"Facts are Facts ... " (was Re: IBM monotheism

[jbor]

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>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>

> "where are the facts if not embedded in history, and then
> reconstituted and recovered by human agents stirred by some
> perceived or desired or hoped-for historical narrative whose
> aim is to restore justice to the dispossessed."


    Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops,
    forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle
    Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers,--
    nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the people.
    History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as
    claim the Power of the other,-- her Practitioners, to survive,
    must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom wit,--
    that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a
    Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever, not a
    Chain of single Links, for one Link could lose us All,-- rather,
    a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong,
    vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in
    common."
                        -- The Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, _Christ and History_


"Why", Uncle Ives insists, "you look at the evidence. The testimony. The
whole Truth."
    "On the contrary! It may be the Historian's duty to seek the truth, yet
must he do ev'rything he can, not to tell it."
    "Oh pish."
    "Tush as well."

    [ ... ]

    "Extraordinary. Things that may not be told? Haven't we had enough of
that from the old George?"
    "Just so. Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or
coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent,
to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,-- who need but touch her,
and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She
needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and
counterfeiters, Ballad-mongers and cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of
Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech,
nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of
Government. [ ... ] "
    "Hogwash, sir," Uncle Ives is about to become peevish with his Son,
"Facts are Facts, and to believe otherwise is not only to behave perversely,
but also to step in imminent peril of being grounded, young Pup."
    "Sir, no offense meant. I was but pointing out that a single Version, in
proceeding from a single Authority,--"
    "Ethelmer." Ives raises a monitory Eye-brow. "Time on Earth is too
precious. No-one has time, for more than one Version of the Truth."
    "Then let us have only Jolly Theatrickals about the Past, and be done
with it [ ... ]
    "Or read Novels," adds Euphrenia [ ... ]
    As if having just detected a threat to the moral safety of the company,
Ives announces, "I cannot, damme I cannot I say, energetically enough insist
upon the danger of reading these storybooks,-- in particular those known as
'Novel' [ ... ] these irresponsible narratives, that will not distinguish
between fact and fancy. ... "

    [ ... ]

    " ... Johnson ... "
    " ... Walpole ... "
    " ... Shakespeare ... "

(Motto and opening to Chapter 35 of _Mason & Dixon_, pp 349-352: a
dialectic? certainly a discussion, lively and heated at that, yet remarkable
for its civility even so ... )

best