tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22992265.post5331270036251167080..comments2023-11-02T09:18:44.063-04:00Comments on Old English in New York: Stonehenge: Decoded! ; or, What's so Secret about the Past?Mary Kate Hurleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14892991966276345782noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22992265.post-17513167086281276572008-06-08T14:15:00.000-04:002008-06-08T14:15:00.000-04:00It all returns to a question that for me is not re...<I>It all returns to a question that for me is not really answerable: can there really be a conversation between the living and the dead -- the past and the present? Or is the past destined to be a kind of straw man, whose script is always written by the living?</I><BR/><BR/>I think that you are right that this question can't be answered, if what you want is to read and report the supposed conversation accurately. And I also think it's self-evidently true that whatever remains an age leaves can only be read by its successors in the light of what they know, don't know, want to believe or prefer to ignore about their predecessors. Here McKie's point about each age's Stonehenge seems very well-made.<BR/><BR/>I think we can get further than this impasse if we try and keep the time-frame in mind, however. Obviously the dead cannot speak to the living in any real terms, unless you believe in ghosts. But the dead can and did leave messages, though with funerary sites you have the further problem that some of the dead to whom the messages relate were dead when the messages were laid down by the then-living...<BR/><BR/>All the same, we have some messages from the dead, however obscure, deformed or damaged there may be. These are genuine communication. If we try and interpret these things, however, we are not talking to the dead, but amongst ourselves about how these messages should be read. So it can never be a conversation, because the dead can neither hear nor respond. All the same there is real communication from the past, and sometimes even aimed at the future living, and then there is communication horizontally as interpretation is diffused or contested. There cannot be dialogue with the dead, however, and <A HREF="http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/critical-theorists-please-english-your-english/" REL="nofollow">I don't think imaginative efforts or book-titles that rely on such ideas really help us</A>. The key in such thinking is therefore to remember the separation of years; the dead do not live at the same time as the living for the purposes of your question.<BR/><BR/>Probably no help, but it seemed like a tool to cut through some of your deliberations...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com