Robert Grudin: Which is most important: History or Interpretations of history?

III.4

From his exile at San Casciano, Machiavelli wrote a friend that he spent much time reading the works of ancient writers, adding curiously that he asked them questions which they "answered."  What he probably meant was that, like Machiavelli himself, the ancients wrote subtly, that they raised questions in the reader's mind and encouraged him to seek out the answers to these questions between the lines, in the stylistic and structural implications of their work.  Good historians treat the past in general this way, asking it questions rather than contenting themselves with its overt and specific messages.  And intelligent individuals treat their memories in the same way, realizing that their past is no more finished or dead than their ability to understand it. 

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living

What's most important about history is not the events nor even the overt or specific lessons learned from it.  Apparently one should go further than merely look at surface events and look into the questions raised by these surface phenomena.  This certainly argues against a literal interpretation of texts and suggests that the important issues are those questions raised by those phenomena. 

And, this last sentence seems perplexing to me, for it includes memories as well as history and could one argue that memories can be seen as one's private history?

And intelligent individuals treat their memories in the same way, realizing that their past is no more finished or dead than their ability to understand it. 


What does Grudin mean when he says that the past is no more finished or dead than their ability to understand it? Longfellow in his "A Psalm of Life" would certainly disagree here for he insisted that we should "Let the dead Past bury its dead!"

Is Grudin arguing that our past is only as dead as our ability to understand it, or even more curiously is no more finished than (our) ability to understand it?"  Does our past change as our ability to understand it changes?

If so, then what is the relationship between our past and our memories of the past?