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Anecdote and HistoryAuthor(s): Lionel GossmanSource: History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 143-168Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590879 .
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Historyand Theory42 (May 2003), 143-168 C WesleyanUniversity2003 ISSN: 0018-2656
ANECDOTE AND HISTORY
LIONELGOSSMAN
Eine Anekdote ist ein historischesElement-ein historischesMolecule oderEpigramm.-Novalis'
ABSTRACT
Althoughthe term"anecdote" nteredthe modemEuropean anguagesfairly recentlyand
remains o thisdayill-defined,the short,freestanding ccountsof particularvents,trueor
invented,that areusuallyreferred o as anecdoteshave been around rom time immemor-
ial. Theyhave also alwaysstoodin a close relation o the longer,moreelaboratenarratives
of history,sometimes in a supportiverole, as examples and illustrations, ometimes in a
challengingrole, as the repressedof history-"la petite histoire."Historians'relationto
them, in turn,variedfromappreciative o dismissive in accordancewith theirown objec-tives in writinghistory.It appearsthat highly structuredanecdotesof the kind that are
rememberedandfind theirway into anecdotecollections dependon and tend to confirmestablished views of history,the world, andhumannature.In contrast, oosely structured
anecdotesakin to the modemfait divers have usually worked to undermineestablished
views and stimulatenew ones, eitherby presentingmaterial knownto few and excluded
fromofficiallyauthorizedhistories,orby reporting"odd"occurrences or which the estab-
lished views of history,the world,and humannaturedo noteasily account.
I. WITTGENSTEIN'SOKER
How are anecdotes related to history and to the writing of history? The question
was raised in an unusually vivid way by David Edmonds and John Eidinow's
recent,highly successful book Wittgenstein's oker: The Storyof a Ten-Minute
Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. The kernel of the book is a fairly
well-known anecdote about the encounter of two celebrated Viennese philoso-
phers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, at a meeting of the Moral Science
Club of Cambridge University on October 25, 1946. Before the end of Popper's
talk, according to some, Wittgenstein became so incensed by the visitor's delib-
erately provocative rejection of his own view that there are no philosophical
problems, only language puzzles, that he rose to his feet, brandishing a red-hot
poker in Popper's face before storming angrily out of the room; according to oth-
ers, Wittgenstein, having used the poker "in a philosophical example" before
dropping it on the tiles around the fireplace, then "quietly (left) the meeting and
1.Novalis,Schriften,d.PaulKluckhohnndRichardamuel, ol.2:"Dasphilosophische erk,"ed.Richardamuel,Hans-Joachimdihl,ndGerhardchulz Stuttgart:ohlhammer,960),567.
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144 LIONELGOSSMAN
(shut) the door behindhim."2The competing versions of the anecdote told by
those who witnessed the scene raise one of the oldest and most fundamentalof
allhistoriographicalproblems:
how to determinewhatactuallyhappened
when
eyewitnessreportsareat variance.The problem s aggravated n this instanceby
the fact that all the eyewitnesses in questionwerephilosopherspresumablyded-
icated to the disinterestedsearchfor truth.
Intriguingas this aspectof Wittgenstein's oker mightbe, it is hard not to be
disappointedby the basic strategythe authorsadoptedfor the writing of their
book. This consistedin expandingthe dramaticanecdoterecountedat the begin-
ning into a complex, circumstantial,novel-like story. Edmonds and Eidinow
draw on standardntellectualbiographiesof WittgensteinandPopper,as well as
publishedhistoricaltestimonies
by personsclose to them, histories of Viennese
society andculture,and accounts of modem philosophy, o painta broadtableau
of the two principalcharactersand their world and to explaintheirintenserival-
ry.We learn aboutthe competing philosophicalpositionsof the two protagonists
andthe largerbackgroundof earlytwentieth-centuryViennesephilosophyfrom
which they both emerged;we learn aboutthe families in which they grew up-
bothhighlyassimilatedJewishfamilies, one fabulouslywealthyand almostaris-
tocratic,the other solidly bourgeois;we learn aboutthe differentlayers of the
Viennesesociety they belongedto and in particularabouttheirdifferentexperi-
ences,as Austrians of Jewish
descent,in a
pervasivelyanti-Semitic culture;
abouthow each was affected by and respondedto National Socialism and the
incorporation f Austria into the ThirdReich; about their differentconnections
with English philosophersand English society; and so on. The anecdote thus
unfoldsintosomethingclose to a culturalandintellectualhistoryof an important
partof Europe n the firsthalfof the twentiethcentury."Thestoryof the poker,"in Edmonds'sandEidinow's own words,"goesbeyondthe characters nd beliefs
of the antagonists. t is inseparable rom the storyof theirtimes, openinga win-
dow on the tumultuousand tragic history that shaped their lives and brought
themtogether
nCambridge."3As the representationof a dramaticencounter of two rival philosophers,the
original anecdote had a stripped-down,almost abstractcharacterwhich left
room-a typical featureof manyoral forms-for variationsof detail. Its focus,
besides the competitionbetween two particularways of looking on the world-
"theschismin twentieth-century hilosophyover the significanceof language,"
as Edmondsand Eidinowputit4-was perhaps he moregeneral,comic contrast
betweenthe ostensiblenatureof philosophy,as the disinterestedanddisembod-
ied pursuitof truth,and the intensepersonalconflict of thetwo philosophers,cul-
minating in an apparentthreat of physical violence; between the tranquil,unworldly ocus of the event-a shabbyroomin a quiet Cambridge ollege-and
2. David Edmonds and John Eidinow,Wittgenstein's oker: TheStory of a Ten-MinuteArgumentBetweenTwo GreatPhilosophers(London:Faber andFaber,2001), 16-17.
3. Ibid.,5.
4. Ibid.
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 145
the passionsthat were unleashed n it.5The particularphilosophicalviews of the
rivalprotagonistswere barelyalluded to in the anecdote,which-fairly typical-
lyas it turnsout-
supposesthatthe audience
alreadyhascertainnotionsof them.
EdmondsandEidinow,in contrast,fill out the anecdote'selementary,essentiallydramatic tructure, utflesh on its bones,and deck it out in colorfulclothing.The
300-page historyto which it gives rise is an intelligentlyconductedamplificatio,but it contains no surprises.The antithesisat the core of the anecdote continues
to structure he history, providingthe frameworkon which the authorsarrangeanddisplaytheirrich but familiarborrowings.
II. DRAMATICAND NOVELISTICCONSTRUCTIONSOF REALITY
The relation of the epic and dramaticgenres, and the implications,in terms of
ideology or Weltanschauung, f narrativeversus dramaticrepresentations f the
world, have been a major topic of reflection on literaturesince Antiquity.As
anecdotes,I now believe, may favoreither--they mayreducecomplex situations
to simple, sharplydefined dramaticstructures,but they may also, if more rarely,
priseclosed dramaticstructuresopen by perforating hem with holes of novelis-
tic contingency-a brief discussion of this topic is in order.
The developmentof narrative n the eighteenth centuryseems to have been
partof the
generalcritical
approachof the
Enlightenmentandits
questioningof
the normsandbeliefs about the natureof humanbeings and the world enshrined
in the content andthe formof Frenchclassical literature.Thesenormsand beliefs
had the undeniable meritof facilitatinga common recognitionand understand-
ing of particularactions, situations, and personalitiesand thus of reinforcingsocial cohesion. The novels of Marivaux,Sterne, and Diderot,in contrast,car-
ried-again both formally and thematically-a deliberately disorientingmes-
sage: thatif we examine particularactions, situations,andpersonalitiescloselyand in individualdetail, we will find that they are not neatly orderedandpre-dictable n themanner
suggestedbythelimited
repertoryof actionsandthewell-
defined,often antithetical ets of charactersold man/youngman, master/servant,
and so on) to which they arereducedin classical drama,or by the equally gen-eral antitheticalcategories(appearance/reality,ubstance/accident,mind/matter,
andso on) to which they arereducedin classical philosophy.6What Marivaux's
La Viede Marianneand Diderot'sJacques le fataliste imply is thatrealityis a
process of unpredictableandcontinuousmutations,not somethingalreadypre-
5. In his essay on the structureof thefait divers,RolandBarthes considers"disproportion"nda
"slightlyaberrant ausality"to be a featureof the "genre"--if thefait divers can be designateda
genre. ("Structuredu fait divers,"in Essais critiques [Paris:Seuil, 1964], 188-197) Most of whatBartheshas to say aboutthefait diversholds equallyfor certaintypesof anecdote.In thepresentcase,the disproportionmightbe said to arise from the spectacleof philosophers,who are meant to argue,to use words,resorting o physicalviolence,andfromupsetting he "normal" elation,among philoso-
phers,of body andmind.
6. Therepertoryof gesturesandexpressionscodifiedfor paintersby CharlesLe Brun,Directorof
Louis XIV'sAcad6mieRoyalede Peinture, s another xample, alongsidethe"emplois"or stock char-
acters of the theater,of a view of the world in which the generalwas deemed more real and funda-
mental than the particular.
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146 LIONELGOSSMAN
formed and simply waiting to be elaboratedand unfolded (literally divelopped,with local variations,as in classical comedy, the classical nouvelle or, for that
matter,Cartesianmechanistbiology).7In the greateighteenth-century arratives,
life is an adventure,not the actingout of a dramaticpart.It is probablynot for-
tuitous that the heroof Rousseau'sgroundbreaking utobiographical arrative s
a thoroughlyuprootedbeing, orthat the centralcharacters f key eighteenth-cen-
tury novels, such as La Vie de Marianne and Fielding's Tom Jones, are
foundlingsor persons of unknownorigin.To such individuals the worldhas no
obvious markersbut is an enigmawhose workingsthey have to explore. They in
turndo notpresentthemselvesto the world withobvious markers,but mustcon-
stantlyinvent and reinventthemselves in a complex negotiationwith the world
and its expectations. Appearanceandreality,
truth and fiction, virtue and vice,
body andsoul, masculine andfeminine turnout, in much of the literatureof the
eighteenthcentury, o be not nearlyas clearlydistinguishableas readersof clas-
sical literatureandphilosophy might have been encouragedto suppose.Human
behavior and the humanpsyche no longer appearreducible to the clearly bal-
anceddesigns andcategoriesof the maxims of La Rochefoucauld.
Writing n the secondhalf of theeighteenthcentury,Chamfort, orone, did not
believe matterswere so simple. "Thingsaremiscellanies,"he declared;"menare
patchworks.Ethics andphysics are concernedwith mixtures.Nothingis simple,
nothingis
pure."8Tothe authorof Maximes et Pensees, Caract&restAnecdotes,
the anecdoteitself, by situating moralityin a narrativecontext, however slight,
representeda much-needed correction to the abstractformal structureof the
maxim as practiceda centuryearlierby La Rochefoucauldand a challengeto its
seemingly incontrovertible ruths."Moralists, ike those philosopherswho have
constructedsystems of physics or metaphysics,have overgeneralized,and laid
down too manymaxims,"he wrote.
