THE SENSE OF THE PAST
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seemed clear to me that J. C. Smith was a specifically modern
name; the piece I was listening to was remarkably
in
the 18th
century manner: I concluded that Mr. Smith was a talented ama–
teur, perhaps a musical banker or a gifted conservatory teacher–
the piece was a very clever pastiche. I should, of course, have
enjoyed the piece as a pastiche, but, like most people who know
little about music, I am a snob and foolishly want only the best.
But when I looked at my program again I saw that J. C. Smith was
the Anglicized form of Johann Christian Schmidt and that name
was of course not necessarily modern. The value of the music was
enhanced. Then I learned that Johann Christian was Handel's
music publisher in England: the piece was genuine if minor 18th
century and I began to enjoy it.
It
was, as I say, snobbery not to
have enjoyed the pastiche
as
pastiche, but I maintain that I was
right in sharing the general sense that invented the word pastiche
with its derogatory meaning. There is a firm critical-historical
sense at work in that word; it states what we know to be true, that
a man can only speak adequately in the language of his own time:
it is upon our sense of the past that our sense of the pastiche
depends.
We are creatures of time, we are creatures of the historical
sense, not only as men have always been but
in
a new way since
the time of Walter Scott. Possibly this may be for the worse; pos–
sibly we would be stronger if we believed that Now contained all
things and that we, in our barbarian moment, were all that had
ever been. Without the sense of the past we might be more certain,
less weighed down and pessimistic. But we might also be less
generous and complete. In any case, we have it and we must live
with it.
And we must read our literature by it. Try as we will, we
cannot be like Partridge at the play, wholly without the historical
sense.
It
seems to me that the leap of the imagination which an
audience makes when it responds to Hamlet is enormous; and it
requires a comprehensive, though not necessarily a highly in–
structed, sense of the past. That sense does not, for most artistic
purposes, need to be highly instructed: it can consist largely of the
firm
belief that there is such a thing as the past. A sense of history
is not only a factual thing; it is a kind of faith.
It is only if we are aware of the reality of the past as past
