History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.
Interpretation
History simplifies the complexities of past events, making them easier to understand through patterns.
This quote by Johan Huizinga emphasizes the role of history in interpreting and simplifying the events of the past. By structuring historical events into coherent narratives, history allows us to grasp the broader significance and patterns of human experience, thereby making it comprehensible and meaningful to us.
In practice
During a lecture on historical events, a teacher could use this quote to illustrate how narratives shape our understanding of history.
If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.
The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity.
Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.
History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.
The susceptibility of the average modern to pictorial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment.
I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.
In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.
As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do--out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation--look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.
This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.
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