Edited story: prompt, Luminary
This is a polished version of the piece I wrote for brigits_flame , by the prompt "Luminary". Thanks go to vyvyan_wilde , for editing it and giving me a lot of really helpful suggestions.
In history class, I was always half-listening, half-formulating stories. We would be learning about the Middle Ages, for instance, and my mind would conjure up the tale of a young boy raised as an impoverished boy, living as an impoverished man, and dying as an impoverished farmer. Maybe along the way, though, he would bump into a famous man-impress a high lord of some sort-win favour, and rise out of his peasant class. Then the teachers would announce, “Revolutions come from the top down, because without the knowledge that there’s something better out there, why would you care?” And I would realize that the story of Medieval-period boys rising to the rank of king or leading a rebellion was hopeless.
That story now historically inaccurate, I would turn to the next topic. While studying King Louis XIV’s extravagant lifestyle, the images of corresponding courts in England, in Russia, in Scotland or Prussia would emerge. I imagined the cold stone halls with fluttering tapestries, or the scheming politicians, heads bent together, plotting to depose one king or another. Or perhaps a quick glimpse of military with feathers and cavalry, poised before their monarch, would follow.
The myths were even better; I imagined the sea that eventually swallowed up Atlantis, saw Odysseus’s ship plunge and rise on the stormy water, and envisioned Arthur and his knights riding across the greensward. Sometimes these were just snippets, an image.
But for me, it was the Enlightenment that was the most interesting. There would be, I imagined, a crowd of men sitting in smoke-filled salons, arguing heatedly over the big philosophical questions. What is the meaning of life? What is man’s basic nature? And having those arguments sparking the explosions-literally-of revolutions: what a mob there must have been, marching down to the Bastille! Imagine the fervent patriotism that some of the early American revolutionists must have felt, or the fear that gripped the royalty in other nations, praying that their own people would not rebel. “Voltaire, Rousseau and other philosophers influenced the revolutions,” said my teachers, and I saw a flickering candle and a hand penning the manuscript that would touch off the eventual call for liberty, equality and fraternity.
Even though I know that these were romanticized, these images were so vivid, so real. Don’t ever let them tell you that history is dull.
In history class, I was always half-listening, half-formulating stories. We would be learning about the Middle Ages, for instance, and my mind would conjure up the tale of a young boy raised as an impoverished boy, living as an impoverished man, and dying as an impoverished farmer. Maybe along the way, though, he would bump into a famous man-impress a high lord of some sort-win favour, and rise out of his peasant class. Then the teachers would announce, “Revolutions come from the top down, because without the knowledge that there’s something better out there, why would you care?” And I would realize that the story of Medieval-period boys rising to the rank of king or leading a rebellion was hopeless.
That story now historically inaccurate, I would turn to the next topic. While studying King Louis XIV’s extravagant lifestyle, the images of corresponding courts in England, in Russia, in Scotland or Prussia would emerge. I imagined the cold stone halls with fluttering tapestries, or the scheming politicians, heads bent together, plotting to depose one king or another. Or perhaps a quick glimpse of military with feathers and cavalry, poised before their monarch, would follow.
The myths were even better; I imagined the sea that eventually swallowed up Atlantis, saw Odysseus’s ship plunge and rise on the stormy water, and envisioned Arthur and his knights riding across the greensward. Sometimes these were just snippets, an image.
But for me, it was the Enlightenment that was the most interesting. There would be, I imagined, a crowd of men sitting in smoke-filled salons, arguing heatedly over the big philosophical questions. What is the meaning of life? What is man’s basic nature? And having those arguments sparking the explosions-literally-of revolutions: what a mob there must have been, marching down to the Bastille! Imagine the fervent patriotism that some of the early American revolutionists must have felt, or the fear that gripped the royalty in other nations, praying that their own people would not rebel. “Voltaire, Rousseau and other philosophers influenced the revolutions,” said my teachers, and I saw a flickering candle and a hand penning the manuscript that would touch off the eventual call for liberty, equality and fraternity.
Even though I know that these were romanticized, these images were so vivid, so real. Don’t ever let them tell you that history is dull.