Living History

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• CROWD:

  Oh, my God!

• CROWD:

  Oh!

• CROWD:

  Oh, my God!

• ROGER ROSENBLATT:

  "There comes a terrible moment to many souls," George Eliot wrote in Daniel Deronda, "when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their lives."

  Tell me about it. For many years, twelve since the toppling of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet threat, 27 since Watergate, depending on how one is counting, the country has been living outside history. By this I mean that the country has been living not only with little regard to the larger destinies of mankind, but also outside the stories, lessons and issues that locate a people within significant patterns of thought. Post everything America unburdened by the past has thus cheapened its presence in the future. Had the country been more alert to world conditions and lessen enthralled with surface nonsense, we might have avoided our current troubles.

  But history demands that one be aware of the deeper world as well as the wider, that everyone occupies a position in the great stream of events and ideas. And to forget that is to lose one's bearings along with one's soul.

  Moby Dick begins with Ishmael making a mild but serious joke about his place in the program of providence. He sees his voyage as an interlude squeezed between more significant events, which he present as newspaper headlines, you will smile at his choices. Grand contested election for the presidency of the United States, whaling voyage by one Ishmael. Bloody battle in Afghanistan. One he believes is that every individual, including his obscure self, belongs to and in history. And had he not seen himself in this way, this story would not have been worth telling or reading. It has long been said and that proved that Americans are uncomfortable with history in the past, which are thought to be dead weight to the buoyant spirit of the nation.

  In fact, however, until recently, Americans have lived quite happily within history. One has understood that being an American entails an appreciation of the intertwining of democracy and equality, and a tense marriage of both with a free market. The daily life of an American consists of learning to deal with these frequently colliding forces. This is where the past enters the future and becomes the foundation of such diverse ideas as civil rights legislation, women's emancipation, the entrance into world wars and the mass production of the Ford.

  To rejoin history suggests more, though, than a re-acquaintance with America's first principles. It requires every life to see itself as part of every other life — the history one feels is not only national and political, but also the history of shock. Grief. Unity. Companionship. The history of fear, invasion, sacrifice. The history of Britain during the blitz. The history of the Jews, which was held dear because it depended on time without place. On everyone's back, invisible yet substantial, is a knapsack containing all that was ever thought, believed, absorbed and rejected. On everyone's back too is everyone else. Of all the American characteristics cast off in recent years, the most essential was that of searching for a more noble expression of life. History enhances a life by extending it beyond its temporal limits.

  What the events of September 11th may wind up doing is to alert the country not only to what it is, but to what it was and could be again one of these days.

  I'm Roger Rosenblatt.