Oct 5, 2004
Poet's Corner
There are things that we just don’t get. Not often at least. The “we” are historians; the “things” are joy and sorrow.
Oh, we talk about joyful things, and sorrowful ones too. Sorrowful ones more often. “May you live in interesting times” may be a curse, but such times once past are our gold mine and joy.
Yet we so often crowd the emotion out. In part that’s the dissertation training; in part it’s the desire to analyze carefully. We deal with so many people over so much time. How often can we stop and look at one? God may be able to follow each falling sparrow to the ground, but we can’t. So we generalize and analyze, and all too often the emotions are lost in that translation.
Yes, nearly everyone finds a moment to bring emotion in, particularly that last line in the talk that we want people to remember. But few of us our poets with our words.
Of course that is what poets are for, in part: To bring out the truths that historians leave behind. Take this poem by Kathleen Flenniken, ”To Ease My Mind”. Mostly it’s about Mary Todd Lincoln, but it’s also about the Civil War, war in general, and an individual’s escape from the pain into either luxury or madness.
I suppose this is the biographer’s world more than the historian. The biographer can take us by the hand and introduce us to the individual, good or evil, joyful or sorrowful. But somehow it seems to me that we historians —or maybe it is simply I—can line up cause and effect and name the emotions in the motives but can never quite get to the complex of emotions themselves.
And that’s a shame, because all human action flows through emotion.
Maybe there are historians, or poets, that you think capture that complex of emotions wonderfully. If so, please share.
Oh, we talk about joyful things, and sorrowful ones too. Sorrowful ones more often. “May you live in interesting times” may be a curse, but such times once past are our gold mine and joy.
Yet we so often crowd the emotion out. In part that’s the dissertation training; in part it’s the desire to analyze carefully. We deal with so many people over so much time. How often can we stop and look at one? God may be able to follow each falling sparrow to the ground, but we can’t. So we generalize and analyze, and all too often the emotions are lost in that translation.
Yes, nearly everyone finds a moment to bring emotion in, particularly that last line in the talk that we want people to remember. But few of us our poets with our words.
Of course that is what poets are for, in part: To bring out the truths that historians leave behind. Take this poem by Kathleen Flenniken, ”To Ease My Mind”. Mostly it’s about Mary Todd Lincoln, but it’s also about the Civil War, war in general, and an individual’s escape from the pain into either luxury or madness.
I suppose this is the biographer’s world more than the historian. The biographer can take us by the hand and introduce us to the individual, good or evil, joyful or sorrowful. But somehow it seems to me that we historians —or maybe it is simply I—can line up cause and effect and name the emotions in the motives but can never quite get to the complex of emotions themselves.
And that’s a shame, because all human action flows through emotion.
Maybe there are historians, or poets, that you think capture that complex of emotions wonderfully. If so, please share.