On the vagaries of collective memory, and whether they
matter.
Is it just as simple as the need for rhymes? That’s long
been the predominant theory for why Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow wrote his poetic ballad about “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”
instead of Revere’s fellow rider William
Dawes. There seems to be some truth to that, but it’s also true that by
1860, when Longfellow composed his poem, Revere was already significantly better remembered in
our Revolutionary histories than Dawes. Longfellow’s easily memorized bit of
verse certainly cemented that status and permanently relegated Dawes to a
distant second fiddle; but somehow, Revere seems to have been the front-runner
from the very first lighting of those lanterns.
Whatever the timeline and reasons, clearly our collective
memories feature Paul Revere far more fully than they do William Dawes. But
does it matter? After all, few American actions have been as much about shaping
the present, impacting the immediate moment and its vital needs, as the two men’s
rides—had they not succeeded in warning the colonists of the Redcoats’ imminent
arrival, it’s entirely possible that there would be no America, or at least
that its Revolution would have gotten off to a significantly different and less
victorious start. Which is to say, what William Dawes did in his life echoes in eternity
precisely as much as does Revere’s ride, and no disparity in memory can change
that shared influence.
And yet. Obviously I believe that remembering our histories
with more accuracy and complexity matters, and Dawes presents a case in point. For
one thing, I’d say it’s pretty significant that the midnight ride was a joint
endeavor—we love our rugged individuals here in America, but so much of the
time it really takes a village, or at least a couple of guys coordinating their
efforts, to get the job done. And for another thing, better remembering Dawes
would help us to recognize how constructed and over-simplified and mythic our national
narratives tend to be—which might be fine for a ballad about
a larger-than-life hero, but is woefully inadequate when it comes to the
dynamic messiness that is history. It might be a lot harder to fit “The
midnight rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes” into a rhyme scheme and rhythm,
that is, but we most definitely need to fit them into our collective memories.
Next remembering tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment