Very personal thoughts on History or “what you see will catch you up.”
I remember very well how I discovered the Venice of Joseph Brodsky. That Venice where there are no tourists, where the winds piercing the bone tissues are blowing and the famous canals are no less dangerous to health than pleasing to the eye. Venice, where everything useless, touristic and meaningless is closed, the waterway is sealed until the spring heat arrives, and around you are crazy guests of a magical city, mixed up in the same rhythm with its melancholy inhabitants. And of course, ghosts wandering along the blackened water, soaring above the Devil’s bridge, striving with an asymmetric string to the expanses of the Grand Canal. I remember these days, this wind, this is a strange feeling of hopelessness, very beautiful hopelessness, harmonious and in some ways even noble. It’s like if you die from the plague, but among the golden candelabra, holding in one hand an ancient manuscript of which there is no price, and with the other holding the keys to Paradise. Venice in winter is not for everyone, or rather, far from all are suitable for Venice, which happens in winter.
That day, standing in front of the majestic St. Mark’s Cathedral, captivated by the rhythm of the square spread out in front of this huge reliquary, I first thought about my perception of the world, about how I create this connection between my inner world and what exists outside and even though — do I create anything at all? As soon as I plunged into these thoughts, everything circled around, lost its shape, the columns turned into a dense grey shadow, shop windows, a bell tower, the all the Apostles — a carousel of images, shapes and figures spun a cent The real square of my beloved Venice.
Nothing happens just like that, the reason is the basis of every event and exceptions do not exist, they are not provided for by divine law. So in my case, every event that happened in my life had its own reasons. Passion for the history of religions, cults and beliefs, examples of human ups and downs committed in endless attempts to find answers to the three main questions of this life: who are we? Why are we here, and who is our Creator? This was a never-ending ringing in my soul, a demand to find the keys to the above variations of the labyrinth of the Minotaur, but also certain features of my personal perception of the world.
These features are never super abilities and far from being always useful, sometimes they very decently interfere with living an ordinary human life. One of these features is the ability to fall through time (unless, of course, the ability to fall from a ladder or tuck afoot at a pedestrian crossing can be called an ability).
Standing on the ruins of an XII century castle, I hear the voice of the Grand Master and the sound of a blacksmith hammering a spur. Stepping on the land of the island of Torcello I carefully listen to the voices of the first settlers and taking a stroll along the swamps with a measured step I see bodies swollen from the plague and scattered along the narrow canals that were once part of the water supply system. Inspecting the majestic Pantheon in Rome, I observe how hastily smashing the statues of the ancient gods and changing them to those that were pleasing to Rome Emperor in that particular period of the time continuum. I bent my head under the stalactites hanging over my head in the Eshkural cave in Evora, I hear the uneven breathing of the man who reached to me through millennia with ochre, drawing distinctive figures of animals on his cave walls. After that, for several more days, this person will accompany me everywhere and be very glad that he nevertheless succeeded in his plan and someone saw him, and not just a place with prehistoric cave paintings. Such craziness happens to me always, wherever I may be, whether I want it or not, I fall through time, pierce entire layers of generations like a fire arrow and see, hear, feel everything — from the smell of sweat knocked the Templar in the armour of the XIII century and to the colour of the sunset over the dolmen that arose almost V millennia ago.
Of course, having such a very strange talent, so to speak, I was always stimulated a little more than most of my colleagues. History was not just an interest in a certain type of science, it was a time travel in the booth of a three-dimensional movie theatre. And I still get great pleasure from this trip. And I’m sure I will receive it until the end of my era.
So it was in Venice. This happened regularly in Rome, Paris, St. Petersburg, and so I live every day in sacred Portugal. And actually, let’s consider all of the above as a preface to what I am going to tell you.
Be here and now. Always.
People come and go. Fleeting people. We spend money on what we think matters. For some, these are some household items, something that can be touched. Works of art, clothing, vehicles, in general, something tangible, for others it’s quite the opposite — something immaterial, some kind of intangible state, in particular — travel. The travel with which people are enriched, filled up from the inside and feeling happy.
Often, when working with my tourists, I observe their genuine interest in history and they literally inflame me with their inquiring state from the inside, I love my work immeasurably precisely because I can tell, transmit and, most importantly, give.
Often, people ask me to speak more slowly, complaining that the information does not fit in, that over the many days of their journey, everything they heard has been mixed into a single tangle with everything they saw, they are asked to send them an abstract of what was said. I always answer the same way — don’t worry if you don’t remember, because it doesn’t matter at all. What you see is sure to catch you up.
I heard this phrase from a person who taught me how to feel the world, a person to whom I am infinitely grateful for everything that I have today and when I say everything that I have, I mean everything that is inside and is not visible at all from the outside.
“What you saw will catch you later.” I first heard this phrase in Paris. Still quite green in the ability to perceive, not knowing how to control my gliding through time, like a boy hypnotised by a bright shop window, I looked up at the gargoyles of Notre Dame Cathedral they were frozen in a stone pause. With a grin, they separated the man-made Holy Word from the world of cigarette butts thrown onto the pavement, dirty curses in all the languages of the world and vulgar thoughts of the guests of the French capital.
-They are waiting for the night. At night they will start rushing back and forth on the roofs of this city.
These words said to me they seemed like a joke, strange and a little stupid. Continuing to look at the impregnable walls, the symbols on the stones and the faces of these strange creatures called gargoyles, I did not understand how real these words would be for me after only six months.
-Let’s go then!
