History, the beast

The umpteenth episode of hostility between England and Spain about Gibraltar, the circumstances in which the Spanish Monarchy has seen Itself tangled in and, most of all, the fabulous developments of the European crisis have fueled in my mind a tiny spark concerning the understanding or, better, the study of History.

Far from being a concatenated series of events, an aristocratic moor for the scholar livestock or a haggard truth only guessed in dark archives, History is colored by the hearts of men and women. Errand as it is, there seems to be after all something immutable in It, in the very same way human hearts never cease to be themselves, generation after generation.

Without the feelings, the real motives and circumstances of the individuals that make it possible, History will just look like an aseptic list of causes and effects, as indeed does, to the naked eye. In the name of Rights, only school children have a chance to study History systematically -provided we accept as "study" what school children do. This is kind of a pity. History seems to me an initiation discipline, more than a plain knowledge of bare facts. Experience is required. A boy of 14 knows nothing about his heart. Twenty or thirty years down the road, however, the soul and skin of a person has born part of the weight of sweet and darkness that they are capable of and, then, time is ripen for him to open the gate of History and look backwards. 

If it is true that Napoleon was the first to say: "he who does not know the History is bound to repeat it", I must disagree. History is on my side on this. Napoleon was the first modern monster brought out of the first modern Revolution, the first to target the kingdom of Man based on the Vindication of Destiny, praising the Religion of the Future and by means of shear force. He, as others after who emulated and surpassed him, was wrong. But my point is that we can only approach History from the present. It is not that we learn History and then we build a society with just the elements that any sort of Idealism brings upon, as Napoleon's statement seems to imply. Stupid, mistaken pretense! It is -seems to me- the taste of our own lives, our own experience which make us understand a little piece of our History, i.e. what we really are.

**

With interest and worried I try to listen behind the lines what my Greek acquaintances tell me about their country situation. What they and their families think or say and, most important, what they do is what really matters. They truly are the pen -or the laptop- of History at this moment. In one week, my friend E. has pointed out twice that the level of suicides has skyrocketed in the last few months in Greece. I don't have any knowledge to make an accurate judgement, but I suspect that the fact is a common symptom of a bad disease. I just learned that between the First and Second World War, Germany suffered an epidemy of suicides, which to Camus indicates "a great deal about the state of mental confusion" and reflects all humiliation and despair. But it is the darkness of today what help enlighten up the shadows of the past, mutatis mutandis, and this realization takes the theories on steady progress of human History -"though with dragging steps", in the words of Turgot, Baron of Laune- to a point of ridicule.

**

The recent death of Donna Summer is still fresh ink in the pages of History, her name just added to the proper Chapter. But the book can be read in many different ways. The dispassionate obituary of The Times last Friday and the unengaged and merely factual commentary of Will Hodgkinson in the same paper are stunning contrasts to the those of others for who Donna made history in their lives. I guess Hodgkinson never danced or fell in love with her music, partly because of his age -me neither-, but for those who did, the surprising dead of the artist has the taste of nostalgia for the lost times of youth and innocence. "Those were the days", sung Mary Hopkin, when those young mean and women thought of themselves, as today's youngsters, invincible. But now, a fatality has stricken upon such a mirage with all the force:

Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they'd never end.
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose,
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.


I kind of like the songs of Donna's last album, Crayons. Sounds quite fresh and contemporary. I've read she was working on a new album at the moment of her death. It sounds reasonable: in the end, everyone, Donna included, try to grasp life and squeeze the last drop of it by doing what he loves the most.

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