DAVID WOLF: You don’t often write very negative reviews these days but
it seems to me those that you have written—such as of House of Exile by
Evelyn Juers or The House of Wittgenstein by Alexander Waugh—share a
theme. In a number of these cases you seem frustrated that the writer is
condescending to history or judging figures of the past
anachronistically. Do you think that’s a fair observation?
ADAM
KIRSCH: I can see what you mean about those reviews. I think that one
thing literature can do is make you aware that the past is just as real
as the present was to the people who were living it. You have to try to
understand it, rather than merely making it serve purposes for the
present. There has to be certain humility before the past. I
particularly remember that with House of Exile, which is ostensibly a
biography of Thomas Mann’s brother Heinrich, the author was simply
scolding Thomas Mann—asserting that he wasn’t up to scratch, that he
wasn’t nice enough. I think that with a writer like that—and Mann is one
I particularly love—you have to approach with a sense of humility and
willingness to be instructed rather than to just pass judgement.
via
descensus Averno facilis est