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Re: archives, history, and fondling the wrong things



7/5/00

        Having spent the better part of two years doing research in the Bavarian
State Archives (from 1973 through the end of 1975) for my dissertation, I
can affirm that a physical connection with the "documents" is an important
part of the historian's final product, as is residence in a country or
region and a sense of landscape---in addition to a grounding in primary and
secondary sources, an increasing amount of which are now available online
for virtually any subject or topic. Handling the records---finished copies
in a fine clerical hand, previous to the age of the typewriter, as well as
drafts with notations and marks by the hand of the Minister of the
Interior, on paper showing almost no signs of age (obviously no acidic
factor here)---gave me a physical link to the period I was dealing with
(the 1870s), which provided, or so I believe, an extra dimension to my
dissertation.

        I would certainly not underestimate the "responsibility of administering
archives for accountability and evidence" (Dr. Cox's message of 7/3), but I
think it is possible to overlook the importance of the physical nature of
evidence, which is, in some form or fashion, what we must always begin with
(and, as Dr. Cox says, digital media are "harder to fondle"). Thomas
Tanselle, in A Rationale of Textual Criticism, has some intereresting
things to say on this subject (though his original context is literary
manuscripts and printed texts therefrom): "...every text has been affected
in one way or another by the physical means of its transmission; and
second...every copy of a text is a separate piece of documentary evidence.
The implication of the first is that reading a text with historical
understanding must involve reading the physical evidence present in the
same document...."

        However one gets a connection to the past: go for it. We live in a culture
which is profoundly inimical to the past and its preservation.

Ed Southern

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