What, orinstance, ecomesof thesayingof Tacitus, Awomanwho has losthermod-
estywillnotbeable o refuseanythingfterward,"henconfronted ith heexamples fso
manywomenwhoma moment f weakness asnot
preventedrom
practicingnum-
berof virtues. haveseenMadame eL_, afterayouthwhichdifferedittle rom hatofManonLescaut,onceive n herriper earsa passionworthy f Heloise.9
7. A weakeningof classical models of compositionis also visible in historiography.n one of myfirst attemptsto study the structureof a historical text ("Voltaire'sCharlesXII:History into Art,"Studieson Voltaireand the EighteenthCentury25 [1963], 691-720), I tried to show that Voltaire's
early Histoire de Charles XII could be seen as the filling out of an essentiallydramaticstructure r,in rhetorical erms,as the elaborationof an antithesis(Peterof Russia versus Charlesof Sweden,mod-
em calculationandruthlessnessversusold-fashionedchivalryandhonor,etc.) or a chiasmus(thevic-
tor is vanquished, he vanquishedvictorious).The informingantithetical tructure f thework,I held,is reinforcedby thepervasivenessof parallelsandantithesesatthe textuallevel andepitomized n the
prolepticembeddedanecdote of the CzarafisArtfchelou n Book 2. I contrasted his earlyhistoricalwork of Voltaire'swiththe laterSihclede LouisXIV andtheEssai sur les moeurs,both of which I saw
as less dramatic,moretrulynarrative,moreopen-ended, ending away fromthe paradigmaticoward
the syntagmatic despitethe recurrent ntitheticalstructure f enlightenmentversussuperstition).8. "Dans es choses, tout est affairesmldees;dans les hommes,tout estpieces de rapport.Au moral
et auphysique,tout est mixte. Rien n'est un, rien n'est pur."9. "Les Moralistes, ainsi que les Philosophes qui ont fait des systhmes en Physique ou en
Mdtaphysique nt trop generalise,ont tropmultipli6les maximes.Que devient,parexemple, le mot
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 147
Though only evoked and not recounted, he anecdote about Madamede L_ (its
claim to reality signaledby the deliveryof the first-person estimony in the per-
fect, not the past tense), does not providea concreteparticularnstance to illus-
tratea generalrule; rather,t bolsters a propositionchallenginggeneralrulesand,
along with them, the view of the worldimplied andcommunicatedby classical
drama, he classicalmaxim,theclassicalcaract&re, ndsome of the basic figuresof classical rhetoric.As Chamfortput it, it is necessaryto pay attention o peo-
ple's actual behavior"afinde n'etrepas dupede la charlatanerie es Moralistes"
("inordernot to be fooled by the quackeryof ourtheoristsof humannature")--
such as La Rochefoucauldand La Bruybre.
III. DEFININGTHEANECDOTE
These preliminaryobservations eave the anecdote stillundefined.In fact, schol-
ars cannot even agree whether there is anything definablethere, whether the
anecdotecan properlybe considereda particular orm or genre, like the novel,
the maxim,or the fable. The scholarly iteratureon the topic, moreover, s scat-
teredandfairlythin,as thoughthe anecdote were thought o be too trivial a form
to deserve serious consideration.While much has been written aboutthe essen-
de Tacite:Neque mulier,amissapudicitia, alia abnueritaprds 'exemple de tant de femmes qu'unefaiblessen'a pas emp&ch6ese pratiquer lusieursvertus?J'aivu madamede L. .., apresunejeunesse
peu diff6rentede celle de Manon Lescaut, avoir, dans l'age mfr, une passion digne d'Hdloise."
Sdbastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort,Productsof the Perfected Civilization:Selected Writingsof
Chamfort, ransl. W. S. Merwin (New York:The MacmillianCompany,1969), 130 (chap. ii), 160
(chap. v). OriginalFrench texts in Maximes et Pensdes, Caractureset Anecdotes, ed. ClaudeRoy
(Paris:UnionG6ndraled'Editions,1963),56, 88. Cf. the firstmaximof chap. : "Maximsandaxioms,
like summaries,are the worksof personsof intelligencewho havelabored,as it seems, for the conve-
nience of mediocre andlazy minds.The lazy arehappyto find a maximthatsparesthem the necessi-
ty of makingfor themselves the observations hat ed the maxim'sauthor o the conclusionto which
he invites his reader.The lazy andthe mediocre maginethatthey need go no further,and ascribeto
the maxim a generality hatthe author,unless he was mediocrehimself,as is sometimes thecase, has
not claimed for it. The superiormangraspsatonce theresemblances, hedifferences,which render he
maximmore or less applicable n one instanceor another,or notat all. It is much the same with nat-
uralhistory,where theurgeto simplifyhasled to the imaginationof classificationsanddivisions.Theycould not have been framedwithoutintelligence for the necessarycomparisonsandthe observingof
relationships;but the greatnaturalist,he man of genius, sees that nature s prodigalin the invention
of individuallydifferentcreatures,andhe sees the inadequacyof divisions andclassificationswhich
are so commonlyused by mediocre andlazy minds"(109). ("LesMaximes,les Axiomes, sont,ainsi
que les Abrdg6s,l'ouvrage des gens d'esprit, qui ont travailld, ce semble, 'a 'usage des esprits
m6diocresou paresseux.Le paresseuxs'accommoded'une Maximequi le dispensede faire ui-meme
les observationsqui ont mend l'Auteur de la Maxime au r6sultatdontil fait partie'ason Lecteur.Le
paresseuxet l'homme m6diocre se croient dispens6s d'aller au-deli, et donnentA a Maxime une
g6ndralit6que l'Auteur,Amoins qu'il ne soit lui-meme m6diocre .. .n'a pas pr6tendu ui donner.L'hommesup6rieuraisit toutd'un coup les ressemblances,es diff6rencesqui font quela Maxime est
plus ou moins applicablea tel ou tel cas, ou ne l'est pas du tout.Il en est de cela comme de l'Histoire
naturelle,oil le d6sirde simplifiera imagind es classes et les divisions.IIa fallu avoirde l'esprit pourles faire. Car il a fallu rapprocher t observerdes rapports.Mais le grandNaturaliste,I'hommede
g6nie voit que la Natureprodiguedes dtres ndividuellementdiff6rents, t voit l'insuffisancedes divi-
sions et des classes qui sontd'un si grandusageauxespritsm6diocresou paresseux..." (Maximeset
pensdes,33).
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148 LIONELGOSSMAN
tial natureof tragedy,comedy,the epic, the novel, the shortstory,the maxim, I
have been able to findonly a few works,almostexclusively by Germanscholars,
thatattempt o define the nature,form, andfunction of the anecdote.10Valuable
as these studies are, they focus mainly on a particular pecies of anecdotethat
was elevatedin the firsttwo decades of the nineteenthcenturyto the status of a
recognized and admired,if minor, literaryform in Germanyby the Prussian
dramatist ndshortstorywriterHeinrichvon Kleistand the Basel-bornSwabian
preacherand popular dialect poet Johann Peter Hebel. (The conjunction of
drama,short-story orm,andanecdotein the case of Kleist does not, as we shall
see, appear o be fortuitous, nasmuchas the dramaand the shortstoryare,like a
certain kind of anecdote, condensed forms representinga critical moment in
which the "essence" of a situationor characters supposedto be made visible.)
The word"anecdote"tself was and is used to describea wide rangeof narra-
tives, the definingfeatureof which appears o be less theirbrevity (thoughmost
arequiteshort)thantheir lack of complexity.As the OED putsit, an anecdote s
the "narrative f a detached ncident,or of a single event, told as being in itself
interestingand striking.""That general dictionarydefinition,which obviouslyaims to distinguishthe anecdotefrom morecomplex narrative orms like histo-
10. In particularKlaus Doderer,"Die deutscheAnekdoten-Theorie"n his Die Kurzgeschichte.
IhreFormund ihreEntwicklung1953] (Darmstadt:WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft,1969);Hans
Franck,DeutscheErzdihlkunstTrier:FriedrichWinter,1922);RichardFriedenthal,"VomNutzen undWertderAnekdote," n SpracheundPolitik:Festgabefiir Dolf Sternberger um60. Geburtstag,ed.
Carl-JoachimFriedrichand BennoReifenberg (Heidelberg:LambertSchneider,1968), 62-67; Heinz
Grothe, Anekdote, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart:Metzler, 1984); Robert Petsch, Wesen und Formen der
ErzdhlkunstHalle/Saale:Max Niemeyer, 1934); Rudolf Schifer, Die Anekdote:Theorie,Analyse,Dialektik(Munich:Oldenbourg,1982); WalterErnstSchhifer,Anekdote-Antianekdote: um Wandel
einer literarischenForm in der Gegenwart(Stuttgart:Klett-Cotta,1977). In addition, n English,are
the hard-to-come-byDissertation on Anecdotes(1793) of Isaac D'Israeli (himselfno mean compilerof anecdotes),and the Introductionby Clifton Fadiman to the Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
(Boston/Toronto:Little, Brown & Co., 1985). Most of these works attemptto define the essential
characteristics nd functions of the anecdote.Themore historicalapproachadoptedby VolkerWeber,
Anekdote-Die andere Geschichte (Tiibingen: StauffenburgVerlag, 1993) and Sonja Hilzinger,
AnekdotischesErzdhlen im Zeitalter der Aufkldirung:Zum Struktur-und Funktionswandelder
GattungAnekdote nHistoriographie,Publizistikund Literaturdes 18. JahrhundertsStuttgart:M&P
Verlagfir Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1997)-provide an invaluablecomplement to these other-
wise preeminently ormal studies of the anecdote.In French,in additionto RolandBarthes'sessay
(see n. 5 above), several articlesdevoted to the ait diversinAnnales 38 (1983), 821-919, throwmuch
light on the closely related, sometimesindistinguishable orm of the anecdote,notablyMarcFerro,
"Pr6sentation"821-826) and Michelle Perrot,"Faitdiverset histoireau XIXeme sihcle"(911-919).11. TheOED definitioncorresponds emarkablyo Roland Barthes'sdefinitionof thefait diversin
"Structure u fait divers":"Le faitdivers ... est une informationotale .. .; il contient en soi toutson
savoir:pointbesoin de connaitre ien dumondepourconsommerun faitdivers; l nerenvoie formelle-
ment a rien d'autrequ'a lui-meme; bien sur, son contenu n'est pas dtrangerau monde: ddsastres,
meurtres, nlevements,agressions,accidents, vols, bizarreries,outcela renvoie i
l'homme,ason his-
toire, h son alienation,ta es fantasmes." "The ait divers ... is a complete piece of information n
itself...It containsall its knowledgewithinitself: consumptionof afait diversrequiresno knowledgeof theworld; trefers formallyto nothingbutitself;of course,its contentis not unrelated o the world:
disasters, murders,abductions,robberies,and eccentricities all refer to humanbeings, theirhistory,their conditionof alienation,theirfantasies.")But it contains its own circumstances,ts own causes,
its own past, its own outcome. It is "sansdur6eet sans contexte"(It has "neither emporalduration
norcontext") (189).
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 149
ry andthe novel, still accommodatesa wide varietyof verbalpractices,bothoral
andwritten,bothpopularandcultivated: hejoke or the tall story;thejewel-likeshortnarrative,with its witty punchline, thatwas
developedin the salons of the
elite in the eighteenthcentury; he shorttale, usually containinga moral lesson,of the type composed (or adapted)by JohannPeter Hebel for Swiss andGerman
popularalmanacs or Kalender;the highly stylized, now classic anecdotes of
Heinrichvon Kleist.12 The later,carefullycraftedworks, entitledAnekdoten,byWilhelm Schifer, and the so-called Kalendergeschichtenof Bert Brecht-a
sophisticatedkind of anti-anecdote ntendedto undermine the sharedassump-tions thatthe traditionalanecdotedependson for its intelligibilityandeffective-
ness-must also be regardedas productionsof high literaryart.Moreover,the
anecdotemay be fairlydetached andfree-standing,
as in anecdote books or col-
lections.13 Or it may be integrallyconnectedwith andembedded n a largerargu-ment or narrative,as in sermonsand most historicalwritings.
As to its form,whatmostpeople wouldconsidertheclassic anecdote s a high-
ly concentratedminiaturenarrativewith a strikinglydramatic hree-actstructure
consistingof situationor exposition,encounteror crisis, andresolution the last
usuallymarkedby a "pointe"or clinchingremark,often a "bonmot."l4 But rel-
atively unstructured hort narrativesof particularevents, such as the miscella-
neous murders, rials, and naturalcatastrophesrecorded in Smollet's late eigh-
teenth-centuryHistory of Englandrom
theRevolution o theDeathof George
II,as a kind of addenda o the principalpoliticalevents,'5or thefaits diversreport-
12. ThoughKleist firstpublishedhis anecdotes in a newspaperwith which he was associated,the
BerlinerAbendbldtter,t is fairto assumethat the readership f the paper,unlike thatof almanacsor
Kalender,was the educated middle and upper class of the Prussiancapital. See HeinrichAretz,Heinrich von Kleist als Journalist: Untersuchungenzum "Phdbus,"zur "Germania"und zu den"BerlinerAbendbldttern"Stuttgart:Hans-DieterHeinz, 1983).
