Historiological Notes

Turner

I have just finished Peter Ackroyd's Turner in the Brief Lives series. I know that he has written many biographies, but this is my first. I have ambiguous feelings towards this book. On the one hand it feels like an encyclopedia article; being full of information written quite compact. On the other hand, the author have take an erudite approach and try to beautify the language. These two approaches seems to be contradictions and thus I am not quite sure how to make an opinion on the contents. The book seems to lack an aim, but I suppose that is due to its short length. Over all it was a just a quick read and I know a bit more aboutJoseph Mallord William Turner.

Job and identity

I have got a job.

Yes, really.

A proper one. Working with historical archives.

I started today and it is wonderful. I was quite tired of temp working, although it was interesting getting to know different places and people.

Being new, I got a tour of the place and was introduced to so many that I only remember half of the names. However, what has stuck to me for the whole day, was a comment I received early in the day. I had to have my picture taken for an ID-card and the man asked if I thought the picture was alright. It could have been worse, so I smiled and said it was fine, but my hair looks a bit messy. And without any irony he just says: "Well, you look just like an archivist, don't you?"

So finally I am no longer a student, no longer unemployed, no longer a temp worker, but have been identified as an archivist...

National historical perspectives

My mother went to school in Britain and I went to school in Norway. The other day we started talking about biased historical perspective or black and white historical teaching. She told me that when she first came to Norway she had to change her view of Britain's role in history. The British empire and the colonies had been a great part of her schooling and she had been thought to be proud of British history. In Norway, however, she was told that an empire is hardly anything to be proud of; it it just exploitation. This was of course not too many years since colonies had reclaimed their independence. Of course she started school before the working class historians had had any impact although historians as E.P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm might have started writing. And even if "history from below" had been strong in university circles, I doubt if schools would have promoted that view. My impression is that British schools still tell the history from above, although it may vary. Independent of the curriculum, a teacher's is as important for the impression pupils get of history.

My experience of history at school was much more a history from below. We did not learn much of the Viking kings, but we learned of Viking agriculture. We did not learn about the Norwegian Medieval Empire, but of how the Great Plague infected merchants and peasants. We did not learn much of the Norwegian-Danish kings in early modern times, but how Lutheranism and Catechisms spread literacy to greater parts of the population. And even though we heard about the Swedish-Norwegian kings of the Nineteenth-Century and of Parliamentarianism, the use of power from streams and waterfalls to the textile industry and the new electric power stations creating a working class in addition to the agricultural sector.

When I went to school, it was still important to emphasis the generation that built the country; that is the building of the Welfare State after 1945. Norway was still not a very wealthy country in the 1980s. However, oil has made Norway a rich country now and I suppose this will influence how history is though. The impression I got as a secondary school teacher was that children should know Norway as a peace nation. It is emphasised that Norway has not gone to war since the Viking Age  - well, if one does not include involvement in Afghanistan in the resent years - and that Norwegian politicians work as peace negotiators all over the world.

As my mother experienced how British and Norwegian schools in the 1950s told quite different histories of Great Britain, I assume the same will be the case today. My experience with historiography is that the interest lies in the development of different historical schools and not how these are used by the public. Even though one historical school is leading in a country it does not necessarily mean that this is the leading view thought in schools. It would have been interesting to do a comparison between countries when it comes to historical curriculum and how history is thought.

Old print

When working in archives I always find it interesting to note what kind of paper used and if  ink, pencil or typewriter have been used. Thin paper with typewriter writing fascinates me, because the imprint shows so clearly on the back. The backside thus becomes almost like a piece of art.

I now read quite an old copy of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White - a book that inspired Dorothy Sayers and which I read about in Reynolds' biography of her. I am not quite sure how books are printed today, but at least the print leaves the pages smooth. In the book I am now reading the the pages have been properly type set, and the imprint has left deep indents. Even though the paper is quite thin, the print does not show through except when there is half a blank page due to a new chapter. This reverse imprint fills me with expectation of what is coming next.

