The strangeness and familiarity of the past

A book I often return to for inspiration is The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft by Tom Griffiths. I love his observations about the strangeness and familiarity of the past.

The essence of good history is this balance between empathy and perspective, intimacy and distance. Historians immerse themselves in context; they give themselves wholly and sensually to the mysterious, alchemical power of archives. As well as gathering and weighing evidence, piece by piece with forensic intensity, they sensitise themselves to nuance and meaning, to the whole tenor of an era, the full character of a person. Historians move constantly between reading and thinking their way into the lives and minds of the people of the past — giving them back their present with all its future possibilities — and seeing them with perspective, from afar, with a bracing sense of their strangeness.
—  Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft

Acknowledgement: The image above is a picture A foggy night by Macfarlane, J., created in 1889. It comes from the State Library Victoria. Full details here. I love its strangeness and familiarity.

Please share. Let’s get the past and present talking.