Empires built & lost, razed cities, destruction & suffering - yes, one could look at history in horror and see a single chain of catastrophes (1).
So, yes : “history
is made by the criminal in us” (2) and “history
is told by the victors”
But it
seems to me that there is also a parallel tradition, kept alive by storytellers such as poets and art historians. Their historical
sensibility is neither about praising victories not about documenting
catastrophes (3). It is about appreciating the range of possible human beliefs
and endeavours , resurrecting all that still exerts power on the imagination, as
something which once was worthy of human passion. One
might call it the revenge of the poetic historian (or of the historical poet) :
recreating or representing a past with beauty and goodness as guide.
And I think
there are many of us who still acutely feel this secret poetry of history. Many
of us who are fascinated by the mere atmosphere
of a certain era, moved by the pathos of an individual human fate, touched by
the beauty of a certain work of art.
If it
weren’t for some widely shared disinterested sensibility, how else to explain
the enduring fascination that, for instance, the history of Alexandria exerts
on us (witness the steady flow of books and exhibitions). It’s an Alexandria wholly of the imagination
which we keep alive – the Lighthouse, the Library/Museon, the luminous
neo-platonic philosophers, the fatal loves of Cleopatra – all lost and gone.
Hardly a stone remains of its thousand years old history. “phare englouti, amours perdus, livres
brûlés” – “ sunken lighthouse, lost loves, burned books” (4)
If it
weren’t for some enduring melancholy strand of the human condition, searching
for meaning and beauty to redeem our frailty
and transience – why would we still read a Greek poet born 150 years
ago, living in Alexandria, acutely sensitive to the unique transitional
qualities of the long gone era of (late)
Antiquity. A poet not necessarily most interested in the stories of the
victors. A poet, too, of the long farewell,
of the experience of the exiled and the defeated.
THE GOD ABANDONS
ANTONY
When at the hour of
midnight
an invisible choir is
suddenly heard passing
with exquisite music, with
voices—
Do not lament your fortune
that at last subsides,
your life’s work that has
failed, your schemes that have proved illusions.
But like a man prepared,
like a brave man,
bid farewell to her, to
Alexandria who is departing.
Above all, do not delude
yourself, do not say that it is a dream,
that your ear was mistaken.
Do not condescend to such
empty hopes.
Like a man for long
prepared, like a brave man,
like the man who was worthy
of such a city,
go to the window firmly,
and listen with emotion
but not with the prayers
and complaints of the coward
(Ah! supreme rapture!)
listen to the notes, to the
exquisite instruments of the mystic choir,
and bid
farewell to her, to Alexandria whom you are losing.
C. P. Cavafy
Listen to the
notes
(1) Always and ever the shadow of Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History
(2) An extract from W.H. Auden’s poem is put as a disclaimer in the preface of Leen Huet’s book, who then goes on telling stories of fascinating individuals, from a Byzantine princess to a mystic or a couturière. Imagining these individual lives feels like reclaiming history from the criminals. “Dansen met Clio”, Leen Huet
(3) Though very often there is of course a melancholy mourning of all that has been irrevocably lost
(4) « Alexandrie Histoire d’un mythe », Paul-André Claudel « Il n’y a donc rien à voir ? pas une pierre ? » « […] Tout est dans cette mémoire millénaire, mais presque totalement invisible, que la ville porte en elle comme un secret. […] » « Cette cité chargée d’histoire est aussi la capitale de l’absence de la destruction : phare englouti, amours perdus, livres brûlés »
(5) « Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa [Cavafy] » « Nous pouvons supposer qu’il préférait Alexandrie at Antoine à Rome et Octave » « Cavafy, une biographie », Robert Liddell , Traduction Eva Antonnikov
(6) Cavafy poem – English translation from EM Forster’s “Pharos and Pharillion” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61116/61116-h/61116-h.htm#f1
