite teacher.

                 Today, history considers itself an important science. It is  not only a record of past times, precise chronicle of events, nor a useful teaching tool. The same scientific rank belongs to only one small part of literature, whereas the other, much larger portion is situated on the opposite bank – the colourful area of art.

           Both history and art firmly support the synchronic and diachronic pillars. Moving alongside the action towards the centrefold, often they unveil rare and precious human values, as they do rules and regulations of higher order. Sometimes in vain, sometimes successfully, they both deal with interpreting what they find important. In their various hermeneutics, they both reach to assumptions or to inventions, as literature (not being limited to follow reality facts, but only strong artifacts) points out, or to hypotheses, as science points out (history being among sciences that support hypotheses with valid facts only). In his work “The Misery of Historicism”, Karl Popper underlines the views of modern psychoanalyst d-r Karin Stephan, who believes that all scientific hypotheses have been based on metaphors. In support of this thesis, she illustrates the latest hypotheses on quantum physics, that she regards as only pure metaphors of ideas, stemming from selected facts. If her approach relates to science, that provides basis for natural sciences, and if it seriously undermines it, what is left for the social sciences, history being one of them, that do not have such one empiric testability as natural sciences do? Their foundation is yet more unstable, because they relate to metaphors of metaphors, and to hypotheses of hypotheses. Yet here, off the wide roof of skepticism, hangs a note - that no one and never could get to realize oneself, let alone space.  Among many sceptics is the white – bearded Solomon, the signed author of the lucid book Preacher among the Biblical collection, and possibly the supreme author of the Song of Songs. He considered human mind powerless before far more complex things, and the glorious human wisdom nothing but transparent vanity. 

                Another movement caused by the insecurity of a general term in history – the term of time - considerably shook the position of history as scientific discipline. The conditionality of passing by of years is as disturbing as the incapability to completely confirm all time periods with sufficient facts. Equally disturbing is the dilemma on authenticity of sources, as well as their void for g great segment of the past. We have history of many stories for many countries, many rulers and peoples, whose frames have conditional value that forces us to move along in hypothetical time coordinates. 

                 The scientific position of history is questioned by our life experience, too. Each of us know that even events we had witnessed, brought about different and selected facts based on individual views and interpretations, and depending on  interests. In our information societies, information is often manipulated. We are constantly overwhelmed with numerous semi – truths that, beside other information centres, arrive from areas of education, as well as our living environment that determines our religious, cultural, political and national affiliation, and in which many myths, prejudices and stereotypes breed. All this creates an opaque fog that can be carefully broken through if one follows the thin thread of disbelief. Even more than the writers, historians should develop their sense of disbelief, to avoid steering into side streets in their search for truth.

                 Finally, the position of a historian and history itself as science, has most strongly been undermined by Karl Pauper and his below-mentioned works, who completes the fragmentation of historicism as a scientific approach and as method used by each historian, beside himself. According to him, historical determination or historic destiny are only myths. Based on the past, we could not know future, as knowledge that will influence the course of history could not be foretold. Hence, “there could be no scientific theory on historical development that would serve as base for historical foreseeing”. Accordingly, there could be no valid theoretical history (or theory of history).

 If we have no valid historical theory, why could there not be a solid history of science, history of history as a science determining knowledge, shifting and moving its components, underlining the important and crucial, determining basic elements and thoroughly describing them in their mutual relations? It is a good foundation for reaching truth, history being its loyal servant. Yet, we face a wall again. Michel Foucault and his “Archeology of Knowledge” bring back the metaphor. He says that each document is a metaphor that extracts only segments important to the truth being brought up as relevant. This means that only one segment of truth is being singled out and presented selectively. Foucault regards all past documents as monuments made by history itself that, instead of viewing monuments as documents, groups them to be remembered, or in his words: “history of our times tends towards archeology – towards an intrinsic description of monuments”.

                 The consequences of such understandings are grim. This means that history as scientific discipline could be manipulated with and that it rarely observes past in full. Also this means that it contains possibility for principal errors due to its tendency to interpret past separatively, which then yields different frames for a single event or single time period. Finally, what is its essence, is it exclusively a science and how much literature does it contain?

                 What is left to the historian, caught up in his foggy cloud by the remnants of methodology, without clear orientation coordinates, without clear view on the moving forces mid fragmented facts? How to build his certainty in an utterly uncertain journey through time; how to reach truth, his golden fleece?

                 Historians have to unavoidably define their position and intentions, decide on the destination, on what to hope for, what to lean on; make clear the efforts needed to endure and what to use of their or other sciences, what to equip with and how to prepare for their journey.

                 3. The book as keeper of time gates. Those who have not yet defined their position and stand in the bewilderment of foggy clouds, wherefrom all others that decided on their route chose to leave, while other found themselves in other fields, they are the ones that a face most beautiful gate. The gate that many top authors – scholars stood in front of, among them almost completely blind Borges. This is the book of books, the greatest book, a book – library containing all written books, and anticipating all future and unwritten books; major gate in time and a wide gate of opportunities.

                 The historian is a writer in a wider sense of the word. He deals with documents, acts, memories, chronicles, i.e. texts created by known and unknown authors, numerous books written on them and various relevant  interpretations. He has no magic machine to enter past and witness its events, nor possesses a special super – sense to enter the shaded past and clearly see it as to why things happened that way, then and there. Yet, he needs and ought to open wide, many books, summon numerous writers for help, multiply thousand – fold his eyes, shorten his way. Naturally, historians have to have good compass,  in order not to stray in the virtual world in the search of truth. And the compass is their consciousness. Consciousness of being seekers of the truth and truth only. Consciousness founded on firmest moral and navigated by objectivity. Consciousness of all possible deceits lying on the road, on all possible optical illusions and limitations. Hence they need to know much. Know much more than what is the chronicle of events, know generating ideas, their depth and power, the basis of cultural heritage that entails arts and languages, the folklore and customs. Only thus could they set off on a thorough search of true testimonies of past - a search that has yet another noble cause: to preserve from diminishing the importance of what was created by people, to preserve from oblivion the deeds and to explain why there were wars, as Herodotus had put it. To see why force, and not reason, creates the foundation of society, why advances and well – being of people are not the primal movers of what used to be and still is, why freedom was won only partially. To learn the value of people’s unstoppable drive for freedom, and appreciate their exhausting climb to the high peaks of knowledge,  to appreciate deeds and deeds of the free spirit that grace life itself.

 4. Single style. If stylistic unity of history and literature mentioned at the beginning of this text, were irreversibly lost, the historian and the writer for that matter would be left with style and with the possibilities of its perfect individualisation. Style assumes creation, which then gives life and vigor to the text that is meant to be the body of knowledge. In order to achieve this, avoid: all mummified stereotypes and prejudices, linear speech, colourless and scarce description of space, indifference towards dramatic occurrences, usage of historic characters as marionettes, mythicize events and participants, black – white narrative…

Therefore, the historian should be no mythologist, no epigone, no pragmatic, and beside being meticulous, should be an interesting describer with good knowledge. In addition, he should be excellent methodical person, an erudite as well, aware of his own profession and its subject, aware of the need for depth of cognition. As with the writer, the historian needs to choose freedom, fight off a wide space for thoughts, have courage in setting up the theses, be convincing in interpreting and in thoroughness in defending of theses. He needs to be clear tongued but illustrative, eloquent and yet convincing. So to create history that suits a teacher who speaks so accurately and eloquently, nicely and vividly, that the told story would never be forgotten.

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© Hi-story magazine, issue 1, June 2003; web-design: "Vertikala - Progressive Ideas and Technologies", Skopje