Word: humanizes
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Francis Parkman on LaSalle and his discovery of the Mississippi, "rolling like a destiny." Jacob Burckhardt on the civilization of the Rennaissance in Italy, which Clive, smiling, called "history for adults." Gibbon, and his cool-headed appraisal of the human excesses of Christianity. It was a fabulous semester, straightforward and absorbing...
...historian in question, empathetic, but tempered with sly asides; shuffling his papers, quietly harrumphing, Clive would look off out the window, a laugh warming his voice as he hit the point of a anecdote. His sympathy for these people, who had devoted their lives to telling the human race where it has been, was strong. I remember most vividly his telling us about the shy, morose Henry Adams, who also taught history at Harvard. As the class wound to the end of the hour, and he related to us the end of Adams' life, Clive's voice became more fluid...
...were given a sense of how history is shaped: through a combination of human intention and ungovernable circumstance...
...party--not in order to lay claim to extraordinary scars and sufferings that taught me the real meaning of tyranny and persecution, but merely to state that this early part of my past left me with an insight I have found useful, both as a historian and as a human being: there are evil people who won't be deterred from their nefarious doings by what might be considered by the self-deceived as special circumstances. His iron cross, first class and all, did not save my father from arrest. The fact that my school had close links with France...
...must, however, supplement that insight with another, which may appear to be in conflict with it, but which simply reinforces that portion of it which tells us to take nothing for granted, especially when it comes to the judgement of human character. One of the mathematics teachers at the Franzosische Gymnasium was a marvelously good-humored and civilized Jewish gentleman called Dr. L. I remember him singing the role of Doctor Bartolo in a resonant bass voice at a school performance of The Barber of Seville, and doing so with irresistible comic gusto. The general assumption among former students...