13. Inthe well knownPercyAnecdotes, ndividualanecdotesaregrouped n thirty-eightcategories,
accordingto the themes they are held to illustrate,such as "Humanity,""Eloquence,""Youth,"
"Enterprise,""Heroism,""Justice," "Instinct," "Beneficence," "Fidelity,""Hospitality,""War,"
"Honor,""Fashion." ThomasBeyerley and JosephClintonRobertson[pseud.Reuben and Sholto
Percy], The Percy Anecdotes, revised ed., to which is added a valuable collection of American
Anecdotes[New York:HarperandBrothers,1843]).14. There is still work to do to explore the relationof the anecdote to the joke, the Renaissance
facitie or Schwank,and the apophtegm.One of the chief repositoriesof apophtegms,the De vita et
moribusphilosophorumof Diogenes Laertius,a favorite work of Renaissancescholars (it was print-ed in Baselby Frobenius n 1533),became the object,in the last thirdof thenineteenthcentury,of the
scholarlyattention of the young Nietzsche, whose own disruptive,fragmentaryphilosophicalstylehad a good deal in common with collections of apophtegms.
15. Book III, chap. xiii (covering the year 1760) may be consideredfairly typical of Tobias
Smollet's practice."Beforewe record the progressof the war [the Seven Years'War]," he author
announces,"itmaybe necessaryto specify some domesticoccurrences hat or a little while engrossedthe
publicattention."Therefollows a series of anecdotesof murders, rials,etc. only loosely connect-ed by the generalproposition para.12) that"Homicide s thereproachof England:one would imag-ine thatthere s something n theclimate of thiscountry, hatnot only disposesthenatives to thisinhu-manoutrage,buteven infects foreignerswho resideamongthem."These more or less extensive nar-
ratives,alongwith themanynarratives f individualsandparticularpisodesinterspersedn the"pub-lic" history,should doubtless be distinguished rom more generalreports(reminiscentof traditional
Annals), such as that (para.42) of "the horrors and wreckof a dreadfulearthquake,protracted n
repeated hocks,"that struckSyriaand"beganon thethirteenthdayof October,n the neighbourhood
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150 LIONELGOSSMAN
ed in the newspapers,have also often been referred o, since the eighteenthcen-
tury,as anecdotes.16
In addition,the term "anecdote"waswidely
used in the lateeighteenth
and
earlynineteenthcenturiesto designatea species of historicalwritingthatdelib-
eratelyeschewed large-scale"narrativization,"o borrowHaydenWhite'suseful
term.These anecdote-histories--Anecdotesdes Republiques(1771), Anecdotes
arabes et musulmanes(1772), Anecdotesespagnoles et portugaises depuis l'o-
riginede la nationjusqu' nosjours (1773), Anecdotes ameiricaines1776), and
so on--seem to be definedby their ostensible refusal of systematization, otal-
ization, and ideological interpretation ndby theirreportingof only particular,
relatively solatedepisodes,often enoughin simplechronologicalorder,as in the
annals and chronicles of the MiddleAges (interest
n which revived, as ithap-pens, around he same time).17
of Tripoli."The report s a list rather han a narrative: Agreatnumberof houses were overthrownn
Seyde, andmanypeople buriedunderthe ruins ... an infinite numberof villages ... were reduced o
heapsof rubbish.At Acra,or Ptolemais,the sea overflowed ts banks andpoured nto the streets.The
city of Saphetwas entirelydestroyed,and the greatestpartof its inhabitantsperished.At Damascus
all the minarets were overthrown, and six thousand people lost their
lives." (TheHistory of England rom the Revolution n 1688 to the Death of George the Second,6
vols. [London:J. Walker,1811],VI, 189-216, 261).
16. "VermischteAnekdoten"was the headingunder which the writer ChristianFriedrichDaniel
Schubart 1731-1791) gathered ogethera greatvarietyof reportsof events andpersonalities n hisbi-weekly newspaperTeutscheChronik(1774-1777; under other names until 1793). The term aitdivers datesonly from 1863 andappears o have no equivalent n otherlanguages,which simplybor-
row the French erm. What s nowunderstoodbyfait divers used to be designated n Frenchas "anec-
dotes,""nouvellescurieuses,singulibres,"or "canards."See MichellePerrot,"Fait divers et histoire
au XIXeme siecle" [as in note 9]).17.Thecatalogueof Princeton'sFirestoneLibraryists well over 200 volumes undertitles such as
Anecdotesafricaines,Anecdotesamdricaines,etc. Most were publishedbetween 1750 and 1830, but
thegenrecontinueswell into the nineteenthcentury.Thesetextsvaryin character. ome authors nsist
on the fragmentary, eyewitness character of their work. Thus the author of Anecdotes and
CharacteristicTraitsrespectingthe Incursionof theFrenchRepublicans ntoFranconia in the Year
1796, byan Eye-Witness translatedromtheGerman London:J.Bell, 1798]) declares n his Preface:
"I do not herepresentthe publicwith a complete historyof the French ncursion nto Franconia;but
supplythe futurehistorianof thatmemorableevent with a few facts andincidents,of which I was an
eye-witness,collected within the district whereI reside.Every circumstancerelatedhere is genuine.I endeavouredo be an attentiveobserver, o collect with fidelity,and to delineatewithoutprejudice."
George Henry Jennings, the author of An AnecdotalHistory of the British Parliamentfrom the
Earliest Period to the Present Time(New York:Appleton,1883), aims to "bring ogether n anecdo-
tal formsome of the most striking acts in the historyof ourParliaments,andthe publiclives of dis-
tinguishedstatesmen" n orderto returnto the "original"of certain statementsand episodes which
have suffered,he says, from what Gladstone called "mythicalaccretion." L. A. Caraccioli's brief
Anecdotespiquantesrelatives auxEtats-Gindraux 1789) retail how the news of the Estates General
was received in various European capitals (Rome, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Stockholm,
Constantinople,Vienna,London), n Paris andatVersailles,andin manyFrenchprovincialtowns. Incontrast,GuillaumeBertoux's Anecdotes espagnoles et portugaises depuis l'origine de la Nation,
jusqu' nosjours, 2 vols. (Paris:Vincent, 1773) and his earlierAnecdotes ran!aises depuis l'dtab-
lissment de la monarchiejusqu'au rkgne de Louis XV (Paris: Vincent, 1767), the anonymousAnecdotes des Rdpubliques,2 vols, (Paris:Vincent, 1771), divided into "Anecdotes G6noises et
Corses,""AnecdotesV6nitiennes,""AnecdotesHelv6tiques,"etc., the Anecdotes arabes et musul-
manesdepuis l'an de J.-C. 614, edpoque e l'dtablissementdu Mahomitanismeen Arabiepar lefaux
ProphkteMahometjusqu'dl'extinction du Caliphaten 1578 of J.F. de Lacroix andA. Harnot Paris:
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 151
IV. EARLYUSES OFTHETERM"ANECDOTE"
Thoughanecdoteshave been around n one formor another or a
very long time,as long, no doubt,as rumorandgossip, it was not untilfairlylate-around 1650
in French,a few years ater n English-that the term"anecdote"tself entered he
European anguages.Its introductionwas probablya result of the discoveryand
publicationby the VaticanLibrarian,n the year 1623, of a text referred o in the
Suda,an eleventh-centuryByzantineencyclopedic compilation,as Anekdota lit-
erally"unpublishedworks")andattributed o Procopius, he sixth-centuryauthor
of an officially sanctionedHistory in Eight Books of the EmperorJustinian's
Persian,Vandal,and Gothicwars andof a laudatoryaccountof Justinian'sbuild-
ing program,De Aedificiis.At
first,he termretained n the modem
languagesthe
purely echnicalmeaningof "unpublished"hat t had hadbothfor thosewho used
it in antiquity Cicero,DiodorusSiculus)andfor the eleventh-century ompilersof the Suda. In the mid-eighteenth century,Dr. Johnson'sDictionary defines
"anecdote"as "somethingyet unpublished."Accordingto the Encyclopidie arti-
cle (by theAbbe Mallet),"anecdote"designates"tout6critde quelquegenrequ'il
soit,quin'apasencore6t6publie" "anypiece of writing,of whateverkind,which
has not yet been published").18From this literal meaning of "unpublished"
springs, n all likelihood,the meaningof "an item of news orfait divers" that s,
somethinghitherto unknown or
unpublished)which seems
quicklyto have
attached tself to theterm"anecdote," nd which is mostprobably hemeaningof
the word in the rarelycited subtitle of BenjaminConstant's amousearly nine-
teenth-centurynovellaAdolphe:"Anecdotetrouveedansles papiersd'un incon-
nu" ("Anecdotefound among the papersof an unknown").Constantno doubt
intended t to convey the impression hat his tale describeda "real" vent.
Its associationwithProcopius's extalsoprovided heword "anecdote"withyetanothermeaning n the modernEuropean anguages.The Anekdota,now usuallyreferred o as Procopius'sSecretHistoryor Storiaarcana,turnedoutto consist of
instancesof the mostbrutalexerciseofdespotic power,
as well as scurrilousales
of palaceand family intrigue,that were completelyat odds with the celebratorynarrative f Procopius'sofficialHistory.The secondmeaningof the word "anec-
dote"listed in Johnson'sDictionary-"secret history"--reflects his influenceof
Procopius's ext. In the Encyclopddie t is alreadythe firstmeaning given: "his-
Vincent, 1772), and the Anecdotes am6ricaines, ou histoire abrigee des principaux eve'nements
arrives dans le Nouveau Monde depuis sa dicouverte (Paris:Vincent, 1776) are all essentially
chronologies,though only those years are included n which somethingoccurred hat, n the authors'
view, can be told as a story.Numerous collections of "Episodes"and"Curiosities" eemclosely relat-ed to "Anecdotes."There was a curious revivalof "anecdotehistory" n theperiod followingtheFirst
WorldWar n Germany,n responseto another risisof historicalunderstanding;ee the discussion of
the prolificAlexander von Gleichen-Russwurm'sWeltgeschichte n Anekdotenund Querschnitten
(Berlin:MaxHess, 1929)inVolkerWeber,Anekdote--DieandereGeschichte,152-167(as in note 10).18. When the ItalianEnlightenment cholar Ludovico Muratoripublishedsome of the Greek and
Latinmanuscriptsn theAmbrosianLibraryn Milanbetween 1697 and 1713, he entitledhis collec-
tions AnecdotaLatinaandAnecdota Graeca.
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152 LIONELGOSSMAN
toires secretesde faitsquise sontpassesdansl'int6rieur u cabinetou des coursde
Princes,& dans les mystbresde leurpolitique" "secrethistoriesof what hasgoneon in theinnercounsels or courtsof Princesand in themysteriesof theirpolitics").
From its earliest usage in the modern European languages, then, the term
"anecdote"hasbeen closely related o history,and even to a kindof counter-his-
tory. Procopius'sAnekdota cover exactly the same years as his History of the
Wars:527-553 CE.But in the unpublishedwork,the secretaryandcompanionof
Belisarius,Justinian's amous general, exposes the censored, seamy underside,
the chroniquescandaleuse,of thereignhe himself hadpresented n noble colors
in his official history.The Justinianof the Anekdotais a tyrant,the EmpressTheodoraa vindictive, cruel, low-bornformer harlot.Belisarius is venal, avari-
cious, proneto acts of gross violence andinjustice, spineless anddisloyal in his
personallife, and enslaved to his scheming, licentious wife Antonina.Like an
ideal humanform when it is inspectedclose up througha microscope,the hero-
ic andorderlypublic narrativeof the History is undercutby a ragbagof stories
of depravityandabuse of power.
