INTELLECTUALS AND WRITERS
SINCE THE THIRTIES
545
don't know to what an extent their lives were determined by something
called the Hayes-Tilden Compromise, but it's American history, and if
we don't know it, we are failing to grasp some of our own complexity.
Joseph
Brodsky:
I guess the term "revisionist history" is nowadays be–
ing used more narrowly, since it presumably denotes the interpretation or
description of historical events that have taken place since the middle of
our century, the ca uses and mental climate that produced World War
Two, and all those , to put it mildly, unpleasantnesses that accompanied
it. The main thing is to remember that revisionism is very much the bread
of history. Every successive generation applies its own lens to the past;
certain things become clearer, and others get dimmer. What is interesting
is that we have a far greater understanding of and less argument over,
let's say, Greek or Roman antiquity, than we do of what has transpired
in our own century and in our own memories. That is not to be
dismissed . Of course, I am speaking of revisionist history in its narrow
sense.
On the other hand, in the larger terminology, there is a whole class
of revisionist historians who can be described as people who tend one
way or another to whitewash the record of the Third Reich. That is
what we are talking about here, aren't we? The question is whether I
would feel obligated to take a stand on that subject; I think I would, if
discourse about it were to take place in my presence. Other than that, it
is quite difficult to monitor each and every moronic view of what has
transpired in history. That is my answer to the question.
William Phillips: I
took the question to be specifically directed to the
kind of revisionism going on in our universities today, which is trying to
undermine what is called Eurocentric history and which, it is claimed,
was created by dead, white males.
Saul Bellow:
Well, you see, the universities are rather peculiar in this
respect; something seems to have gone totally awry in many quarters.
Marxism has not done too well in Eastern Europe, but it has taken a
new lease on life here. All of a sudden we have all sorts of startling
interpretations of history, amounting to a kind of vulgar dismissal under
various rubrics that used to be identified with the left, such as the claim
that the history of the West is a history of imperialism, colonialism, ag–
gression, exploitation, enslavement. There are accusations that these
interpretations have been foisted upon an innocent public in order to
continue the hegemony of white males. It fits very well a kind of long–
standing tradition of debunking for which this country has always been
