The past is not the present
One thing that drives me batty is when historians talk, or write, about their subject matter in the present tense. And I go completely bonkers when they mix their tenses — especially when they do it in the same sentence. Then I become homicidal!
Telling a historical narrative in the present tense is a device often used on a PBS show that I enjoy, called the History Detectives. And one of my favorite historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin does has done it often when she is was a guest or was being interviewed on TV, the news or in a documentary. She’s a peach, and I think maybe she does has done it to give the impression of history and the past being a living thing. Which it is not. Is the device a way to make history seem more accessible for people who generally have no interest in history?
I remember one day, I’m watching TV and I even hear the master, David McCullough doing it!
Does that mean that I was (am?) doing the remembering and the watching on the same day?
Something like this, for example: “…and Lincoln travels to the sacred battlefield and delivers his famous Gettysburg Address.”
Well, it wasn’t sacred or famous yet when he delivered it.
And what if Lincoln wrote the address this way (with my my changes in red italics):
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought bring forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…
“…But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled struggle here, have consecrated consecrate it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did do here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought fight here have thus far so nobly advanced advance. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave give the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died die in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Those few changes and it makes no sense at all. And yet I hear have heard modern historians talking talk this way all the time, and I think thought it is was confusing.
Now I am far from the world’s finest grammarian, but see what I mean?
I loved this essay, especially since I am often guilty as charged!