Procopius'sAnekdotaor secrethistorywas the explicitlyacknowledgedmodel
of several late-seventeenth-and early-eighteenth-century istories, the barely
disguised target of which appearsto have been the new absolutist Europeanmonarchies. The best known of these is probablyAntoine de Varillas'sLes
Anecdotesde Florence,ou l'histoiresecrete de la maisondesMddicis,
publishedin 1685, supposedlyin The Hague. Likewise, Les Anecdotes de Suede,ou His-
toireSecretedes Changemensarrivdsdans ce Royaumesous le regnede Charles
XI, which appeared n Stockholmin 1716, took the lid off the officialhistoryof
CharlesXI of Sweden, the ally andemulatorof Louis XIV.19
Not surprisingly,he friends of power,those concernedwith maintainingpub-lic images anddecorum,have generallybeen fearful of anecdotesand have lost
no opportunity o denigratethem, while at the same time enjoying them in pri-vate and,when necessary,using themagainsttheirown enemies. "L'anecdote,"
the Goncourtbrothersassert,"c'est laboutique
aun sou de l'Histoire"20"The
19. Anecdotes continueto functionin thiswayin modernuse, as in the clandestinediaries n which
Ulrich von Hassell,GermanAmbassador o Romebetween 1932 and 1937, recordednot onlyhis and
his friends' efforts to organize a regime-changebut living conditions and popular attitudesin
Germanyunder National Socialism. Thus, to illustrate he unpopularity f the law requiringJews to
weara yellow star,he tells of a workerin NorthBerlin "who had sewed on a large yellow starwith
the inscription: My nameis Willy',"and of another"herculeanworker"who "said to a poorandagedJewess in the train: Here,you little shootingstar,takemy seat!' and when someone grumbled,said
threateningly:Withmy backsideI can do whatI like."' Anotheranecdote,more properlydefined as
a joke, "illustrates he stupidityof the Party. At a crossroadthreecars, each with the rightof way,
collide-Hitler, the SS, and the firedepartment.Who is to blame?'Answer: 'The Jews'" (Ulrichvon
Hassell, The VonHassell Diaries: TheStoryof the Forces againstHitlerinside Germany1938-1944[Boulder,CO andOxford:Westview Press, 1994], 227, 246-247).
20. EdmondandJules de Goncourt,Iddes et sensations (Paris:BibliothequeCharpentier-Eugene
Fasquelle,1904), 13. See MichellePerrot,"Faitdivers et histoireau XIXeme siecle," 912-913, on the
authorities' ear of anecdotes and "canards" nd their attemptsto suppressor domesticate them by
removingthemfromthe less controllablearea of oral circulation o the more controllablearea of the
press.Even so, seriousnewspapersrelegatethem to an inconspicuouspositionon aninsidepage, and
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 153
anecdoteis the dime store of history").But they themselves made abundantuse
of anecdotesin their Histoirede la socijtj frangaise pendant la Revolution,the
aim of which, in their own words,was "not to relateonce again" hegrand
polit-ical historyof the Revolution,but to "portrayFrance,manners,states of mind,
the nationalphysiognomy,the color of things,life, and humanityfrom 1788 to
1800" ("peindre a France, les moeurs, les ames, la physionomie nationale, la
couleurdes choses, la vie et l'humanitdde 1789 't 1800"). That meant, in this
instance,discrediting he heroicRepublicanaccountof the Revolutionand sub-
stitutingan alternative,unheroic,andoften petty counter-history.To write such
a history, heGoncourtssaid,"wehad to discovernew sources of thetrue,to look
for our documents in newspapers, pamphlets,and a whole universe of lifeless
paperhitherto viewed with
contempt,in
autographetters,
engravings,all the
monumentsof intimacythatanage leaves behind."21n short,theyhad to explorethe worldof the anecdoteand the anecdotal.
Voltaire had alreadyexpresseda similarlyambivalent view of anecdotes.In
his "Discourssurl'Histoirede CharlesXII"of the early 1730s, he lambastedhis
contemporaries for their "fureur d'6crire" ("mania for writing"), their
"ddmangeaisonde transmettrea la postdritddes details inutiles"("itchto trans-
mit useless details to posterity").This passionfor the allegedly trivial hadgottento the point, he alleged, that"hardlyhas a sovereigndeparted his life than the
publicis inundatedwith volumes
purportingo be memoirs,the
storyof his life,
anecdotes of his court."22In Voltaire's own view, only great public events and
events that had major consequences for the course of history deserved to be
recordedand remembered.23 wo decades later, somewhat apologetically,the
matureauthorof theSiecle de Louis XIVdevotedthe concludingfourchaptersof
the politicalpartof his historyto "Particularit6st anecdotesdu regne de Louis
XIV."Anecdotesmay be of interestto the public,he conceded, butonly "when
they concern illustrious personages"("quand ls concernent des personnages
illustres"). n general,however,modem historiography as no place foranything
the most serious, ike LeMonde,excludethemaltogether.The conservativeBarbeyd'Aurevillyantic-
ipatedthatthe newspaperwould destroythe book andwould in turnbe destroyedby thefait divers.
"Lepetit fait le rongera.Ce serason insecte, sa vermine" quotedby Perrot,913).21. "il nous a fallu decouvrirde nouvelles sources duVrai,demandernos documentsauxjournaux,
aux brochures,a out ce monde depapiermort et mrnpris6usqu'ici, aux autographes,aux gravures,'
tous les monuments intimes qu'une 6poque laisse derribreelle." Edmond et Jules de Goncourt,
Histoire de la socijtj frangaise pendant la Revolution (Paris: Bibliotheque Charpentier-Eugene
Fasquelle,1904),v-vi. In a section of thebook devoted to the passionfor the gamingtableduringthe
Revolutionaryperiod,one reads,forinstance,the storyof an addictedgambler:"Mourant,e cheva-
lierBouju,le terribleponte,se fitporterau trenteet unet, dans es brasde ses amis,agonisant,crispant
ses mains sur le tapisvert,comme sur es drapsde son lit de mort, il se gagna,ce cadavre oueur,desuperbes undrailles""Ashe lay dying, thatformidablegambler,chevalierBouju,had himself trans-
portedto a gaminghouse to play trente-et-un.n the armsof his friends,at death'sdoor,clutchingthe
gamingtable like the sheet on his deathbed, hisgamblingcadaverwon a superb uneral or himself")
(26).22. "apeine un souverain cesse de vivre que le public est inond6 de volumes sous le nom de
memoires,d'histoire de sa vie, d'anecdotesde sa cour."
23. Voltaire,Histoirede CharlesXII(Paris:Garnier-Flammarion, 968), 30-31.
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154 LIONELGOSSMAN
that cannot be properlyverified,and thatis often the case with anecdotes.Thus
Procopius'sHistoire secrete de Justinienis not, in Voltaire'sview, a model for
modem historians to follow. It is a satire "motivatedby vengefulness"which
"contradicts he author'spublic history"and"isnot always true."Seventy pagesof anecdotes ater,Voltairerelentshardlyat all.Anecdotes have value only when
they are at least plausible and concern prominent igures in world history."A
philosophermightwell be repelled by so many details. But curiosity,thatcom-
mon failingof mankind,ceasesperhaps o be one, when it is directed owardmen
andtimes thatcommand the attentionof posterity."24In part,Voltaire'sdisdain for anecdotes was consistent with his demand that
historynot be about individual monarchsbut about nations and civilizations. It
is the false view of historyas thestory
ofkings,
heargued,
thatencourages
the
presumptuousbelief that every detail concerningthem and those around them
must be of vast and enduringinterest. Voltaire'smostly negative judgmentof
anecdoteswas also determined,however, by the same classical, fundamentallyconservative esthetics (and politics) that later led the editors of the AnnieLitteraire o condemnRousseau'sConfessionsas an act of literaryarroganceand
presumption."Wherewould we be now,"they protested n 1782, "if every one
arrogatedo himself therightto write andprinteverythingthatconcernshimper-
sonally andthathe enjoys recalling?"25It is hardto read this indignantrejectionof Rousseau's claim thatthe humblest anecdotes
concerningthe
personalife of
an obscuresemi-orphanchild (albeitone who became a famous writer)arewor-
thy of interestas expressing anythingbuta classical (and conservative)desire to
controlthe knowledge of historyandto preserve hierarchy n historyas well as
in society by dictating what should count as importantand worthy of beingrememberedand what should not.
Admittedly, his is a complex matter.As is well known, the eighteenthcentu-
ry was a greatage of anecdotes.A considerablepublishing ndustrywas devoted
to anecdotes on every conceivablesubject--medicine, literature, he theater, he
arts. Voltairewas one ofmany
writers whodeplored
thisdevelopment
as asignof thedecadenceof taste andtheintrusionof thecommercialspirit ntoliterature,
with publishersrushingto please a growing readingpublic allegedly no longer
willing or able to engage seriously with literatureor history.26But that was
almostcertainlya simplificationof the issue. The taste for particulars ather han
extended formal narrativesor arguments,for the concrete privatedetail rather
thanthepublic generality,probablydid reflect a diminutionof traditional ulture
24. "Tantde detailspourraient ebuterun philosophe;maisla curiositd,cettefaiblessesi commune
aux hommes, cesse peut-&tre 'en &treune, quandelle a pour objet des temps et des hommes qui
attirent es regardsde la post6ritd."Voltaire,Siecle de LouisXIV,2 vols. (Paris:Garnier-Flammarion,1966), I, 307, 379.
25. "Otien serions-noussi chacuns'arrogeoit e droit d'dcrireet de faire imprimer ous les faits
qui l'int6ressentpersonnellementet qu'il aime a se rappeler?"Annde littiraire 4 (1782), 150-151,
quotedin FrancoOrlando,"Rousseaue la nascith di una tradizione etteraria: l ricordod'infanzia,"
Belfagor20 (1965), 12.
26. See ChristopherTodd, "Chamfortand the Anecdote,"ModernLanguageReview 74 (1979),
297-309, especially the opening pages.
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 155
in an expandedreadingpublic, a demandfor easy distractionandquickstimula-
tion. But it also had a good deal to do with Enlightenmentempiricism,distrust
of authorityand "authorized"xplanationsof things,andsuspicionof all-encom-
passing systems-in historiographyand ethics, as well as in politics, theology,andphilosophy.
V. ANECDOTESIN HISTORICALWRITING
As it happens,the most common use of anecdotesby historiansappearsnot to
have been especially subversive.Anecdotesusuallyfunctioned n historicalwrit-
ing not as puzzlingorunusual ndividualcases throwingdoubton notions of his-
toricalorder,but as particularnstancesexemplifying and confirminga generalrule or trendor epitomizinga largergeneralsituation.Theparticularn thisusagewas not, as Voltairefearedit might be, disruptiveor destructive of the general,but remained subordinate o the general.The detail or particular tory or anec-
dote was admittedwhen it illustratedhistorical situationsorpersonalitieswhose
generalcharacterandimportancehad alreadybeen established--that is, when it
illustrated, n Voltaire'sown words,"men and times thatcommandthe attention
of posterity."As magistra vitae, early modern history was often a collection of episodes
exemplifyinggeneralrules and lessons of behavior.27 husthe "histories" elat-
ed in the Historische Chronica,published by the celebratedengraverMatthaiusMerian n the 1620s andfrequentlyreprinted,were intendedto demonstrate hat
vice is punishedand virtue rewarded n the same way thatexamples in grammarbooks offer particular llustrationsof the generalrules governing noun declen-
sions and verbconjugations.As a result,particularnarrativesarerelated to each
otherin the Chronicafar more in termsof the virtues or vices they exemplifythanin terms of an internalhistoricalconnectionor relationamong them.Onlythe successionof datesin the margins calculated rom Creationor fromthe birth
of Christ)establishes a loosetemporal
connectedness-
somethingakin to the
connectednessHaydenWhite considers characteristic f annals,as distinctfrom
"narrativized"istories while also serving,atthe sametime, as a signalthatthe
events being narratedare not to be regarded as fables but as having trulyoccurred.Furthermore,f they were to function as exemplary, he stories had to
be relatively short, simple, and easily intelligible in terms of traditionalvalues
and a sharedunderstandingof human beings and the world. The relation of
part-individual short narrativeor anecdote-to whole in this kind of history
27. ChristophDaxelmiiller, "Narratio, llustratio,Argumentatio:Exemplumund Bildungstechnikin der frtihen Neuzeit," in Exempel und Exempelsammlungen,ed. Walter Haug and Burghart
Wachinger(Tiibingen:M. Niemeyer, 1991), 79. In Plutarch--still Rousseau's favorite historian-
"pastevents only become history," hat is they enter the narrativeof history,only "whentheirexem-
plarycharacter, heircapacityto offer (thepresent)models to imitate,releases them from the sphereof the irrevocablyvanished"(EginhardHora,"ZumVerstdindnises Werkes," n GiambattistaVico,
Die neue Wissenschaft Hamburg,1966], 232, quoted by Rudolf Schhifer,Die Anekdote:Theorie,
Analyse,Dialektik[Munich:Oldenbourg,1982], 12).