History, biography and Ibsen - part II

When I wrote about the Ibsen museum the other day, I did not know that there is an other Ibsen exhibition on in Oslo at the moment and I feel I should compare.

"I det hus sætter jeg ikke mine ben mere!" ("I will never set foot in that house again") is an exhibition on Henrik Ibsen and his relationship with the University in Oslo, or Royal Fredrik's University in Christiania as it was then called. Even though this exhibition hardly can be said to be perfect, it has something which I felt lacking in the Ibsen museum's exhibition - a topic and purpose.

Ibsen failed in Greek and Arithmetic, thus he failed the entrance exam and was not allowed to be accepted as a student. This was the start of a troublesome relationship with the University. He get funding from the University for a research trip to collect folktales, but he does not get as much as he needs and he is less successful with his next application. His son, Sigurd Ibsen, also struggles with the university. Sigurd starts his studies in Munich whilst Ibsen lives in Germany. When they both go back to Norway, Ibsen writes to the King to let Sigurd continue his law studies without taking the entrance exam as he is already a student. This petition is rejected.

The exhibition shows the correspondence between Ibsen and the University and water colours Ibsen painted whilst he was collecting folktales. In addition there are water colours of costume designs he made for his own play Olaf Liljekrans and a display of the newly started annotated edition of Ibsen's complete works. And this exhibition seems to be as much a PR-stunt to promote the books. However, it was rather entertaining to get an impression of Ibsen's relationship with the University although it was perhaps not surprising. Ibsen did not have an easy success and popularity in Norway in his lifetime.

Gender and Academia

Jill Walker at jill.txt discuss gender and academic evaluation in "perhaps we should be glad of quantitatively measures of research productivity". This is quite depressing. Women seems to need to achieve much better to get a good evaluation. She refers to a study of Swedish post.docs., but if this is the general tendency it means that women have to write more in more prominenent journals.

Dorothy and Barbara

As faithful readers will know I am a fan of Lord Peter Wimsey and Dorothy L. Sayers. And before I owned all the Lord Peter novels, I would quite often search the the crime section for Sayers' books. When I handed in my dissertation in December 2004 I therefore had a look through the bookshelves of Borders in Glasgow traveling back home, and next to her novels someone had put Barbara Reynolds' biography of Dorothy L. Sayers. I bought the book, but it stayed untouched in my bookshelves for a long time. Since then I have reread many of Sayers' books and thus grown more interested in the author. It was therefore with high expectations I started reading the biography earlier this summer. I hoped Sayers' life would bring some of the wisdom and wit that surrounds Lord Peter.

However, Dorothy L. Sayers. Her Life and Soul by Barbara Reynolds - although not being uninteresting - did not fill my expectations. Barbara Reynolds was a friend and colleague of Sayers. They both worked on old Italian literature and Reynolds finished the translation Sayers started of Dante's The Divine Comedy. This relationship might be the reason why my expectations were not fulfilled. In my post yesterday I complained that biographies often tend to be too personal and too filled with facts. As this biography is written by one of her friends, I assumed it would do both. However, Reynolds seems to protect her friend by telling as little as possible and leave as many intimate and personal facts as possible.

As I am a Lord Peter fan, I had unconsciously assumed that Sayers had a knowledge of his lifestyle. However, as probably many other authors also will admit to, he was more of the perfect man and the ideal life she was dreaming of. Reynolds never insinuates that Sayers life was never the one she dreamed of, but it feels quite often as she is holding something back. Reading between the lines, it is easy to understand that Sayers must have been quite frustrated at times, but I am not quite sure if this was intentionally done by Reynolds. I seems as Reynolds is so much in awe of Sayers that she does not dare write anything bad about her.

It is also my impression that as Reynolds and Sayers were colleagues, Reynolds does not like to pry in her private and intimate life - and perhaps does not like anyone else to do it either. This is clearly visible in the description of the relationship between Sayers and John Cournos. Reynolds seem a bit embarrassed and thus does not like in her own words. Instead she includes quotations from Cournos' and Sayers' books where she believes they refer to each other.

