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Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
Sep. 11th, 2012 09:32 pmI got to quote Keats in my first grad school paper! "Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all/ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
I'm comparing a late nineteenth-century historian, imbued with Romanticism, with some of the more rabid late twentieth-century postmodernists - the kind who believe that writing history is exactly the same as writing a novel (which suggests to me that they have done neither).
(I think this stringent version of postmodernism is based on a misconception. Its proponents seem to think that, because there can't be one, definitive, true interpretation of history, then all interpretations must be equal. But this is wrong: while there is no One True Interpretation of history, there are interpretations that fit the facts better, and interpretations that are demonstrably false.)
What's interesting to me is that Mr. Nineteenth-Century Romantic to a certain extent shares this view: he urges that we must see Shakespeare as a historian, and never mind Shakespeare made stuff up.
Romanticism sees the whole world as imbued with truth, overflowing with meaning, too much meaning - so much meaning that it can never be captured in mere words or cold facts, but only ensnared through art and literature. Therefore, though Shakespeare's plays are not historically, factually accurate, they are in some sense truer than a history - as my nineteenth-century historian says, they "supersede history" - because their artistry better explores human character than mere facts would.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, sees truth as immanent in nothing. If it is impossible to find the truth, then, it follows, writing history is just like writing a novel - one is as (un)true as the other.
The two views start at opposite poles, but end with a similar intertwining of art and history. It's fascinating to me.
I'm comparing a late nineteenth-century historian, imbued with Romanticism, with some of the more rabid late twentieth-century postmodernists - the kind who believe that writing history is exactly the same as writing a novel (which suggests to me that they have done neither).
(I think this stringent version of postmodernism is based on a misconception. Its proponents seem to think that, because there can't be one, definitive, true interpretation of history, then all interpretations must be equal. But this is wrong: while there is no One True Interpretation of history, there are interpretations that fit the facts better, and interpretations that are demonstrably false.)
What's interesting to me is that Mr. Nineteenth-Century Romantic to a certain extent shares this view: he urges that we must see Shakespeare as a historian, and never mind Shakespeare made stuff up.
Romanticism sees the whole world as imbued with truth, overflowing with meaning, too much meaning - so much meaning that it can never be captured in mere words or cold facts, but only ensnared through art and literature. Therefore, though Shakespeare's plays are not historically, factually accurate, they are in some sense truer than a history - as my nineteenth-century historian says, they "supersede history" - because their artistry better explores human character than mere facts would.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, sees truth as immanent in nothing. If it is impossible to find the truth, then, it follows, writing history is just like writing a novel - one is as (un)true as the other.
The two views start at opposite poles, but end with a similar intertwining of art and history. It's fascinating to me.
