The American Scene; The Art of History

Good morning. This is Howard Vincent, viewing the arts for the American scene for the Illinois Institute of Technology. The art today is the art of history, you want to consider. This all started, I suppose, may not be important, but it did start about five years ago. I was lucky enough to be spending the summer on a job in Nice, France, the southern part of France and kind of paradise. And one afternoon, I visited a friend of mine who was also there teaching in the same situation I was. And in his garden, we got talking about history. The art of writing, we started talking about biography. We were both concerned in writing biographies. And that led to the writing of history, which after all biography is a form of history. And we made a number, we discussed it, we argued about it. And I've been thinking about that argument, that discussion for the subsequent five years. And for one question, is there such a thing as history? And if so, how is it written? So that I thought I would

call upon this man who has written not only several volumes of biography, but has written a very important textbook in European history, who is a professor of European history at the University of Chicago, and who has written a book on history as an abstract concept of history. And this man, as a former president of the American Historical Association, a distinguished historian of the country, has certainly qualified for this job. And I will try to talk with him, but he will be talking way over my capacities. And he's a great person to talk with and you will enjoy him. Dr. Lewis Gotchak of the University of Chicago. Louis, remember that afternoon? I wish you would tell me about it in advance, so I'd be prepared to take up where I left off. Well, I can't remember where we left off, or even where we started, but I was arguing that the difficulty of writing that it was an art to write history. Well, I would certainly agree with that. I would also add, however, that

history is not exclusively an art. No. There are forms of history that are essentially art. And I think every form of history, whether or not it is primarily art, contains a dimension which is artistic, but I would be inclined to argue that there are all kinds of history and that some might very well aim at being scientific. And others might very well aim at being philosophical, although for each, it would seem to me that there was an element of art that entered. Interesting. Well, we're back in that garden, we better watch out and not take care of it. I remember this coming up. But those works of history, which survive, you'll notice they have a certain artistic structure, quality about them. After all, they are employing words, and words have got to be manipulated by the scale. Well, they not only have to use the art of style, the sort of thing that enters into any

kind of effective picturing. And essentially, the historian is engaged in trying to reconstruct an event or a person edge or an institution. He doesn't have the advantage that people engage in other kinds of scientific enterprise have of having an object that exists out there, that he can grasp, that he can look at, that he can go back if he wants to verify a detail and take another peek at. What he has to do is to reconstruct in his own mind something that happened a long time ago, if he wants to envisage Charlemagne being crowned or, or a Jinguist con, marching at the head of an army of con class, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt making a speech, no matter how remote or how in time or space or how recent in time or space, he nevertheless has to do that in his mind. He can't go out and take a look

at it, even when he has pictures, he can't very well take a look at it because the picture is taken from a certain bias and is totally incomplete so that he has to reconstruct the whole event in his own mind. And consequently, the historian is an artist in the sense that while he may not create in the way in which a writer of fiction creates or a writer of poetry creates, or even a painter creates, he is nevertheless engaged in the art of re -creation. He has to imagine a situation that existed some time ago with costumes and persons and voices and surroundings that come to him only indirectly through some kind of record. He's a mosaicist like this, so he puts little pieces of fact together and they form a pattern. That's right, and the pattern may not necessarily be the same for historian access. They do have a

certain common collection of data, and these data are subject to verification. But poets have the same data to work from, too, there's data of the world, the materials of the world, but they come out with different structures each of them. Well, and even your artist, you know more about French art than I do, Howard, but you know of artists like Monet and Manet, for example, who have painted the same picture. The same scene in different modes and the different times have come out with different pictures. Fundamentally, the subject is recognizable in each picture, but yet the pictures are different. Well, the same is, to a very considerable extent, true of the historian, that is to say he has a set of verifiable facts, verifiable in the sense in which the historian verifies them, that is to say, by careful saying of the evidence, and any two historians might very well agree as to what were the facts, when what comes to putting facts together, reconstructing a picture, or

reconstructing a series of pictures into a history of a period, or the life of a man, two historians might very well come out with altogether different impressions. Well, we'll go on this after the show and carry this on. There's a lot here, but let's get down to a case. You are doing a volume for the UNESCO in their universal history. Now this universal history, I think, is a fascinating project and presents undoubtedly tremendous problems. I think people would like to hear about this. This is a very important work he's doing, and it's a great honor that they selected him to be the editor of the fourth volume. It's something about this, and I'll keep interrupting you and asking questions. Well, UNESCO wants very hard, and with a certain amount of success, to be an international organization, not in the sense of being made up of representatives of nations, though present political situation makes that inevitable, but in the sense of trying to create an awareness in the minds

