History Lesson – Part III

"It is a suggestion, I think, of Schopenhauer (to whom Borges turns as often as he does to Berkeley), that what we remember of our own past depends very largely on what of it we've put our tongue to telling and retelling. It's our words, roughly, we remember: oblivion claims the rest––forgetfulness. Historians make more history than the men they write about, and because we render our experience in universals, experience becomes repetitious (for if events do not repeat, accounts do), and time doubles in confusion like a hound which has lost the scent."

Willian H. Gass, "Imaginary Borges and His Books", page 126-127