Reading History

I read History for a few hours and then I feel a subtle sense of gloom. It may simply be that I am sitting alone for so long and need a long walk or a light conversation. But I feel it’s a little more. It is about what I am reading. It is about what History is.

Are we in any way different from what we were? Do I feel the sense of gloom because I realise how little we have changed? Or could it be that I feel disconnected from the world around me? I think it is about identity, and that you and I, two ordinary people, are among the countless others across time and ecologies. That we do not really matter, or that all that we hold dear is largely a product of our thoughts.

History shows us the very fragile inheritances we cherish. It shows us the inadequacies of our imaginations, and the beautifully mysterious ways we live through our minds. The way I sit here, my body amidst these walls, is a difficult reality. It isn’t at one with the many ideas in books and notions we carry with us. It has no meaning, no clear purpose. Why do I sit here in this way, with this life, carefully regarding these unkempt ideas?

When we look back at our affairs we inevitably try to make sense of them. We try to find, not simple patterns, for let us assume intelligent men suppose the absence of those, but inner sense. We look for moral force, for lessons, for a clarity our realities refuse to provide us. But history gives us none.

History does not say what is right or good or fair. It says that the times were different and people believed in different things. It says they were very similar to us, but wrote poetry in a different way and sang of different things. It says there have been many of us, and most of our knowledge has been strangely powerful and largely futile. What we look for in the past will never be enough even if we find it. The unread libraries hold deeper contradictions and eternally incomplete verse.

The only consolation is that when you leave the library in the evening, and sit outside among the darkening trees lit now by warm lamps, there will be that mild, fragmented music. To then walk, towards another night and day, and the finitude of life, is an unbearably beautiful thing.

History lets us return and never end.