"Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present"
About this Quote
Penelope Lively points to the human need not only for a personal narrative but for a shared one. The word "equally" signals a pairing: as individuals need memory to sustain identity, communities need a storyline of the past to cohere. That need drives the ceaseless reworking of history, because the past is never encountered raw; it is selected, arranged, and voiced to address the anxieties, values, and aspirations of those doing the telling. What counts as significant, admirable, or shameful shifts with the times, so each generation edits the archive, promotes some episodes and muffles others, constructs heroes and dismantles them, revises causes and consequences.
Lively, a novelist long preoccupied with memory, archaeology, and the sedimented layers of time, understands that both private and public recollection are provisional. In Moon Tiger, a character tries to write a history of the world that is also her own story, exposing how subjectivity infiltrates every claim on the past. The same dynamic animates national histories. Monuments, school curricula, museum labels, and public anniversaries do not simply mirror what happened; they frame it, often to fit a present moral lens. Sometimes this is corrective and emancipatory, as when marginalized voices are recovered and systemic harms acknowledged. Sometimes it is self-serving, laundering failures or creating tidy myths. Often it is both at once, because societies are messy coalitions of memories competing for recognition.
The observation is not a cynical shrug but a call for alertness. If the collective past is something we require, then its continual reinterpretation is inevitable and even healthy, provided we know we are doing it. Recognizing present-mindedness does not banish truth; it deepens responsibility. We can ask whose perceptions are shaping the narrative, what evidence is being highlighted or ignored, and how a story might look if told from another vantage. History becomes a conversation across time rather than a single verdict, and belonging is forged not through a fixed myth but through an honest, revisable account of how we came to be.
Lively, a novelist long preoccupied with memory, archaeology, and the sedimented layers of time, understands that both private and public recollection are provisional. In Moon Tiger, a character tries to write a history of the world that is also her own story, exposing how subjectivity infiltrates every claim on the past. The same dynamic animates national histories. Monuments, school curricula, museum labels, and public anniversaries do not simply mirror what happened; they frame it, often to fit a present moral lens. Sometimes this is corrective and emancipatory, as when marginalized voices are recovered and systemic harms acknowledged. Sometimes it is self-serving, laundering failures or creating tidy myths. Often it is both at once, because societies are messy coalitions of memories competing for recognition.
The observation is not a cynical shrug but a call for alertness. If the collective past is something we require, then its continual reinterpretation is inevitable and even healthy, provided we know we are doing it. Recognizing present-mindedness does not banish truth; it deepens responsibility. We can ask whose perceptions are shaping the narrative, what evidence is being highlighted or ignored, and how a story might look if told from another vantage. History becomes a conversation across time rather than a single verdict, and belonging is forged not through a fixed myth but through an honest, revisable account of how we came to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
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