But how small is the sum of good writing against the mass of poisonous stuff that finds its way into the history books; for the dead can be stifled by the living./
That's metaphysical./
Never. That of the dead which exists in our imaginations has as much fact as have we ourselves. The premise that serves to fix us fixes also the part of them which we remember./
If history could be that which annihilated all memory of past things from our minds it would be a useful tyranny,/
But since it lives in us practically day by day we should fear it. But if it is, as it may be, a tyranny over the souls of the dead- and also the imaginations of the living- where lies our greatest well of inspiration, our greatest hope of freedom (since the future is totally blank, if not black) we should guard it doubly from the interlopers.
Excerpt: The Virtue of History, William Carlos Williams. From 'In The American Grain,' New Directions, 1965. pp 188.
