the truth of fact and the truth of art (1)

Nostalgia, a yearning to return home (nostos) and the simultaneous realisation of its impossibility (thus the algia, pain), seems to be the order of the day - a symptom of the time of crisis we are living, for many; for me, just simply part and parcel of human experience and its anguished relationship with time. Nostalgia has always been ubiquitious in art and integral to our aesthetic experience: I find it thus difficult to understand why so many people feel so discomforted by it.

This weekend I witnessed a most interesting discussion among professional historians around the topic, which once again set me thinking. It would be almost impossible to summarise here the main arguments exchanged; I took, however, particular note of the contention that the past is always, to a great extent, irrecoverable and that nostalgia builds an imaginative bridge between past and present, not by actually returning home but by creating a new experience that irrevocably alters past events. Hence what is called "historical experience" is not that different from fiction, in that both are the products of a narrative. Stories, in sum...

My literary self, momentarily delighted at what seemed the confession of a weakness, dared suggest that the line separating a historian from a fiction writer is therefore rather blurred or perhaps even non-existent. After an awkard silence, someone replied that the line clearly exists to the extent that the historian must always be committed to an idea of objective (?) "truthfulness", whereas the fiction writer isn't. I was thus reminded, once again, that we move in utterly distinct universes of meaning and deal with very different concepts of truth. The majority of the historians present seemed to be unwilling to admit that they are not only writers but also readers, and that the encounter with the past is never direct and static but always mediated by dense layers of meanings and codes of all sorts.

Nothing new, of course. Yet, it is always good to be reminded of the reasons why you have opted out of certain academic paths and debates (whose importance I nevertheless acknowledge and respect), lest you forget the essentials of what really moves you and gives meaning to life.