However, what I find lacking in the book is a story or a motive. Even though a life is not a story, it is best retold as one. There seems to be nothing that links the different chapters in this book together. In the early years it seems as Reynolds want to describe the coming of an authoress, but her development as an author is not the guideline in the description of her adult years. The book's underline - Her Life and Soul - should perhaps point to her religious development. But also this seems to be a bit too personal for Reynolds. Reynolds has also edited Sayers letters The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist. Perhaps this is a better book as Reynolds can keep her professional distance.

History, biography and Ibsen

My new year resolution number six was to read more biographies. The main reason for this being my general suspicion to biographies and a want to appreciate the genre more. Having worked with historiography for some years my belief is that it is incredibly hard to write history well. There is - as most people are aware -  a huge difference between lived history and written history and the historians' task is to try to make this difference smaller. (Though some historiographers would perhaps say that historians today makes the difference larger as they are more aware that they to a large they write fiction.)  In my opinion the best written history is made by historians that admits they have a purpose with their writing and are thus not pretending to be objective. However, at the same time the historian should ideally have some distance to the topic.

Adapting this to biographies I believe it must be even harder to write a biography, than to write written history. It is so much easier to be personally involved when a personality is the subject. At the same time the purpose with history books and biographies, must be to give the reader entertainment and wisdom - both being equally important. My experience so far is that biographies very easily fall down in either too much entertainment or too much knowledge, but seldom much wisdom, though learning from our forefathers might have been the main purpose in writing biography. When I read my first biography this year on Queen Margrethe of Denmark, I had hopes of reading some words of wisdom. The book did not offer much wisdom, but it made me reflect over her view on historiography, so the book had some value for me. This summer I have read another biography and I will write a post on that tomorrow, but today I will continue with Henrik Ibsen.

As Norway (and the rest of the world) celebrates the centenary of Henrik Ibsen's death, the Ibsen Museum here in Oslo has finally been able to make the exhibition. As I find it hard to understand how it is possible to write biography, I find it even harder to understand how how it is possible to make an exhibition to justify a person's life - a biography is at least a story, an exhibition has to be very well curated to tell a story. The Ibsen Museum in Oslo is in the flat Ibsen spent the last years of his life and also where he died. I found it extremely interesting and entertaining to see his flat because of the image one gets of late nineteenth century, bourgeois life in Norway, but not because Henrik Ibsen used to live there. (I can also mention that I did neither have a thrill when visiting Shakespeare's birth place in Stratford-upon-Avon ten years ago). The exhibition - which is new this year and placed in the nabouring flat - however, did not catch my interest. Though I must admit I was fascinated with the colour scheme. The reason for my dislike was the exhibition's unhappy faith at being too entertaining, too personal and too much filled with facts. The exhibition has thus left me with these images:

• Red, white and black, glass, minimalistic fonts, play between light and darkness. The image of a cool restaurant.
• Why display his shaving equipment, his comb, his handkerchief and other very personal belongings? His notebooks are interesting since he is an author, but his shaving brush!!!
• Ibsen was a short man. I find this to be a distracting fact. Everyone in Norway who has a higher education knows that Immanuel Kant was 153cm tall (or short) because this is emphasised in the entrance course in philosophy, but hardly any one can tell you anything about his epistemology. I am afraid to now be more concerned with Ibsen's lack of tallness, than his works.
• There were screens everywhere, making it very interactive. But also making it look like a spaceship.

I know I would have preferred an "Ibsen - the author" museum, compared to "Ibsen - the man who lived in this flat" museum, but I am not quite sure how it could have been done. What are the important facts? How to experience his work? Would it not be best to watch some of his plays? If telling his life's story, how could it be linked to his work?

Whilst I write about Ibsen and his biography I am reminded of A.S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale on a biographer writing the biography of a biographer writing a biography on Ibsen's early years. It has been a while since I have read it, but I seem to remember the difficulty of the biographer to catch the essence of the lived life. Instead of looking for the essence, the biographer looks for everything. He seems to want to re-live the other persons life, which of course is an impossibility. I suppose Byatt try to show the "too personal" and "too much information" traps.

