The Meaning of History
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Before starting making history - on line and out line - we have to clarify the meaning of the world history. What does really mean "History"?
The word “History” means at the same time:
- the fact, the event of the past
- the story of that fact.
This ambiguity goes back to the root of the Greek word .jpg)
, which was vid, the same root of the Latin and Greek verb “video”. That means that, at the origins, the historian was intended first of all as the witness of the event.
But we know that more than one witness can assist to the same event and, on the other hand, that some events have no witness.
both the meanings are very important for the historian. A fact indeed exist only if someone can tell it. That is why commonly we consider that History begins with the birth of the writing. Before that moment we speak about pre-history. In our concept of history, then, the fact cannot exist without his tale. That means that, for making history, we don't need a fact, but we really need a story, because if a fact cannot exist without a story, a story can exist without a fact.
but the main difference between an historian and a novelist is that the first should write stories that really happened, whilst the second' job is to imagine and to create veracious stories and words.
That means that the historian's work is often hard because, on one hand, for some events can be very difficult to find sources, on the other hand, for the same fact of the past we can have different stories (that is true also for the present: think about a car crash!).
finally, we have always to remember that, as a human product, History can never be objective and to admit that there is not only one history.
