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Article: The most sublime event. (books on the French Revolution)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- March 12, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Napoleon liked to say history is fable agreed upon.
Napoleon had it exactly backward: History is truth not agreed upon. That is to say, while historical events may possess some essential core meaning, a truth visible to wholly impartial spectators (the Estates-General were convened in Versailles in 1789; Louis XVI was subsequently tried and executed), there are and can be no impartial spectators and thus there is no such thing as historical truth. For however wedded to impartiality historians may be, they always live in two worlds: a world of the past, which may be conceived of hypothetically as having some unitary meaning, and their own world of the present, ...