Brigitte Goldstein's Blog

Walking in the shoes of characters in a bygone era

"The art of the novel is almost divine; writing history gives it life; writing poetry creates it."

"One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other."

These quotes, both by  the great French poet and novelist Victor Hugo, clearly define the ideal of historical recreation. While the "two orders of fact" in the second quote are basic to the development of the historical novel and any claim it may claim to authenticity, and can be accomplished by any academic historian, the historical novelist, unrestrained by the straightjacket of documentation, embellishes with work through imagination in creating characters and plot and the ability to relive events in a given period. To paraphrase Georg Lukács praising the work of Walter Scott, the historical novelist's goal is "to awaken a distant vanished world through portrayal of characters and their actions within a historical reality that is authentic and yet relivable by readers of a later time."

To infuse presumed historical characters with present-day sensitivities and concerns , as is so often the case, is ahistorical and anachronistic. We may no longer be writing in the manner of our predecessors of the nineteenth century, but their example is still worth heeding for contemporary writers of historical novels.