of people of mankind as a whole. One of the projects that they undertook to preach this idea, or to present the idea of mankind as a whole, was a universal history. Now, there have been a large number of universal histories in the past. One thinks, for example, of the Cambridge histories put out by the University of Cambridge in the course of the 20th century. One thinks of the Eastau -A -Jane Rao, which was put out by a French group. There are a number of these universal histories. Some of them in the process, now of being developed. The old German propylene Velkischecht is now in the process of revision. All of these are world histories, and as one comes closer to our own day in the preparation of these histories, they tend to be more and more universal in the sense of giving attention to every part of the world. Well, there were some attempts in the Middle Ages. Is Adora Seville? They had a kind of

try to bring together knowledge, but this is, excuse me. Right, but you see exactly that point that is Adora Seville encountered, that he didn't know very much about the world. The world is the world around the Mediterranean. Today we have a notion of the world in a consider -be -more universal scope. We know a great deal about the Asiatic civilizations, though not enough. We know a good deal about the African civilizations, though not enough. We know a great deal about American cultures before the European came to America, though not enough. And in general, the feeling is that these cultures were often very respectable, sometimes even more respectable than the European. Certainly the Chinese and the Indian cultures were extraordinarily respectable cultures at a time when the European cultures were not equally advanced. And even

like the Chinese history, it makes us look crude even today. Or like the Western history, the Egyptian and the Greece periods, what we call the ancient Mediterranean world. Well, the feeling was that that a history of the world ought not to be written from the point of view of any one region. Trouble with histories like the Cambridge modern history, or like the Laviste -Eastois -Générale is that it's a universal history from the Western point of view, so to speak. And the feeling here was that if a... I think parochial isn't that parochial. That's right. It couldn't help being parochial, even though the intention was not to be. The way to get round the inevitable parochialism, if it's all done by Europeans or Americans, was to get a team that would

represent various other parts of the world and to submit the work that they did to people all over the world. And an organization like UNESCO could do that, whereas a private publisher or even a university publisher like the Cambridge University Press couldn't do it or couldn't do it as well. And the result, therefore, now is that we have a team working on a universal history, what is called the history of mankind, which is made up of people from all over the world. Unfortunately, most of the people are still Western because the Western people are more history conscious than other people. But we have on this team a fair number of people who are not from the Western cultures. And to compensate for the inadequacy of experts working on the history, this work goes in draft to all nations,

not only the national commissions for UNESCO in the separate nations. There are, I forgot how many roughly 80 members, nation members of UNESCO, it goes not only to the national commissions for UNESCO of the separate nations, but it also goes to selected authorities, experts all over the world for criticism of the separate parts of the work dealing with their countries or their regions or their culture. Well, how big a group would this be roughly? Well, my own volume, for example, has nine people who are actually doing the writing, although paragraphs and sentences are taken from a large number of other people in these nine, so that it would be hard for me to designate how many people have actually written parts of my volume. The rough draft, what I call draft number four because

three preceding drafts were ahead of it, draft number four went out to, I don't know how many hundreds, but literally hundreds of persons, and of those hundreds about 90 have replied, some of them were the extraordinary severity, some of them were the complete disgust with the manuscript, and I have tried to take into account every criticism that I have received. Sometimes, the criticisms are contradictory, and as a result, it's very difficult to take them both into account, but as nearly as I could, what I have tried to meet every criticism that has come to me. This reminds me of a 16th century play by John Hayward, the play of the weather, in which Jupiter decides Monday, he's going to make everybody on Earth happy with the weather they want, so he asks them to give their petitions. They all come and say one person says one says this, and this, they all contradict and clash. Finally, Jupiter throws his hands up in the heart and says, I give, I'm not going to give you the weather, I've been giving you and you'll like it. Well, there's the famous story

