The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
Simon SchamaRead
We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the deep connection between nature and our experience of grief, suggesting that nature helps us come to terms with loss.
Simon Schama's quote emphasizes the healing power of nature in the process of grieving. By allowing the dead to return to the earth and contribute to the natural cycle, we find a way to cope with mortality and connect with something larger than ourselves. This relationship with greenery not only honors the memory of those we have lost but also offers a sense of continuity and renewal through the changing seasons, suggesting that grief is an integral part of life that is woven into the fabric of the natural world.
Themes
GriefNatureMortalitySeasonsCycleHealing
In practice
Example use cases
In a memorial speech, one might say, 'As we gather here today, we remember how the cycle of nature reminds us of the enduring connection we have with those we've lost.'
More from Simon Schama
All quotes →In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.
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Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation - but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between.
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I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.
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History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.
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History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel.
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