Sphinx

Have just finished the paper that I’m giving in Freiburg on Thursday evening on Thukydides und der moderne Geschichtsbegriff, focusing on the fascinating 1842 book on the subject by the later historical economist Wilhelm Roscher, and thought that I could easily make it available here for any readers of German who might be interested. It’ll be just the second time that I’ve attempted to give a paper in German – I do strongly believe in trying to do this, as a blow against the increasing dominance of English in the world of classics and ancient history, but it’s a fairly terrifying prospect for someone like me who is essentially self-taught (albeit I read a lot of novels and detective fiction in German, and regularly watch Biathlon). This is, therefore, simply a revised version of the first paper I ever gave in German, in Bielefeld in 2011, and it’s basically a modified translation of a paper that I’ve given a few times in English and have now published in the collection on the modern reception of Thucydides I edited with Katherine Harloe.

I don’t normally give papers that have already appeared in print – I’d find it boring to listen to someone re-hashing stuff I’d already read, so I don’t think I should do it to other people – but the fact that this is in a different language gives me, I think, license to bend that principle. In fact I even considered at one point trying to publish this paper in German (back in the days when I was still fully signed up to the “get stuff published in prestigious journals as much as possible or else” agenda), on the basis that it wasn’t too much like self-plagiarism to publish similar stuff in different languages, but thought better of it; I’ve promised some German colleagues that I will at some point get round to finishing a related but more general piece based on the book I’m currently trying to finish (which won’t be appearing as an English article, so I think that it’s a bit more legitimate).

It’s actually only in the last couple of years that I’ve managed to break the habit of writing something completely different for every occasion, and have given the same paper a couple of times before getting round to writing it up. It does make life a little easier… The problem for the first few years of my career was that the only invitations I received to speak related to the book of the thesis, which I didn’t want to re-hash and so had to write something new on a similar theme even if I really wanted to talk about something else – and indeed I still seem to get some invitations on that theme, perhaps because I’ve perpetuated the idea that this is a major interest of mine by continuing to write about it (well, I do still find it interesting). It’s got better since I started getting open invitations to speak at research seminars, but it’s still the case that sometimes what I’m working on at the moment isn’t necessarily suited to the interests of my hosts, or isn’t yet in a fit state for public presentation, and so I add another paper to the list of ‘things I really should think about writing up properly, if only I didn’t have other stuff to do first’.

There has to be a limit to how many times one can trot out the same old paper before everyone gets sick of it – or, more likely, it feels stale and unprofitable to its author. On the other hand, producing something new for every occasion might be seen as a terrible waste of time and resources, a symptom of our throwaway society, always desperate for novelty…

Update: Well, that’s a good start; it has just been pointed out that I’ve got my genders confused, and so the title should be Thukydides und der moderne Geschichtsbegriff. Corrected above, but not in the actual paper as I don’t have time at the moment…