I want to write here about my experience with one historian who sees himself as a minor poet as much as a historian. In a defence of a critique of his work back in the 1950s in “The Journal of the History of Ideas” by one, Peter Geyl, Toynbee made this point. Toynbee would not say he was writing fiction. There is a clear difference. But there is also fiction and there is historical fiction. The twain meet and blend and fold. Anyway...let me tell you a little about my experience. It will serve as a posting at your site and as the basis for a question--in an indirect sort of way.
It was thirty years ago, in 1964, that I bought the ten volumes of Toynbee’s A Study of History. Every once in a while I get some time to dip into these volumes or some commentary on them. Although reading Toynbee is a solid intellectual exercise, not unlike Edward Gibbon who served as his model, he comes closest to providing some perspective on history that seems to be written in a global, universal, perspective—and one that seems particularly relevant to our time in history. His style and content appealed to me back in 1964 and that was enough to give him an honoured place in my pantheon of important historians. But I don’t expect everyone or, indeed, even a minority to agree with me. Indeed, most people will never read Toynbee for a variety of reasons.
I find that Toynbee is not easy to read. In fact, it has taken me at least two decades to be able to read more than a few pages at a time. His writing, like Gibbon, requires a good deal of exposure in order to acquire the tastes of appreciation. Toynbee began his Study of History just after WW1, trying to come to grips with the enormity he and his civilization had just lived through and finished his final Reconsiderations in 1961. The eleven volumes were the tour de force of his life.
There is something magisterial about this work of erudition. To read Toynbee , or anyone else for that matter, one must be capable of assuming the position of the writer—even if one does not agree with that writer. For this reason most of the students I have ever taught would never enjoy Toynbee or Gibbon. They may agree with the assumptions of the writer, but they don’t have the ability to take it in. At the centre of Toynbee’s thesis is the global imperative to federate. Our survival depends on it. History, as the relationship between God and man, found its raison d’etre in the higher religions. They played a critical role in the story of humankind. This historical ethos or perspective impressed me in 1964 and still does. That is a significant part of why I read Toynbee.
I have observed three reactions to Toynbee. The most common one by far is: “who is he?” To most of the post-WW2 generations Toynbee got lost in a sea of print. He is a heavy dude, not the sort of chap you take to bed for a light night cap. Others have heard of him but have got caught up with life and its busy highways and byways and the burgeoning of print in our age. A third group finds him wonderfully stimulating. For me, he is quintessentially the historian-if we needed one-and we do. But one must immediately add-to each our own in this pluralistic age. The story of the human experience in history is immensely complex and Toynbee gives one a flavour of this complexity. This third group, also contains a sub-group which has found the time to read Toynbee, but disagrees with just about all his major assumptions—Peter Geyl, a Dutch historian for one.
In 1955 in responding to a range of criticisms of his work in The History of Ideas, one of the many journals in the social sciences, Toynbee said he was ‘studying history’. One of the many charges that Toynbee responded to was that he was unconventional and tried to write about too much. In closing his brief response of less than a page Toynbee said he felt like a minor poet, a minor historian. He has given us a lifetime of reading. Given his global perspective, the similarity of assumptions and the rich diversity of his work, he may come to occupy an important position at some future time. Perhaps after these troubled times become more peaceful and we develop a more literate and cultured sensibility.
In the meantime I will continue to dip into his mind from time to time. A second thirty years would do me fine. We still await that federation which Toynbee hoped for but was not convinced he, or we, would ever see. A certain pertinacity, persistence, determination is required in taking Toynbee along for a ride. An elan vital, an intellectual energy, is crucial to overcome incipient fatigue, concentration’s lapses and one’s own sheer ignorance. If one stays with him he becomes part of one’s own backbone. He occupies several essential strands in my intellectual make-up. His paperback volumes are getting warn. Back in the early 1960s they cost three or four dollars a volume. They have become old friends. But they are history friends—not fiction—not historical fiction—but wonderfully imaginative, stimulating and, for me, erudite. Is he right? Goodness, his is only one voice, hardly known in today’s world. Such is life.-Ron Price, Tasmania
His volumes are sprinkled with pages of Russian history, the revolution, among other central modern events. What do you think of Toynbee's views?-Ron price, Tasmania
