来源：《BBC历史》2022年5月号
“Before you study the history, study the historian,” said EH Carr in his 1961 lecture series ‘What Is History?’ In these lectures, later turned into a book, he argued that no writer of history has ever been able to recount the past without being influenced by their own present and human experience.
“在你研究历史之前，先研究一下历史学家，”卡尔在他1961年的系列讲座“什么是历史？”中讲到。在这些后来被编成一本书的系列演讲中，他认为没有一个历史作家能够在不受自己当时所处的世界和人类经验影响的情况下叙述过去。
It is Carr’s direction to study the historian – a call against objective history – upon which Richard Cohen expands in Making History. This in-depth analysis considers those who have written about the past, and how their writing was influenced by their present.
卡尔的研究方向是历史学家——一种反对客观历史的呼吁——理查德·科恩在《创造历史》一书中对此进行了扩展。这个深入的分析考虑了那些写了过去的人，以及他们的写作是如何受到他们当时所处的环境影响的。
Cohen begins with the so-called “father of history”, Herodotus, and considers how much the ancient Greek writer was influenced by his world and personal experiences when writing The Histories. Herodotus was perhaps the earliest narrative historian. But at times he also played fast and loose with the truth, leading Plutarch to critique Herodotus as the “father of lies”. Despite this, Cohen argues that The Histories formed “a new way of seeing”. Certainly, Herodotus’s approach to history writing was different from that of his slightly later counterpart, Thucydides, who – unlike Herodotus – drew entirely from his own research and experiences.
科恩从被称为“历史之父”的希罗多德开始，思考这位古希腊作家在撰写《历史》时，他所处的世界和个人经历对他的影响有多大。希罗多德也许是最早的叙事历史学家。但有时，他对真相也反复无常，导致普鲁塔克批评希罗多德是“谎言之父”。尽管如此，科恩认为《历史》形成了“一种新的观察方式”。当然，希罗多德的历史写作方法与他稍晚的同行修昔底德不同，修昔底德完全以自己的研究和经历为依据。
However, it is not only written history that has influenced our view of the past. The Bayeux Tapestry, Cohen notes, has “influenced our understanding of history possibly more than any other graphic artefact”. Millions of schoolchildren have pressed their noses against the glass at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy to soak in the history of the conquest. The Tapestry tells the story about England’s past as both Norman and Anglo-Saxon propaganda.
然而，不仅仅是书面的历史影响了我们对过去的看法。科恩指出，贝叶挂毯“对我们理解历史的影响可能超过任何其他图案工艺品”。在诺曼底的贝叶博物馆，数以百万计的学童把鼻子贴在玻璃上，沉浸在征服的历史中。挂毯作为诺曼人和盎格鲁-撒克逊人的宣传，讲述了英格兰过去的故事。
The Middle Ages were also a period rife with political propaganda. Chroniclers frequently pitched their viewpoints against one another in order to appease a patron’s perspective or a religious standpoint. William Shakespeare shook this up with his vision of the past, in which he offered historical figures “a psychological depth they had not received before in English drama”. The playwright has irreversibly influenced our perception of the past and its politics.
中世纪也是一个政治宣传盛行的时期。编年史者彼此的观点经常相互对立，以安抚赞助人的观点或宗教立场。威廉·莎士比亚用他对过去的想象颠覆了这一点，他为历史人物提供了“一种英国戏剧中从未有过的心理深度”。这位剧作家不可逆转地影响了我们对过去及其政治的看法。
By the 18th and 19th centuries, fictive history had gathered pace. Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace, argues Cohen, is “the world’s likely best historical novel”, and it was followed by a “roll call of notable novelists” interested in romantic nationalism, epic costume drama and romance. Moving on to the 20th century, Toni Morrison’s work is praised as “history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music”. Hilary Mantel notes the importance of historical fiction, too, writing: “If we want added value – to imagine not just how the past was, but what it felt like from the inside – we pick up a novel.”
到了18、19世纪，虚构的历史开始加速发展。科恩认为，列夫·托尔斯泰的史诗《战争与和平》“可能是世界上最好的历史小说”，紧随其后的是对浪漫民族主义、史诗古装剧和浪漫主义感兴趣的“著名小说家”。进入20世纪，托妮·莫里森的作品被誉为“历史、社会学、民俗学、噩梦和音乐”。希拉里·曼特尔也注意到了历史小说的重要性，她写道：“如果我们想要增加价值——不仅仅是想象过去是怎样的，而是从内心去想象它是什么样子——我们就会选择一本小说。”
Making History proves that Carr’s lesson to “study the historian” is a good one. This is a biblical text for scholars of history to navigate what it means to write the past.
《创造历史》证明了卡尔“研究历史学家”这一课是很好的。这是一本宏大的文献，供历史学者理解书写过去的含义。