The Dark Backward

from Darkness Moves, by Matthew Swiezynski: artwork for the music Lost Beyond Telling | Ingenting Kollektiva | invisible birds (bandcamp.com)

What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
If thou remember'st aught ere thou camest here,
How thou camest here thou mayst.

Prospero, Act 1, Scene 1, The Tempest

You don’t really know a thing until you know its history. You can know concepts and principles – about literature, which I teach, the different genres, and within them, forms and types and varieties. But you don’t truly, deeply understand something without knowing how it developed and came to be what it is. We all realize this. When we reach that point of wanting to know a person better – more fully – a potential lover or a friend – what is it we now seek to learn about them? Their past. Their family life, where they grew up, their formative experiences. Formative. Though Aristotle placed action ahead of character as the principal representation of tragedy, and F. Scott Fit…