-Wait, I want to remember all this, I have a mess in my head, I don’t understand anything.
-You do not need to understand. What you see is sure to catch you up.
And it caught me up. Just a few weeks after returning to Moscow, sitting at my desk and looking at the next schedule of publications, I suddenly saw before me those very stone creatures. Their embittered faces looked straight into my eyes. I could smell the streets of Paris and the cold touch of heavenly moisture. It was pouring rain and icy water was rushing in wide streams from the mouths of the guards of the cathedral, directly onto the stone pavement surrounding Notre Dame de Paris.
-Gargoyle is a drain, along with the water they wash away sins and dark forces from the temples in which the Holy Spirit lives.
How do I remember that?! Why do I suddenly think about this? Read somewhere? Did I hear it from someone? It does not matter. I take my chained gaze from the monitor and look through the plastic windows of the office. I see Moscow outside, Garden Ring. Heavy rain is falling. I got it. What I saw just caught me up.
You should not try to remember everything, but you definitely need to learn to absorb, let in the knowledge, even if sometimes it is enclosed in the silence of the walls, in the grandeur of monuments, in the peace of ancient ruins. Dates, first names, surnames, titles and deeds are sometimes much less important for the perception and understanding of history than the feeling that you get when leaning against the V century wall or hugging an olive tree that continues to produce olives for more than a thousand years. At times, sensations are much more important than the mechanical counting of the sand pieces of past ages.
Getting into the possession of a place of historical significance it is extremely important to be there absolutely consciously, understanding where you are to drop everything that connects you to the place from which you arrived, the time in which you live and try to just be, listen and hear space and time, be not just their guest, but actually be with them in a single dimension. And then what you see will surely catch you up, without any abstracts, dates or other documentaries you will know more than any academician, for there is nothing more accurately conveying the past than its sensation and empathy.
This does not mean at all that the accuracy of the historical narrative must be discarded, not at all! The main thing to remember is that numbers and data, in general, are needed only for one purpose — to help us more accurately imagine the past. Data is an aid, a tool, but by no means a goal. Understanding this is crucial.
Everything matters. Everything.
Often, my guests ask me a question about the route of a tour. This question is always perplexing because it is impossible to describe the magic of a place with words, dry names will not say anything, you need to see everything with your own eyes and, as mentioned above, feel it. It’s not uncommon for me to discover something new with tourists. New and not seen by me before this sigils on the transects of the Church of St. Francis, the unusual and clearly deliberate location on the map of Convento De Cristo, the Church of John the Baptist and the Church of Dos Olivais, the strange and clearly artificial landscape of the northern forest in Nazare, an unusual XVI century fountain in the form of a female vagina in the Seven Hills National Park and of course one of the oldest Visigoth church in Portugal, Sao Giao near Nazare — this is only a small part of the discovered historical subtleties along the way of our tours in Portugal. And all this would probably have gone unnoticed by us if it were not for one of the main rules for any person who is keen on history, a rule that I abide by impeccably. Everything matters. Attention should be paid to absolutely all details, even those that may seem completely insignificant at first glance. Look at both, be attentive to trifles because very often things have a mutual connection, are a logical continuation of directly dependent on each other.
Of course, today, given the opportunities that the world wide web gave us, it is enough to press a few buttons and we will receive information about any fact, subject or place of interest to us. But still, how much more pleasant it is to conduct an independent search, a search based on a logical one, I would even say a deductive method of thinking. The results of such a search, as my English-speaking colleagues would say, are highly awarding. And indeed they are.
Feel.Feel.Feel.
Studying the incredibly rich world of Medieval symbolism, I came to the only correct conclusion in my opinion — it is impossible to perceive the world identical to that which was perceived by a man of the Middle Ages. Learning the details of the life of our ancestors, we only create for ourselves the illusion of awareness and understanding, but in reality, we go far beyond the boundaries of reality. Medieval man perceived the world based on a coordinate system inherent only to the time of its existence and completely different from the one we use to interact with our world today. Visiting historical monuments and objects, examining the decoration of monasteries and tombs, we must be fully aware of the blindness of our historical skills. The only thing we can rely on is the ability to feel, empathize with people of those historical eras, the prints of which we have the honour to observe today. I would call it a “sense of temporal identity.” With an emphasis on letter O. Feeling, based on two basic starting points — an initial acquaintance with historical facts and a deep inner sense of involvement. Only with this combination, it is possible that what we call at Uncommon Tours “immersion,” and most importantly, an understanding of long-gone times.
And if you do not need to train the depth of your soul, your perception of events, people, the world to master historical facts, then to feel involved you will have to work decently on yourself, and each person will have his own methods of such work. I’ll give you one but in my opinion a very important piece of advice: when travelling, be here and now, don’t try to accommodate tons of numbers, dates, names and events, stop, understand that this is completely irrelevant and it’s time to take a new look at history. Look around and breathe in what you see. There is no guide, there are no people around, there is nothing at all, only traces of past times that touch you with an invisible hand at that very moment. Feel the time inside yourself and then, you will not take dry data with you, but a whole universe of sensations. Do not chase information and always remember — what you see will surely catch you up.
I will conclude this lengthy text with a wonderful quote from the magnificent philologist and literary critic Valentin Oskotsky who was able to express the whole essence of historical science in a compressed format.
“History is not enough to know — it must be able to feel. Take it morally and aesthetically. A person deprived of a sense of history inevitably impoverishes, deprives himself. ”
V. Oskotsky
