Threads and Traces: True False Fictive

337 Pages·2012·6.36 MB·English

by  Carlo Ginzburg

THREADS AND TRACES
Th e publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the
Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund of the University
of California Press Foundation.
Th e publication of the present book was made possible by the
contribution of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Aff airs.
THREADS AND TRACES
true false fictive
Carlo Ginzburg
Translated by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi
university of california press
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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University of California Press
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© 2012 by Th e Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Ginzburg, Carlo.
[Filo e le tracce. English]
Th reads and traces : true, false, fi ctive / Carlo Ginzburg ;
translated by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi. —1
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-520-25961-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Historiography—Philosophy. 2. Literature and
history. 3. History—Errors, inventions, etc.
4. Truth. 5. Collective memory. I. Title.
D16.8.G536513 2012
907.2—dc23
2011020079
Manufactured in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally
responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has
printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100 percent
postconsumer fi ber paper that is FSC certifi ed, deinked,
pro cessed chlorine- free, and manufactured with renewable
biogas energy. It is acid- free and EcoLogo certifi ed.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction 1
1. Description and Citation 7
2. Th e Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (a.d. 417–418) 25
3. Montaigne, Cannibals, and Grottoes 34
4. Proofs and Possibilities: Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis,
Th e Return of Martin Guerre 54
5. Paris, 1647: A Dialogue on Fiction and History 72
6. Th e Eu ro pe ans Discover (or Rediscover) the Shamans 83
7. Tolerance and Commerce: Auerbach Reads Voltaire 96
8. Anacharsis Interrogates the Natives: A New Reading
of an Old Best Seller 115
9. Following the Tracks of Israël Bertuccio 126
10. Th e Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians 137
11. Representing the Enemy: On the French Prehistory of the Protocols 151
12. Just One Witness: Th e Extermination of the Jews and the Principle
of Reality 165
13. Details, Early Plans, Microanalysis: Th oughts on a Book
by Siegfried Kracauer 180
14. Microhistory: Two or Th ree Th ings Th at I Know about It 193
15. Witches and Shamans 215
Notes 229
Index 313

ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Paolo Veronese, frescoes of Villa Barbaro: child opening door / 1 9
2. Bernard Salomon, engraving for La métamorphose d’Ovide fi gurée / 3 7
3. Vitruvius, De architectura / 3 9
4. Giulio Romano, Palazzo del Te, Mantua / 4 1
5. S ebastiano Serlio, Libro estraordinario / 44
6. N acolabsou, king of the Promontory of Cannibals / 4 8
7. Atabalipa, king of Peru / 48
8. P aolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium / 50
9. From the Vergilius Romanus / 5 1
10. Albrecht Altdorfer, Th e Battle between Alexander and Darius
at the River Issus / 206
vii

Introduction
1. Th e Greeks tell us that Th eseus received a thread as a gift from Ariadne.
With that thread he found his bearings in the labyrinth, located the Minotaur,
and slew him. Th e myth says nothing about the traces that Th eseus left as he
made his way through the labyrinth.
What holds together the chapters of this book dedicated to some highly
heterogeneous topics is the relation between the thread—t he thread of nar-
ration, which helps us to orient ourselves in the labyrinth of reality— and the
traces. I have been a historian for some time: using such traces, I seek to
narrate true stories (which at times have falsehoods as their object). Today it
seems to me that none of the terms of that defi nition (narrate, traces, stories,
true, false) can be taken for granted. When I began to learn my craft, toward
the end of the 1950s, the prevailing attitude in the guild of historians was
completely diff erent. Writing narrative history was not considered a matter
for serious refl ection. I remember one exception to this rule: Arsenio Frugoni,
who, as I understood later, returned now and then in his seminars in Pisa to
the topic of the subjective nature of the narrative sources, which he had dis-
cussed a few years earlier in his Arnaldo da Brescia. Frugoni suggested to
me—I was in my second year at the University of Pisa—t hat I prepare a col-
loquium on the school of the Annales, so I began to read Marc Bloch. In his
Métier d’historien I ran into a page which many years later, though I was not
fully aware of it, helped me to refl ect on traces of evidence. But in those days
historians did not speak of traces and the trail they leave.
1