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156 LIONELGOSSMAN
mightbe described as allegorical.Each anecdote is a singular nstance of a gen-eral rulethat it exemplifiesandpointsto.28
Thelate EnlightenmentandRomantic nvention of Historyas a process,rather
than a simple diachronyor a playingout in varyingsuccessive guises of a limit-
ed repertoryof acts, implieda differentrelationof part o whole, and of anecdote
to history.In conformitywith the shift in literatureand art from Classicism to
Romanticismand fromallegory to symbol,29anecdotesceased to be allegorical,
exemplaryof essentiallyextra- or transhistorical niversal situations.In a world
in which it was held that, in Ranke's famous words,"jede Epoche ist unmittel-
bar zu Gott" ("every age of history stands in an immediate relationto God"),
theirrelationto a largercontextbeyondthem ceased to be conceptual,and came
to be understoodas an internalrelationto an evolving whole, of which the par-
ticularevent recounted n the anecdotewas a relativelyautonomousbut integral
part,as an organis partof a body.This change was underlinedby a new-more
thanmerelypicturesque--emphasison couleur locale and historicalaccuracy n
the representationof costume and mores, in contrastwith the free handlingof
these-the combiningof ancientfiguresand modernattributes, or instance-in
the engravingswith which Merian llustrated he Chronica.30n the new histori-
ography, n sum, the individual incident enshrinedin the anecdote came to be
more like a symptom,to borrowa termfrommedicine,than a sign.It had long been used in that way in
biography.In his "Life of Alexander"
Plutarchdeclaredfamouslythat "a chanceremarkor a joke may reveal farmore
of a man's character hanwinning battles in which thousandsfall, or ... mar-
shalling greatarmies,or laying siege to cities."31Therein,accordingto Plutarch,
28. On the Chronica,see AndreasUrs Sommer,"Triumph erEpisodefiberdie Universalhistorie?
PierreBayles Geschichtsverfliissigungen,"aeculum52 (2001), 1-39, at 15-23. Sommerpointsout
that as the Chronicaapproachedmodem times and the historical material became overwhelmingly
abundant,t became increasinglydifficult to reduce it to the simple termsrequiredby exemplaryhis-
tory."Confrontedby the sheer mass and extentof the materialof modem history,the historiancan-
not controlit or establishanythingbut the most imperfectconnections. As moralist,he has to capitu-
late before the complexity of the material"(22). According to Volker Weber the "Histirchen"of
Wilhelm Schifer (HundertHistbirchenMunich:A. Langen,G. Muiller,1940]) are a modem case of
the use of anecdotes to suggest the underlying similarity of different situations. (VolkerWeber,
Anekdote-Die andere Geschichte,173-174 [as in note 10]).29. See on the important ransition from allegory to symbol, Bengt A. Sorensen,Allegorie und
Symbol:Textezur Theoriedes dichterischenBildes im 18. und riihen 19. Jahrhundert Frankfurt m
Main:Athenium, 1972).30. Sommer,"Triumph erEpisode fiberdie Universalhistorie," 3.
31. "Life of Alexander," n The Age of Alexander: Nine GreekLives, transl. Ian Scott-Kilvert
(Harmondsworth:enguin,1973), 252. Inthe samevein,morerecently,ArthurSchnitzler:"Bydrawingon threestrikinganecdotes rom his life, we maybe ableto take themeasureof a man's characterwith
the sameprecision
hatwe measure he surfaceof atriangleby calculating
herelationamong
hree ixed
points,whoseconnecting ines constitute hetriangle""DasWeseneines Menschen isst sichdurchdrei
schlagkrdiftigenekdotenaus seinem Leben vielleicht mit gleicher Bestimmtheitberechnen,wie der
Flicheinhalteines Dreiecks aus demVerhiltnisdreier ixer Punktezueinander, erenVerbindungsliniendas Dreieck bilden"). (ArthurSchnitzler,Buch der Spriiche und Bedenken, in Aphorismenund
Betrachtungen,d. RobertO.Weiss [Frankfurtm Main:S. FischerVerlag,1967], 53.) Cf. Nietzsche:
"Threeanecdotesmay sufficeto painta pictureof a man"(quotedby CliftonFadiman, ntroductiono
TheLittle,BrownBookofAnecdotes[Boston/Toronto: ittle,Brown andCompany,1985]).
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 157
lay the differencebetween the historianor chroniclerof public events and the
biographer.To the degreethat,with the Romantics,historyitself came to resem-
ble a kind of nationalbiography-Michelet, it will be recalled,boastedof hav-
ing "been the first to presentFrance as a person"("pos6 le premier a France
comme une personne")32-Plutarch'sdistinction between the methods of the
biographerand those of the historianceased to hold. As early as the last thirdof
the eighteenthcenturysome of Chamfort'sanecdotesappearto have had such
symptomaticvalue. A story about the Duke of Hamilton, for instance-who,
being drunkone night,heedlesslykilled a waiter at an inn, and when confronted
with the fact by the horrified nnkeeper,calmly replied:"Add it to the bill"-
seems intended as more thanan allegory of the generalindifferenceof the rich
andpowerful
to thepoor
andpowerless;
it is alsosymptomatic
of the personage
described,the Duke of Hamilton,and--beyond himperhapsof the social rela-
tions of a particularhistoricalmoment,thatof the ancienr6gime.33This is the kind of anecdote we are most familiar with as modernreaders of
history.A couple of examples from Michelet will be enoughto call manyothers
to mind.In the Histoire de FranceMicheletpresentsan anecdote abouta change
in the relationsof d'Aubign6 and Henri IV as symptomaticof a fundamental
change in the political and culturalclimate in generalat the end ot the sixteenth
century.
D'Aubign6ellsof a sad event.TheKing,still haunted y hisbogeyman,he Calvinistrepublic,was determinedo puthim n the Bastille.TheHuguenot,who knewhisroyalmasterwell, nordero be leftinpeace,asked or thefirst ime o be rewardedorhis ser-
vices withmoney, pension.Fromhatpointontheking s sureofhim;he summons im,embraces im;suddenlyheyaregoodfriends.That ameevening,D'Aubign6was hav-
ingsupperwith wonoble-heartedomen.Suddenly, ithout word,oneof thembegantoweepandshedmany ears.
"Forgood, too good reason,"Micheletcomments,giving the sense of the anec-
dote. "Theday D'Aubign6 was obliged to accept a pension and ask for money
the great 16thCenturycame to an end and the otherbegan."34Likewise, in the
section on the Bastille (section IX) in the Introduction o the Histoire de la
32. "Pr6facede 1869,"Histoire de France, Book III,Oeuvrescompletes,ed. P.Viallaneix,21 vols.
(Paris:Flammarion,1971-), VI, 11. See L. Gossman,"JulesMichelet: histoirenationale,biographie,
autobiographie," ittirature102 (1996), 29-54.
33. Chamfort,"Caracteres t anecdotes," n Productsof the Perfected Civilization,appendix 1,
272. A somewhatsimilarpointis made,morebenignly,by ananecdote n which Madamedu Chatelet
admits a manservant nto her bathroomwhile she is naked. There was no more shame in this, to an
aristocraticwoman,thanbeing seen nakedby a dog.34. "D'Aubign6raconteun fait triste. Le roi, revassanttoujoursson 6pouvantail, a r6publique
calviniste,voulait
d6cid6mente mettre
Ba Bastille. Le
huguenot,quile
connoissait,pouravoirenfin
son repos,lui demandepourla premiere ois r6compensede ses longs services,de l'argent,une pen-sion. Des lors, le roi est stirde lui; il le fait venir, il l'embrasse; es voila bons amis. Le meme soir,
d'Aubign6soupaitavec deux dames de noble coeur.Touta coup, l'une d'elles, sansparler,se mit 'a
pleureret versa d'abondantes armes.Avec trop de raison.Le jour oii d'Aubign6avait6t6 forc6 de
prendrepensionet de demanderde l'argent, e grandXVIe siecle 6taitfini, et l'autre6taitinaugur6.""Histoirede FranceauDix-SeptibmeSiecle"(1858), in OeuvresCompletes,ed. PaulVillaneix(Paris:
Flammarion,1982), IX, 153.
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158 LIONELGOSSMAN
RdevolutionFrangaise the essential arbitrariness Michelet considered characteris-
tic of the ancien regime is conveyed by means of an anecdote.
One day,Louis XV's andMadamede Pompadour'sdoctor,the illustriousQuesnay,wholodged with her at Versailles, sees the King enter unexpectedly and becomes
disturbed.The lever Madame de Hausset,the lady-in-waiting,who has left such curious
memoirs, asked him why he was so flustered."Madame,"he replied, "when I see the
King, I say to myself: There is a man who can have my head cut off." "Oh!" she said,"theKingis too kind."
Michelet again concludes the anecdote by explaining its significance. "The lady
in waiting summed up in a single word here all the safeguards offered by the
monarchy."35
35. "Le mddecinde Louis XV et de Madamede Pompadour,'illustreQuesnay,qui logeaitchezellei Versailles,voit unjour le Roi entreri l'improvisteet se trouble.La spirituelle emme de chambre,Madamede Hausset,quia laiss6de si curieuxMemoires, ui demandapourquoi l se d6concertait insi.
'Madame,'repondit-il, quand e vois le Roi, je me dis: Voila un hommequi peutme fairecouperla
t -te.'- 'Oh!,' dit-elle, 'le Roi est trop bon.' La femme de chambrerdsumait a1d'un seul mot les
garantiesde la monarchie."Histoire de la revolutionfrangaise,2 vols. (Paris:Editions de la Pl6iade,1952), II, 67. Manyotherexamplescould be cited. Describingthe drasticallydiminishedauthorityof
the monarchy n the years precedingthe Revolution,Philippede S6gurexpressesconfidencein his
Mimoires that"Onpeuten juger parune anecdote."He thenproceedsto tell how one dayhe raninto
the Comtede Laureguais,whose witty and cynical sayingsandwritingshad made him the objectof
countless "lettres de cachet"-referred to gaily by the Count as "ma correspondenceavec le roi."
Laureguaiswas strollingaboutopenlyin a placewhere there was horse-racingand to which members
of the Courthadthereforebeen attractedn largenumbers.Remembering hat hecounthadbeen exiled
far from Parisby a recent "lettrede cachet,"Sdgurwent up to him and warnedhim that his brazenly
showinghimselfthere was an imprudent rovocation hatcould have seriousconsequences or him.In
response,Laureguais implylaughed.His escapade, Segurobserves,could not havepassedunnoticed,"andyet it went unpunished."Mimoires,souvenirs et anecdotespar M. le Comtede Sigur, ed. M. F.
