Agreement expressed by the author of the article.

It’s a beautiful, moral world, a world made for angels the one we live in. Every time we seem to be touching the past, we come across the lies we have been served at school. Mr. Edison lives with us as the good old man who offered the electric lamp, the phonograph and the motion pictures to humanity. He turned out a ruthless businessman who used to hire bullies to beat or shoot his rivals. Pablo Picasso has been famous just for being an ingenious artist. In reality he was a “sadistic bastard who used to beat his (numerous) wives whose body bore scorches from his cigarettes”. Arthur Koestler was the rebel against the Stalinist regime, author of the book entitled The Naught and the Infinite. He was proved to be a serial rapist.

There had always been a worldwide conspiracy of silence regarding all the geniuses in history. The world had turned them to flawless, lifeless, marble statues. Their work, their spirit would cover every shadow in their personality, everything that would unveil their flaws. That was the attitude expressed by a society wishing to exalt them to the skies. A society that created heroes used to excruciate posterity.

Yet, how important is to us the fact that we are aware of Einstein’s insensitivity to his kins’ afflictions? Is it just that we are striving to look through the keyhole of history, or is it that we are just struggling to fit all these Great people in our own size? Are we in pursuit of the so called “yes, but…” that would justify our own pettiness? Things are not just like that! Any detail conveyed through history ought to be conveyed as a whole. The educational role of the past cannot be carried out in half-truths. We ought to learn history the way it really is. If we don’t, we are doomed to lose ourselves in its obscure corners…

By Pashos Mandravelis.

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