of Jefferson and Franklin and the Declaration of Independence. You remember that Jefferson was very much discouraged because various people dislike various parts of the Declaration of Independence. Well, the story's long, but to make it short, Franklin indicated in the end that if you didn't want to displease people, you had to say nothing, and the best way to then would be to deliver a blank sheet of paper. Of course, you can't get very much independence that way, however. Well, having 90 people, comments and 90 people, you must, it really must be a headache, because you get such divergent views of generalization, and also imagine how trouble with facts. Well, the facts are to a considerable less extent, a source of trouble, primarily, because even when the facts are debatable, you can either leave them out if you think they're relatively negligible, or you can make up your mind as to where you think the burden of evidence lies. The difficulty comes rather from ideological differences, from religious differences,

from nationalistic differences. The Russians, the Eastern countries, have thought that I have said too much about Russia, about Europe rather, not enough about Russia, and the East. Well, since pages and wordage are limited, I can meet their obligations with some difficulty to be sure, by cutting down some of the, I mean, the obligations they put on me, by cutting down some of the material on Europe, which I think can be spared and adding some of the material on Russia and the Eastern countries, which they think are at least as important as some of the events in Europe that I emphasize. Much more difficult are religious complications. I've been accused of both being a Roman Catholic by the Russians and the English, and of being anti -Catholic by the Austrians and the Spanish. Now,

I'm neither one nor the other, and so I feel I'm probably doing a fairly even level -headed job, but at the same time, I try to meet the contradictory criticisms by asking myself, now, what could have made an English critic think I must be a Roman Catholic, and trying to take out whatever words or phraseology or point of view seems to me upon examination to justify that kind of criticism. But here we are. Finally, there has to be a point of view, even though it be from way out in Mars, let us say, these things have to be organized. A point of view may be so large, it may be loose, biting for us, but there has to be a point of view of Italy. There must be, there must be not only a point of view that is to say, ultimately, my authors and I are responsible for what is said, regardless of the criticism, but also there has to be something in the nature of the thesis in a

volume. We can't just tack data together, and we have, in volume four, a very an age in which all the cultures were largely religiously oriented, and at no time during our period, which runs from the 14th century to the 18th century, no time during our period does religious orientation disappear, and in some countries it remains exceedingly pronounced, even in the 18th century, but that nevertheless, in Europe especially, and to a very considerable extent, also in the other cultures, a pronounced scientific bent becomes increasingly conspicuous, and as a result, the theme in our volume is the movement from an otherworldly oriented culture all over the world, to a culture which in Europe at least is very largely scientifically

oriented, and this worldly, this worldly, and where the idea of this worldlyness, secularization passes on to a certain extent, even to other cultures. Curious, I was talking about this in class, just the other day, talking about the change from cotton mother, let us say, to Benjamin Franklin, that's just exactly what you have. That's all I think, that occurred in our country within a century or so, but here, he said it's occurring as a world movement, or Western world movement. Well, we start out with a few chapters on religious problems. Actually, one of my critics, whom I prefer not to name, but a very able French historian, objects to our starting with religion, he thinks that since the major achievements of this age, these four or five centuries, was scientific that

science ought to receive emphasis from the very start. But in order to make our point clear, we think it important to start out with religion, and show what an extraordinary place that religion held at the beginning of our period, around 1300. And he's arguing really what it's basically not so much his charcoal matter. He would agree on your general point, but it's a rhetorical matter, a structural matter, rather than that. His point is, essentially, that the important things here are science, and we give too much space and too much prominence by putting it first to religion. Whereas our contention is, we're tracing a development here from this worldly society, a set of societies, to a society in which secularization has not yet become predominant, but is well on the way to becoming predominant. And we have bridged the gap, therefore, between

what in Europe would be called the Middle Ages, of volume three, although, of course, that phrase doesn't well apply to areas outside of Europe, Middle Ages, to the 19th century, which all over the world begins to be considerably more secularized, scientific, and material in this world then. Well now, you are going to have this volume ready by next week? No, I've been working on it now for something like eight years. I'm now engaged in revising draft number four into draft number five. draft number five now goes through the process of criticism, though I hope it will meet with less. I think, have some reason believe it'll be more satisfactory than volume four. I'm sure a great many of the petty details that were inaccurate have come out. I'm not sure that the organization and the thesis will be more acceptable, but in any case, I count on it's meeting with less criticism than draft number