Barribre[Paris: Firmin Didot, 1859], 90-91). In his pathbreakingHistoire de la Conquete de
l'Angleterre ar les Normandsof 1825,AugustinThierry requentlyprovides"anecdotalllustration(s)of the life and mannersof the natives"andof the effect of the conqueston the haplessSaxons.A typ-ical introduction o one of those anecdotes(which tells of the persecutionand spoliationof a certain
Brithstanby the NormanprovostRobertMalartais)runs:"Acircumstancewhichoccurredsome time
before this may throw some light uponthese decrees,whichdespoiledthe unhappySaxons of every-
thing" Historyof the Conquestof England by theNormans, ransl.W. Hazlitt[London:Bohn, 1856],I, 362-363 [BookVII]).Guizot relatesananecdote, n his Historyof England,aboutArchbishopSharp
being setuponand,despitehis pleasformercy, stabbed o deathby Scottish Covenantersas he passedin a carriagewith his daughter hrough he environs of St.Andrews.The anecdote s intendedto epit-omize the cruelty and lawlessness of those "armedfanatics,"as Guizot calls the Covenanters(A
PopularHistoryof England rom the Earliest Timesto theReign of QueenVictoria New York:John
W.Lowell,n.d.],III,378 [chap.30]).DescribingQueenMary'spersecutionof theProtestants,he nine-
teenth-centuryEnglishhistorian,JohnRichardGreen,insertsa one-pagenarrative bout a single indi-
vidual,RowlandTaylor, he Vicar of Hadleigh,on the grounds hat t "tells us more of the work which
was nowbegun(thepersecutionandtheexecutions),and of theeffect it was likely to produce i.e. stiff-
enedresistance), hanpages of historicdissertation"AShortHistory of theEnglishPeople [NewYork,
Cincinnati,and Chicago:AmericanBook Co., n.d.], 365 [TheReformation.Sect. II, chap. 30]). The
same basic approacho anecdote s still evidentin Eileen Power's MedievalPeople (Harmondsworth:PenguinBooks, 1957), a successful work of modem social andeconomic history,firstpublishedin
1924. Powerchose to presenther accountof medieval society by means of six portraitsof "ordinary
people," n thebelief, as she putit, that"thepast maybe made to live againforthegeneralreadermore
effectively by personifying t thanby presenting t in the form of learnedtreatiseson the developmentof themanoror on medieval trade,essentialas these areto the specialist" Preface,7). Anecdotesplaytheircustomaryrole in the construction f Power's portraits;n addition,each portrait n itself mightbe regardedas a kind of extendedanecdoteepitomizinga largergeneralsituation.
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 159
VI. THETRUTH OF HISTORICALANECDOTES
Being passedaround
bywordof mouth orborrowed
byone writer rom
another,most often associated with the private sphere,and almost always unverifiable,
anecdotes were generally regardedas of doubtfulveracity by "modem"histori-
ans determined to apply to their work the critical methods elaborated at the
beginningof the eighteenthcentury.36n parallelsof HerodotusandThucydides,the Fatherof History did not usually come out well. But if the meaning of an
anecdotewere to be soughtless in its factualaccuracythanin what it conveyedabout states of mind andgeneraltrends,theneven when its factualveracitywas
in doubt it might still be thoughtof as in some way illuminatinghistoricalreali-
ty. Prosperde Barante, or instance, ustifiedhis method of closely following thechronicleaccounts,on whichhe basedhis immensely popularHistoire des Ducs
de Bourgognede la Maison de Valois n the thirddecade of the nineteenthcen-
tury,by claiming that the "naive"vision of the chroniclerswas in itself as his-
toricallysignificantas any fact, since it told a greatdeal abouthow the men and
women of an earlierage thoughtand felt. ProsperM6rim6e's ustificationof the
anecdotein the Preface to his Chroniquedu Regne de CharlesIX was similar.
"Anecdotes are the only thing I like in history,"he declared("Je n'aime dans
l'histoireque les anecdotes").Traditionalhistorians, o whom the only historyis
political, military,anddynastic,would doubtless consider this"not a very digni-fied taste,"buthe himself "wouldwillingly give Thucydidesfor some authentic
memoirsby Aspasiaor by a slave of Pericles."37
Somethingof the characterBurckhardtaterascribedto myth in his Cultural
Historyof Greece was thus attributedo the anecdote: thatis to say, it was seen
as an essentiallypopularor communalcreation, he validityof which resides not
so much in the accuracywith which it reportsparticularpositive facts as in its
abilityto reflectthe general realityunderlying hose facts or the generalview of
thatreality.It was thus the truerawmaterialof the culturalhistorian.Burckhardt
himself made the connection between anecdote and myth. "The oral traditiondoes not cleave to literalexactness,"he declared n a lectureon "TheScholarlyContribution f the Greeks,""butbecomes typical;that is to say that it does not
36. On hearing a string of anecdotes about a famous figure of the day, Kant is said to have
remarked: Itseems to me I recall similar anecdotes aboutothergreat figures.Butthat s to beexpect-ed. Greatmen arelike high church owers: aroundboth thereis aptto be a greatdeal of wind"(quot-ed by Fadiman,Little,Brown Book of Anecdotes).Investigatinganecdotesaboutlocal characters n
relatively small communities,SandraK. D. Stahl reports hat such anecdotes,"presumed o be true
by the local populace . . . are often made up of motifs found in otherregionsas well" ("TheLocal
CharacterAnecdote,"Genre 8 [1975], 283-302).
37. ProsperM6rim6e,Chroniquedu Rhgnede CharlesIX (Paris:Nelson, n.d.), 6; A Chronicleofthe Reignof CharlesIX in The Writingsof ProsperMdrimde, ntroductionby GeorgeSaintsbury,6
vols. (New York:Croscup& Holby,1905), VI, v-vi. Inthe middle of the eighteenthcenturya similar
argumenthadbeen proposedby the antiquarianLaCurnede Sainte-Palayeas ajustificationfor schol-
arly studyof the OldFrenchromances.Accordingto Sainte-Palaye, he very anachronisms nderrors
of the old romanceswere historicallyrevealing(L. Gossman,Medievalism and the Ideologies of the
Enlightenment:The Worldand Workof La Curne de Sainte-Palaye [Baltimore:Johns Hopkins
UniversityPress, 1968], 247-253).
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160 LIONELGOSSMAN
cleave to a factuallyexact groundingof the events narrated,butbringsout their
innersignificance,what is characteristicaboutthem, whathas a generalhuman
or popularcontent. Often an anecdote is all that remains of a long chain of
events, circumstances,andpersonalities."38Infact,historiansdo not shrink,on occasion, frominvokinganecdotes,forthe
truthof which they freely admitthey cannotvouch. Voltairerelates an anecdote
about a priest who dared to take the King to task in a sermon he preachedat
Versailles.Theanecdoteculminates n a "pointe," hememorablypointedremark
characteristicof the classic eighteenth-centuryanecdote: "We are assured that
Louis XIV was satisfiedto addresshim thus: 'Father . . I am happyto accept
my share of a sermon,but I do not like being the targetof one.'"39Whether he
King actuallyspoke those words or not, Voltaireconcedes, they are instructive
andrevealing.In Burckhardt'swork, as one mightexpect, the "fictional"anec-
dote serves an unequivocally historical function. In Part I, Section 3 of The
Civilizationof the Renaissance in Italy"anold story,one of those which are true
andnot true,everywhereandnowhere," s recounted o illustrate"thethorough-
ly immoralrelation"between city governmentsandpowerfulcondottieri n fif-
teenth-century taly.Inthe following section Burckhardt ites another"legendary
history,"which,he says, "is simplythe reflection of the atrocities"perpetrated y
38. "Uberdas wissenschaftlicheVerdienstder Griechen"(lecturegiven in Basel on 10 November
1881),in JacobBurckhardt,Votriige, d. E. Diirr,3rd ed. (Basel:Schwabe,1919), 188-89.Burckhardtgoes on to describe theprocessof creationof an anecdote n termsreminiscentof his defense of mythin theGriechischeKulturgeschichte: Inthemeantime,of course,the narrators ave also filled out the
storyas it passedfrom mouth to mouth,not onlyby drawingon other nformationbutby drawingon
the generalnatureof the situation n question;they have addedcolor to it and recreated t; they have
in shortattributed o the most celebratedrepresentativesof certain human situations and relations
whathappened n them at one or another ime. Thus the lives of most of the well-knownGreeksare
full of traits hathave been observed n others ike themand arethen transferred o them--on neprete
qu'auxriches and modemcritics have aneasy time of it exposingsuch fictions. ... Yetthis typical,anecdotalmaterial s also historyin its way--only not in the sense of the singularevent,but rather n
the sense of whatmighthave happenedat anytime ("desIrgendwannvorgekommenen"),nd often it
is so beautifully expressive that we would on no account want to do without it." Duringthe First
WorldWara similar ustificationof the anecdotewas offeredby the editor of a Germancollection of
anecdotesdevoted to the War anddoubtlessdesignedto raise morale.(It was one of a series of four-
teen immensely popularanecdotebooks put out in the early twentiethcentury by Lutz of Stuttgart,each one devoted to a particularsubject, such as Bismarck, the Hohenzollerns,the Habsburgs,
Bluecher,Frederick he Great,Napoleon, Schiller,etc.) Like Burckhardt,he editor claimed not that
the stories were true (in fact these "Anekdoten" re a mixed bag of anti-Englishpoems and songs,
newspaperreports, supposedlettersfrom or to the front,as well as classic anecdotes),but thatthey
gave an authenticpictureof the spiritof the Germanpeople at the time, its grittyenergyin adversity,its pride, its humor,its capacity for laughterand for tears, its ability to celebrate triumphsand to
mourn losses: "ein getreues Seelengemdilde des deutschen Volkes" (Der grosse Krieg. Ein
Anekdotenbuch, d. ErwinRosen, 9th ed. [Stuttgart:RobertLutz, n.d.]). After the War, n the late
1920s,the anecdotewas
again justifiedas "the
onlyvalid artistic form of cultural
history"in the
Introductiono Egon Friedell's Kulturgeschichte er Neuzeit: Die Krisis der europdiischeneele von
derschwarzenPest bis zumersten Weltkrieg, vols. (Munich:C. H. Beck, 1927-1931), I, 18: "Pars
pro toto: this is not the least effective or vivid of figures.Often a single handmovementcan charac-
terize an individual,a single detail an entireevent, more sharply,more essentially,andwith greaterforce thanthe most detaileddescription."
39. "On assurequeLouisXIV se contentade lui dire: 'Monpere ... j'aime bien a prendrema partd'un sermon,maisje n'aime pas qu'on me la fasse."' Voltaire,Sihclede LouisXIV, I, 367.
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 161
the petty tyrantsof the fifteenthcentury.40mplicit n suchuse of anecdotes s the
ideathat,even if they arenot factuallytrue,theirvery fabricationandsuccess are
in themselves a kind of evidence.
VII. CRITICALUSES OFANECDOTESIN PASTHISTORIOGRAPHY
Alongside the predominantly onfirmatoryuses of anecdoteby historians,there
is also, but more rarely,a negativeuse. In additionto the histoiresecrete tradi-
tion, stemmingfrom Procopius41 and alludedto earlier,whatone might call the
"Cleopatra's-nose necdote"aims to debunkgrandgeneralargumentsabout his-
tory by finding the cause of major historical transformations n some minor
"anecdote" r"particularit6istorique,petit
fait curieuxdont le recitpeut
6clair-
er le dessous des choses" ("ahistoricalparticularity, small curious fact whose
telling can reveal the undersideof things"),to borrowone of the Dictionnaire
Robert's definitions of the word "anecdote."Several examples of this use of
anecdote are to be found in John Buchan's 1929 Rede lecture at Cambridge
Universityon "TheCausal andthe Casual in History."The defeat of the Greeks
in the Warof 1922, for instance,andthe resultingconsolidationof the revolution
of Kemal Ataturk n Turkey,are traced via a chain of causally connected inci-
dentsto thedeath, n the autumnof 1920, of theyoungKingAlexanderof Greece
from the bite of apet monkey
in thepalace gardens.
