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PARTISAN REVIEW
mother." The man-who-swims-into-history has floated out without
leaving any message. One must look for any message back in the
waters of the Pruth, in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, in the
storms of the English Channel and the hurricanes that sweep the At–
lantic seaboard, in breakers off the coast of California and typhoons
that slam out of the South Pacific onto the islands of Japan. For a
man who swims into it, history must exist in water or not at all.
•
•
•
It is very difficult for a later generation to accept that a
history, a biography can begin mysteriously in midstream. There
always was a before and a before and a before that. There always is a
past to be discovered. Locked away in the basements of stone build–
ings in Moscow or Kishinev, Odessa or Leningrad or Cracow, there
are dossiers, documents, certificates, record books, registries, peti–
tions, scrolls, mountains of damp records awaiting the love that will
drag them into the sunlight. Enough time, enough patience, enough
diligence, enough training, enough work, enough language skill,
enough stubbornness, enough imagination or lack of imagination
and enough of a grant from some foundation, university or secret or
public government agency, and the past will return with all the cer–
tainty of iron bars.
It is no easier for a historian to accept a biography that begins
in midstream. The swimmer's grandson was a historian. In theory
he solved mysteries, shed light on the unseen corners of the past. But
he could not unravel the mystery of the swimmer. He could not even
solve the problem of why he wanted to solve the problem of the swim–
mer. Motivation was baffiing. He could write with implacable words
of historical assurance, buttressed by walls of footnotes, about people
he had never known, but his grandfather was an implacable mystery.
His was the problem of all historians. One might even say it was the
problem of civilization.
Why did the man-who-swims-into-history swim into history? A
good investigator can find economic cases, political causes, sociolog–
ical causes, psychological causes. A subtle one might find metaphys–
ical causes. After looking into mirrors for far too long, the grandson
began to attribute the action to an itch. Most history has no room for
itches; they are far too personal. They belong to individuals.
It
is best
to explain the past without individuals. People are messy, quirky, in–
effable. Often they are a downright nuisance, always interfering with
well-laid plans and significant projects. It is better to look at history
