The Shape of Time by George Kubler

“The historian’s special contribution is the discovery of the manifold shapes of time. The aim of the historian, regardless of his specialty in erudition, is to portray time. He is committed to the detection and description of the shape of time. He transposes, reduces, composes, and colors a facsimile, like a painter, who in his search for the identity of the subject, must discover a patterned set of properties that will elicit recognition all while conveying a new perception of the subject. He differs from the antiquarian and the curious searcher much as the composer of new music differs from the concert performer. The historian composes a meaning from a tradition, while the antiquarian only re-creates, performs, or re-enacts an obscure portion of past time in already familiar shapes. Unless he is an annalist or a chronicler the historian communicates a pattern which was invisible to his subjects when they lived it, and unknown to his contemporaries before he detected it.”

-George Kubler, 1962