"Icannot,"
Buchan con-
cludes, "betterMr.Churchill'scomment: 'A quarterof a million personsdiedof
thatmonkey'sbite."'42
The Cleopatra's-noseanecdotedoes not producea richer and more complex
history than the grand narratives-of which the Marxist was probably the
grandest-that it purports o undercut;on the contrary, t presentsa drastically
simplified one. The opposite effect may be produced,however, by anecdotes
that offer themselves neither as links in a simple causal chain nor-in the styleof the Romantics-as partsof a whole, from which they derive their meaningand which
theyin turn
epitomize.Anecdotes as
fragmentsof some undeci-
pheredwhole, as instancesthatresist neat interpretation,arfromconsolidatingwhat we think we know, may cause us to question it and provoke inquiryinto
it. Such anecdotes will have to be different,however, from the classic, well-
designed anecdote, with its triadic structureof exposition, confrontationor
encounter,and "pointe"or punch line, since that form of anecdote works pre-
cisely to the degree that it can count, like traditionaltheater,on commonlysharedassumptionsto drive home its meaning despite, or even because of, its
brevity.If an anecdote is to be trulydisruptiveand disorienting,it cannothave
40. JacobBurckhardt,TheCivilizationof theRenaissance in Italy, ed B. Nelson and C. Trinkaus,2 vols. (New York:HarperandRow, ColophonBooks, 1958), 1,40, 49.
41. Now largely neutralized, f one can judge by a series of so-called "histoiressecretes"of theFrenchprovinces currentlybeing putout by the publishinghouse of Albin Michel in Paris.
42. JohnBuchan,TheCausal and the Casual in History(Cambridge,Eng.:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1929), 19-20.
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162 LIONELGOSSMAN
the structural oherencethatthe classic anecdotepossesses in farhigherdegreethanhistoryitself.43
The disruptiveor negativeanecdotecan alreadybe foundin PierreBayle, and
a little laterDiderot took delightin demonstrating ow undecipherablehe real-
ity behind a seemingly transparent tory may be. The most ardentchampionof
the anecdoteas a disruptiveelementmay in fact be a novelist rather han a his-
torian. "Justthink,"wrote the author of Le Rouge et le Noir, itself developedfromafait diversreported n the newspapers,"Just hinkthat whatfools despiseas gossip is, on the contrary,he only historythat n this affectedage gives a true
pictureof a country. ... We needto see everything,experience everything,make
a collection of anecdotes."44Not the contrived narrativeof history,in short,but
onlythe anecdote,understoodas a naive, unreflected,andunvarnished
eportof
a fragmentof reality,offersreliableclues to the way things are (or were), unal-
tered by eitherideological or formal-estheticelaboration.As the only window
onto realityas it is, rather han as we have pre-shaped t, the anecdotevaluedbyStendhalcouldnot, obviously,be the polished productof salon wits that findsits
way into the anecdote books. Its chief meritbeing that it is "exactementvraie"
("exactlytrue"), t could not, in Stendhal'sown view, be "fortpiquante" "very
snappy").It could not, in otherwords, be literature.45t is because this kind of
anecdote is raw, unpolished,not "piquante,"hatit is more easily found in the
provinces, accordingto Stendhal,or in
legaldocuments or
newspapers,han in
the spoiled andcultivated circles of the capital.As anynarrative elling,howevernaive, involves a minimummeasureof shap-
ing according o a priori moral,psychological, epistemological, literary,and lin-
guistic categories,there was something inherentlyparadoxicalaboutStendhal's
43. See, for instance, Richard N. Coe, "The Anecdote and the Novel: A Brief Inquiryinto the
Originsof Stendhal's NarrativeTechnique,"Australian Journalof French Studies22 (1985), 3-23:
"In the remoteroriginsof all narrative iterature heremay be discerned two fundamental lements:
history,which creates out of 'reallife' a model of quasi-arbitrary,ut strictlychronologicaldevelop-
ment, retailingfacticity from day to day; and the anecdotewhich, startingfrom a factual-historical
'happening,'proceedsto refashion t in terms of structural oherence, endowingit with a beginning,middleandend,and mbuing t withsignificanceandpoint. History maywell be haphazard ndshape-
less, andyet command attentionnonetheless because 'that'show it was'; the anecdotedepends,for
its viability, entirelyon its formalstructure--afact which in no way contradicts ts necessarydepen-denceupona profoundsubstructure f historically,sociallyorpsychologicallyverifiable ruth"3). In
his studyof Brecht's"anti-anecdotes,"Walter-Ernst chifer highlightsthe structureddramatic orm
of the anecdoteandits dependence, ike the drama,on stereotypesand sharedassumptions.These re
what Brecht set out to deconstruct."Eine'epischeAnekdote'muss diese Gattung iberhaupt prengenundErzihlungoderRomanan ihre Stelle treten assen"("An'epic anecdote' shouldexplodethe very
genre of anecdote and replaceit with an extended narrativeor a novel") (Schhfer,Anekdote-Anti-
anekdote,29).44.
"Songez quece
queles sots
meprisentous le nomde
commerage,est aucontraire a seulehis-
toirequi dans ce siecle d'affectationpeigne bien un pays ... il faut tout voir, tout6prouver,aire un
recueil d'anecdotes."Stendhal,Mdmoiresd'un touriste, I, in Oeuvrescompletes,ed. Victor Del Litto
and ErnestAbravenel(Paris/Geneva:SlatkineReprints,1986),XV, 174 (datedLyon,24 May, 1837);Journallittiraire, 25 frimaire,anXI (16 December 1802), in Oeuvrescompletes,XXXIII,31.
45. "Le premiermrrite du petitnombre d'anecdotesqui peuventfaire le saut du manuscriptdans
l'imprim6 erad'8treexactementvraies,c'est annoncerqu'ellesne serontpasfortpiquantes"Mdmoiresd'un touriste, n Oeuvrescompletes,XV, 189, citedin Coe, "TheAnecdoteand theNovel,"9.
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 163
requirement. t is fascinating o follow his desperateattempts o protect he anec-
dotes he valued from such shaping-to the extent that he sometimes refrained
altogetherfromgiving them verbal form andconfined himself to a simple refer-
ence, such as "Mlle Camp's reply to her lover"("Rdponsede Mlle Camp ... .
son amant")or "heartbreakingnecdote this morning" "anecdoteddchirante e
matin").46 The preservationof authenticityat the expense of communicability
inevitably leaves the reader with an undecipherablenotation.47 It has taken
Stendhalscholarsover a centuryto track down and identify some of these enig-matic references.
Fromourpointof view, the most importantdifferencebetween the unliterary,
radicallyrealistanecdotethatseems to have been Stendhal'spreferenceand the
anecdoteas itappears
n most historical texts lies in the fact that, in traditional
historicalusage, the anecdoteis mainlyborrowed,not found. It hasalreadybeen
worked over andmadeinto literature. t does not lie at the beginningof a histor-
ical investigationor promptone, but is importedfrom a repertoryof anecdotes,
after the historical argumentis already in place, as an illustrative rhetorical
device. In that respect, the Romantic symbolical anecdote does not differ
markedlyfrom the Humanistallegoricalanecdote. In contrast,the anecdote as
Stendhalappearsto have imaginedit is not found after the historicalargumenthas alreadybeendrawnup, but,preciselybecauseit cannot be easily understood
in terms ofexisting
notions ofpast
orpresent reality,
becomes thestartingpointof a longerstory(fictionalor historical) hatexploresthatrealityand seeks a new
understanding f it. The Stendhaliananecdote,in short,disturbs ntellectualrou-
tines and stimulatesnew explorationsof history.
VIII.MODERNHISTORIANS,MICRO-HISTORY, ND THE ANECDOTE
In an essay outlininga proposed "Historyof theAnecdote,"a scholarof Englishliterature bservesthat,"as the narration f a singularevent,"the anecdote s "the
literaryform or
genrethat
uniquelyrefers to the real."
Bythe
veryfact that it
does notrefer to the realthroughdirectdesciriptionorostention,it inevitablyhas
a literarycharacter;nonetheless,Joel Finemaninsists, "howeverliterary,[it] is
neverthelessdirectly pointed towards or rooted in the real," and it is this that
"allowsus to thinkof the anecdote,given its formalif not its actualbrevity,as a
historeme, .e. as the smallestminimalunit of thehistoriographicact."Thefunc-
tion of the anecdote s thusessentiallydisruptive,according o Fineman.His the-
sis, he declares,is "that he anecdote s the literary orm thatuniquelylets histo-
46. Mimoires d'un touriste, n Oeuvrescompletes,XV, 224, cited in Coe, "The Anecdoteandthe
Novel," 9.47. See Coe, "TheAnecdote and the Novel," 8-10, 12, 13 [as in note 43]. Stendhaldid not, of
course,succeed in his endeavor o deconstruct he literaryanecdote.Indeed,he pursued he goal only
intermittentlyand also made use of familiar anecdote forms. In fact, he was not above the kind of
transpositionof anecdotal material from one subject to another to which Kant and Burckhardt
referred: husananecdoteaboutHaydn n Carpani'sbiography,whichStendhalknewinsideout, since
he made abundantuse of it for his own Vie de Haydn,reappearsn Stendhal'sVie de Rossini appliedto the Italiancomposer(Coe, 10-11).
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164 LIONELGOSSMAN
ry happen[italics in text] by virtue of the way it introducesan openinginto the
teleological, and therefore imeless, narration f beginning,middle,and end. The
anecdoteproducesthe effect of the real,the occurrenceof contingency,by estab-
lishing an event withinandyet withoutthe framingcontextof historical succes-
sivity." To Fineman, the Hegelian type of historical narrativeis the "purestmodel" of the kind of "timeless"historicaldesign or grand recit that the anec-
dote disrupts by injecting contingency and thus real, open-endedtime into it.
ThoughI cannot agree with Finemanthat this is how the anecdote has alwaysfunctionedor must,by its very nature, unction, t is, I believe, a fairdescriptionof how Stendhalmay have wanted it to functionandhow it functions for a num-
ber of modem or,moreaccuratelyperhaps,"postmodem"historians.48
The collapse of confidencein the widely acceptedgrandsrdcits
or "metahis-
tories"(Jean-FranqoisLyotard)of the nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies s
also the context in which the ItalianhistorianGiovanniLevi49 situates the suc-
cess of "microhistory," modem, or perhapsone shouldagain say postmodem,formof historythatoften seems to start roman anecdote or a narrativeground-ed in a non-literarysource, such as a court or otherarchivalrecord. One thinks
of Natalie Davis's Returnof MartinGuerre(1983), RobertDarnton'sTheGreat
Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin(1984), Alain Corbin'sLe Village des
cannibales (1990) or, albeit the action takes place in a more elevated social
milieu, EdwardBerenson's The Trialof Madame Caillaux (1992). Whereasin
the heyday of FemandBraudel,"microhistoire"was a pejorativeterm-a char-
acter n RaymondQueneau'sLes Fleurs Bleues of 1965 applied t humorously o
the lowest, pettiestkindof history,"apeine de l'histoire6vdnementielle"50-bythe 1980s, it marked, ormanyhistorians, he discoveryof a new method,as well
as new objects andtopics, of historical nvestigationandanalysis.It did indeed
rejectthehierarchyof historicalobjectsstill adhered o in some measureeven by
Voltaire,but it was defined less by the small-scale and humble characterof its
objects than by its way of looking at all historicalobjects-through a micro-
scopiclens.