four. And I hope that draft number five will with some modification be acceptable. This will be published in several languages, of course, before. Well, the intention of UNESCO is to publish it, and there's many languages as they can get published. At the present moment, the contract is held in England by Ellen and Unwin and in this country by Harper, and the present text, although not written originally, always in English, in English, some of the volumes, other volumes, or in other languages, the present text will be published at first in English. Do you know whether the other volumes are as far along as yours or father? At least two are farther along than I. That is to say, they have now got drafts that are more acceptable than mine, and at least one is not as far along as mine in composition. Well, possibly two are not as far along as mine in composition, and one has been subject to at least as

much criticism as mine, and perhaps even more. Who's in charge of this team of wild horses? There is an international commission, which is a creation of UNESCO, which consists of some very reputable scholars, most of them, most of them historians, or at least learned men with a historical interest, and they ultimately will have to decide whether to accept or reject an author's work. This would take you to Paris every year, this commission to rest not every year, but quite frequently, and sometimes these meetings are pretty exciting meeting. Well, I would think so. I hate to stop this because this could go on and entertain me, but I want to bring the attention that he is wearing a strip of red. Dr. Gotchak is a Chevrolet Légion Donner, a Chevrolet Légion Donner in France, and for a very good reason. I think it would be fun to talk about

that side of your career. You've done five volumes on Lafayette so far. Well, four major volumes and three minor volumes. Seven. How many more to go? Well, I don't expect to live long enough to allow to die on my pages, but I suspect that there will be another seven if I should live long enough to do so. At present, I'm engaged in a three -volume study of three years of the life of Lafayette. Practically, at least for every minute that there is evidence that is to say for the year 1789 to 1792. See, this is a young man who at the age of 19 was a major general in the American army. The youngest major general, the American army, has ever had, and therefore at age 19 he was a very famous man and nobody ever destroyed any piece of paper that came from his desk and as a consequence, the documents on Lafayette exist all over the world

and more over people all over the world at his time and in our time have been writing about him so that the motto material is just simply incomprehensible and ungraspable and as a consequence, it makes my life a little difficult, especially if I have to deal with the 80 odd members of UNESCO at the same time so that I'm having a pretty tough time despite some very able assistance that I have on the Lafayette project and completing this three -volume study of the year 1789 to 1792. These years, I need to tell you how I dark crucial because they are the beginning years of the French Revolution. Most people in this country don't remember that Lafayette lived after age 19 and actually didn't die until he was 77 years of age so that he was a very prominent man for a long period after he left America

and he was a leading figure. In fact, I think we will be able to show in these three volumes that he was the leading figure in the French Revolution for quite a period of time. That the French Revolution was Lafayette from about the middle of 1789 until he began to lose his popularity in the middle of 1790. You recovered it though, the 1830 revolution was a lot of fun Lafayette. I don't expect to live long enough to get to 1830 at the pace I'm going but he did become a part of and perhaps the leading part of the Revolution of 1830 but there's a lot of very important history that has been largely forgotten and is known badly even by the experts between Lafayette's career in America which ended roughly with Yorktown in 1781 and Lafayette's death in 1834. Now these volumes, if I may be so rude as to embarrass you, give me a few old from my argument

that writing history is an art. You have all the facts and you've got the facts and you're as seduous in gathering them. Well, these incomprehensible massive manuscripts but your style of writing is to put together its bitterly art and so it reads and it's attractive, attractive reading. Well, if you sound overwhelming to anybody say, oh my heavens, five volumes of Lafayette but these volumes are readable. And you have not only the question of form that is to say of style and of structure but also you have the problem of imagination. Again and again, there are gaps despite the tremendous amount of material. There are gaps in our knowledge of Lafayette. Now we could of course invent and put in something very, very handsome in those gaps. That would hardly be in keeping with the best canons of historical research. On the other hand, we have to use some imagination to figure out what he must have done in that period. And while this is not the same kind of imagination as a fiction writer uses, it is nevertheless

creative work. Sensitive hypothesization, let's call it. Well, and then on top of that you have the other kind of hypothesization, that is to say the problem of how to make this meaningful in a wider sense. Yes, of course. Well, I hope you do get it finished. Well, you're a young man who should live long enough further. Then you've got your other job teaching history after all. Very important. Well then. Well, we have to stop here. I'm sorry. This is fun. I'd like to go on and talk and get back to history as ours and some of the other problems we raised in that garden in these. Thank you, Dr. Godchuk.