Byatt's book is a novel, but perhaps she also have a solution to the biography problem. The entertainment part of a biography is perhaps much better taken care of in a novel. And as books of this sort often tend to become bestsellers, biographies proper should perhaps not aim for the same strategy?

July update

I did not plan to take the summer off from academic activities and blogging, but then it happened mainly due to two factors; heat and work. I have been working at the palace six days a week and the days are long, so I have been completly exhausted. In addition it has been very hot, and that does not inspire work either.

My saviour Wittgenstein

My oral exam went well, and I am relieved. I have no clue how I managed to draw lines from Merleau-Ponty to Wittgenstein and then stay there, but it saved me. The direction in which we were going, where Kristeva and Merleau-Ponty; both which belong the my lesser known subjects. Wittgenstein and language games, on the other hand, is one of my favourites.

And now it is back to learning the history of the palace. I am guiding my first tour tomorrow.

Textual world view

Reading for an exam always create a new world view. Being totally into a topic influences everything one encounter. Today I has these ideas come into my head.

Whilst sorting forms at work: "Is this form a text? How can it be said to be a text? Does it tell a story? Is it necessary with a certain linguistic competence to read the story of this form?"

Whilst typing a letter: "Is this a descriptive or narrative paragraph? What is the model reader of this letter? Do I have more than one model reader in mind?"

On my way home on the tram: "What on earth does Merleau-Ponty say? Body/text? Body/sign? Text/sign?" (Big sigh) "All these people create an image of themselves and are thus a sign. But what kind of sign? Have I understood anything of Merleau-Ponty?" (Even bigger sigh)

Walking to the shop, humming a mantra: "tunnel-circular-feedback-autopoiesis, tunnel-circular-feedback-autopoiesis, tunnel-circular-feedback-autopoiesis, tunnel-circular-feedback-autopoiesis, tunnel-circular-feedback-autopoiesis,..." (Four models of communication)

Whilst skimming today's paper: "Is there any texts with obvious polyphonic voice?" (Well, there should be, but I could not find any and that is a bad sign)

Exam - too soon...

I was totally convinced that my exam was next Wednesday, but I have now just checked and my name is up for ten o'clock on Friday. That is quite much sooner than expected. And I started revision (that is readning...) today. Even though I feel comfortable about the subject, I feel I should have started reading a bit earlier.

Online handicap

Although I work in an office on a computer all day, I do not have Internet access. One thing is it preventing me from blogging in a spare moment, but it also keeps me from checking my email and my other regular reads. I do understand that employees are supposed to work at work, but I actually feel rather handicapped or wing clipped. I am so used to having the possibility of being online when ever I want, that not having this possibility is to lack something.

Age Wisdom

I am visiting my parents and relaxing with old magazines in the sun. One of my mother's regular reads is a magazine for the 40+ lady. It has a regular column where a famous woman in the 40+ age group tell what she did when she was 25. They tell of uncertainty and sometimes frustration, and few of them had started anything like a career.

This is a great comfort for people like me; under 30. Hope is definitely not over yet. Why does not magazines for the 20-something woman tell of this wisdom? Instead they focus on the bright young things, surfing life on a different league from the rest of us.

Historians - British style

Anthony Beevor visited Oslo today and I managed to get a seat at his talk this evening. It was probably the talk he gives anywhere he goes to promote his new book on the Spanish civil war. As this is not my field of knowledge I cannot really say whether it was a good talk or not, but I made a few notes on something else:

Many British historians have an intellectual arrogance that very few display in Norway. One feature of this arrogance is always to talk in metaphors. Thoughts seems a lot deeper this way. And even better, add a few quotes from the diaries of famous men - preferably some that can make the audience laugh. Then make general categorisations of historical events and categorise peoples' attributes. This makes you sound like the king of the world.

Sometimes this works wonderful, as it is done with a touch of irony and a big dash of humour. However, it might fail terribly and you become only tremendously arrogant. I am not quite sure what happened today.