48. Joel Fineman, "TheHistoryof the Anecdote,"in The New Historicism,ed. H. Aram Veeser
(New YorkandLondon:Routledge, 1989), 49-76: "Governedby an absolute, nevitable, inexorable
teleological unfolding,so that n principle,nothingcan happen by chance,every moment thatpartic-
ipateswithin such Hegelianhistory,as the Spiritmateriallyunfoldsitself into and untoitself, is there-
by rendered imeless;suchmomentsexist ... outside of time,orin a timelesspresent,andthis because
theirmomentarydurativeappearances alreadybut the guaranteed oreshadow,the alreadyall but
realizedpromiseof the concludingend of historytowardwhich,as but thepassingmoments n a storywhose conclusion is alreadywritten,they tend"(57). Otherquotations rompage 61. One is remind-
ed of Karl-Heinz Stierle's comment that "Die Problematikder Konstitutionvon Geschichten ist ein
Beispiel jener Problematikder Relation von Allgemeinemund Besonderem,die in der Perspektive
Montaignesdie eigentlicheErkenntnisproblematikarstellt" "Theproblemof how historyis consti-tuted is an instance of the widerproblemof the relationof the generaland the particular,which in
Montaigne's perspective, is the essential problemof all knowledge")("Geschichteals Exemplum-
Exemplumals Geschichte,"in Geschichte-Ereignis und Erzdihlung, d. ReinhartKoselleck and
Wolf-DieterStempel [Munich:WilhelmFink, 1973], 375).49. "OnMicrohistory,"n New Perspectives on Historical Writing,ed. Peter Burke(Cambridge,
Eng.: Polity Press, 1991), 93-113.
50. RaymondQueneau,Les Fleurs Bleues (Paris:Gallimard,1965), 85.
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ANECDOTE NDHISTORY 165
Instead of setting out with a set of establishedmacrohistoricalcategories--such as the individual,the family, the state, industrialization,urbanization,and
so on-the new history stayedclose to the ground.Typically,
t workedout from
some limited, often perplexing,incidentor person, in orderto investigate,con-
cretely and withoutpriorparti pris, networksof relations in the small Lebens-
welten in which people actuallylive, with the aim of discoveringunsuspected
patternsof action andinteraction,motivation,andbehavior.By openingup orig-inal fields andmodes of inquiry, t was hoped,the unusualor statisticallyexcep-tional case mightmake it possibleto look behind the well-mappedsurfaceof his-
tory to those "silences de l'histoire"to which Michelet famously referred n a
journalentryfor January30, 1842. One could say that the new historywas doingwhat innovative writers of fiction,
includingMarivaux,Diderot, and Stendhal,
have repeatedlydone, almost always in the name of "realism": hat is, it was
attempting o breakthrough categoriesthatmay once have led to betterunder-
standing,but hadbecome conventionsfacilitatingthe productionof a particularkindof institutionalizeddiscourse.Wherethatdiscourse oftenendedup actingas
a screen rather han a lamp, the new history hoped to serve as a kind of recon-
noissance flareilluminatinga darkenedlandscape.5'
Nothingcould be further rom the polishedminiaturemostly used by histori-
ans in the past, or closer perhaps o thepetit fait social of Stendhal's deally un-
literary anecdote, than thedeliberately
raweight-line recounting
of astrangeincident, followed by an equally brief, puzzlingly contradictorycontemporary
judgmentof it, with which, in a section with-in the originalFrench-the musi-
cal title "Prelude,"Alain Corbinopens Le Village des cannibales (1990; pub-lished in English as The Villageof Cannibals,1992).
Thedate s August16, 1870.Theplace s Hautefaye, communentheNontron istrict
(arrondissement) f the Dordognedipartement.On the fairground,a young noble is tor-tured ortwo hours,then burnedalive (if indeed still alive) beforea mobof threehundred
to eighthundredeoplewho haveaccusedhimof shouting Vive aRepublique!" hen
night falls, the frenziedcrowd disperses,but not withoutboastingof having "roasted"a
"Prussian."omeexpress egret tnothavingnflictedhesamepunishmentntheparishpriest.
The scenenow shiftsforwardn timeto February 871. TherepublicanournalistCharlesPonsacsuppliesdetails hat turn ragedyntohistorical bject:"Never n theannals f crimehastherebeenso dreadful murder.magine!thappenedn broadday-light, n themidstof merrymaking,eforea crowdof thousandssic]!Thinkof it!This
revoltingcrime lackedeven the cover of darkness or an excuse! Dante is rightto say that
man sometimesexhibits a lustmorehideous thanconcupiscence: helust forblood." Laterin the articlewe are told that"thecrime of Hautefaye s in a sense a wholly politicalact."
The enigma of Hautefaye... lies in this tensionbetween horrorandpoliticalrational-
ity.We must therefore urnto
history,to what it was that first
broughthorrorand
politics
51.Inquiringntoneglectandevendisdain f the aitdiversamonghistoriansntilquite ecently,MichellePerrotbserveshat"lechoixdu ong erme,'ambitionmacrostructurelle,esobsessionsusdriel .. nepouvaient u'end6tourner,ommeaussi e peud'indretport6 a 'histoire e la spherepriv6e""the ocuson the ongterm,he nterestnmacrostructures,heobsessionwithquantitativeseries,alongwith helackof interestntheprivatephere, ouldonlydistractrom he aitdivers")("Fait ivers thistoire uXIXeme iecle," 17).
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166 LIONELGOSSMAN
together nd henprizedhemapart,norder oclarifyourunderstandingf whatprovedtobe,inFrance,he astoutburst f peasant age o result n a murder.52
The pointof departure f Corbin'sLes Clochesde la terre(1994; published nEnglish as VillageBells, 1998) is again anecdotal-in this case a series of three
anecdotes about heringingof bells. The firstrelatesanincident n whichagroup
of girls and unmarriedwomen repeatedly rang the bells of the commune of
Brienne in the departmentof Aube on the 4th Frimaireof the year VIII (25
November,1799), in flagrantviolationof laws passedin 1795 and 1796 restrict-
ing the use of bells to nationalfestivals, andin uncomprehending efianceof the
attemptsof the "authorities"o get them to desist.The second anecdotetells of a
riot that broke out in the same place in December 1832 following a decision by
the municipalcouncil to sell one of the village bells-the oldest, knownas the"great"bell-which was cracked,in orderto satisfya requestof the sub-prefect
of Bar-sur-Aube hatthe communepayfor the armingof the local nationalguard.
Finally,in the thirdanecdotewe learn of the uproarcausedin 1958 in the solid-
ly religious commune of Lonlay-l'Abbaye in Normandy by a decision of the
municipalcouncil to have the restoredbell of the local churchresume theancient
traditionof marking he noon hour, n place of the sirenon the roof of the town
hall to which thatfunction--important n a ruralcommunity--had been entrust-
ed afterthe destructionof the churchtowerby the Germans n 1944.53This text
is furtherpunctuatedby innumerable tories of disputesover bells. "Manywillbe astonishedat the idea of treatingbell-ringingas a subjectof historical nves-
tigation,"Corbinconcedes in a forewordto the English translation,"andyet it
offers us privilegedaccess to the world we have lost."54
A few years later,in writingthe life of an unknownclog-maker(Le Monde
retrouvi de Louis-FrangoisPinagot: sur les traces d'un inconnu 1798-1876,
1998;published n Englishas the life of an unknown:The RediscoveredWorldof
a Clog-Maker n NineteenthCenturyFrance, 2001), Corbinseems to havewant-
ed to distance himself even furtherfrom basing his own text on a previously
existing structurednarrative.His "hero" s chosen atrandom, he only conditionof selection being that not a single pre-shapedbiographicalor autobiographicalaccountof him, not even a criminalrecord,was to be found.55
Accordingto Corbinhimself, his storyof Louis-FranqoisPinagotis "notreal-
ly an exercise in micro-history."Whether t is or is not is of less interestthanthe
lengthsto which Corbinwent in order o make sure that the startingpointof his
investigationwouldbe as undeterminedas possible. Pinagothimself was select-
ed not simply by excluding any figurewho "left an unusual record of anykind"
52. Alain Corbin,The Village of Cannibals:Rage and Murder in France, 1870,transl. Arthur
Goldhammer Cambridge,Eng.:Polity Press, 1992), 1.
53. Alain Corbin,Les Cloches de la terre:paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnesau XIXesibcle (Paris:Albin Michel, 1994), 9-13.
54. Corbin, VillageBells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th CenturyFrench Countryside, ransl.
MartinThom (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1998), ix.
55. Corbin, helife of an unknown:TheRediscoveredWorld f a Clog-Makern NineteenthCentury
France, transl.ArthurGoldhammer New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2001), viii, ix, x.
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ANECDOTEAND HISTORY 167
or about whom any personalor family recollectionsremained,but by the histo-
rian'spicking out, eyes closed, "a volume from the inventoryof the municipal
archives... on which(his) handhappen(ed)
o fall"- which turnedout to be that
for the commune of Origny-le-Butin,"a nondescript ocality, a tiny cell in the
vast tissue of Frenchcommunes,"one, moreover,that "like so many othertiny
communes . . . has vanished from memory in the same way as its individual
inhabitants."Two names were finally chosen "atrandom" rom the decennial
tables of vital statistics for the late eighteenthcentury.Only here did the histori-
an intervene:one of the two was eliminated because he died young and thus
would have been of limited heuristicvalue.
It is hardto imagine a startingpoint more at odds with thatof Wittgenstein's
Poker, with which Ibegan
thispaper.
Corbin'staskwas not to fill in anexistingstructure,o elaboratean existing story,as EdmondsandEidinow do. Therewas
no such structure.His startingpointwas a cipher,a mysteryabout which every-
thing hadto be learned.Moreover,the aim was not to make Pinagothimself an
objectin his world,but to use him "like a filmmakerwho shoots a scene throughthe eyes of a characterwho (himself) remains off screen,"in order to "painta
portraitof his world as he mighthave seen it, to reconstitutehis spatialand tem-
poral horizon,his family environment,his circle of friends,his community,as
well as his probablevalues andbeliefs."56Between the historianandhis charac-
ter the distance remainsunbridged
andunbridgeable.
Unlike Edmonds and
Eidinow,Corbindoes not presenthimself as an omniscient narratordescribinga
world of readilyidentifiableandintelligibleobjects,relations,andpersonalities,
but as a historically imited subject engaging with otherhistoricallylimited and
deeply unfamiliarsubjects.Conjuringaway the strangenessof the otheris not
partof Corbin'shistoriographical roject.
Comparedwith the experimentaland exploratorywork of Davis, Darnton,
Corbin,andothers,Wittgenstein's okermust strikeone, in the end, as "potted"
history,skillfully cobbled togetherfrom other books by a couple of intelligent
andwell-readjournalists.
Like alarge
class of traditionalanecdotes anecdotes
of Napoleon,Bismarck,Churchill,De Gaulle, andso on-the openinganecdote
of Wittgenstein'sPoker is a well-structurednarrative nvolving a famous indi-
vidual about whom the reader can be expected to have the usual common
notions.Characteristicallylso, it has been borrowed romthepublicdomainand
is not itself the productof historical research or discovery.Not surprisingly, t
producesfairly predictableresultsand does not contribute o the opening up of
new historicalquestionsor lead to new areasof historicalexploration.
As a structuredorm,writtenor
oral,that is
passedfrom hand to hand or mouth
to mouthand, transcending he particular ircumstances t relates, thatpretends
to a broadersignificance, the anecdote depends on, epitomizes, and confirms
generallyacceptedviews of the world,humannature,andthe humancondition.
It may be invoked to illustratea problemor even a paradox,but it will not usu-
57. Ibid., 12.
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168 LIONELGOSSMAN
ally lead to a rethinkingof the terms of the problemor paradox.In contrast,as
an unpublished,often secret record of events excluded fromthe official record,
anecdotesmay challengethe historian o expandand revise establishedor autho-
rizedviews of a historicalsituation, event, or personalityor of human behavior
generally.In the modern guise of thefait divers, thatis, as a rawjournalisticor
archivalreportof a striking, disturbing,or perplexingevent or behavior,anec-
dotesmay likewise provokea reconsideration f what we believe we know about
historyandsociety and lead us to considerpreviouslyunobservedaspectsof the
past.As Marc Ferronotes, the "fortuitous ncident"-dismissed as a non-event
by churches, governments, political parties, and similar established institu-
tions-is in fact a "necessityof (the writingof) history ... a privilegedhistori-
cal object" n that it serves as an "indicateurdesant6,"
a signalof trouble n the
textureof society, politics, the economy,or the prevailingvalue system.57
Princeton University
57. MarcFerro, "Presentation," nnales 38 (1983), 824-825.
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