Literature is always about bygone times. It's always looking back

Host: The evening settled over the old town like a faded photograph. The streets were narrow, cobbled, and empty, except for the echo of footsteps and the distant hum of a radio from a window left ajar. Inside a dimly lit bookstore, dust danced in the golden haze of a single hanging bulb. The air smelled of ink, paper, and rain-soaked wood.
Jack sat behind the counter, his elbows resting on a stack of worn novels, their spines bent from years of touch. Jeeny stood by the window, tracing her finger along the fogged glass, watching the shadows of passing lives dissolve into the night.

Jeeny: “Amos Oz once said, ‘Literature is always about bygone times. It's always looking back in time with a certain perspective. I look at bygone life which no longer exists, and as I said, I look at it without nostalgia but without anger, either. I look at it with criticism and with compassion. I look at it with curiosity.’”

Jack: “Curiosity, sure. But not compassion. The past doesn’t deserve compassion, Jeeny. It deserves analysis — cold, clinical, dissection. If we start feeling too much for it, we risk romanticizing it.”

Host: The light bulb flickered, and a moth circled it like a lost soul, trapped between memory and oblivion. Jeeny turned, her eyes soft yet piercing, the kind that saw more than just books — they saw the stories inside them.

Jeeny: “And yet, Jack, how can you analyze what you don’t understand? The past isn’t a crime scene — it’s a graveyard. You don’t walk among the dead with cold hands. You walk with respect, with questions, and sometimes, yes, with compassion.”

Jack: “Respect, maybe. But compassion? The past has hurt too many people to be coddled. Look at history — wars, injustices, empires built on blood. Compassion for that? No. What we need is critique, not comfort.”

Jeeny: “Critique can still be gentle, Jack. Oz wasn’t excusing the past — he was understanding it. There’s a difference between excusing and examining. You can look at something with love and still hold it accountable.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked, each second a reminder that time itself was the invisible character in their debate — the third guest in that quiet bookstore, listening, perhaps even smiling.

Jack: “You talk like time forgives. It doesn’t. It just buries. The past isn’t a person we can reconcile with. It’s a record — fixed, factual, unchanging. If you look at it with compassion, you start seeing ghosts instead of truths.”

Jeeny: “Maybe ghosts are part of the truth. Maybe we need to see them to understand why they linger. History isn’t just what happened, Jack — it’s what remains inside us. The stories, the songs, the pain we inherit.”

Host: A train horn echoed from somewhere beyond the river, a long mournful sound, as if the city itself were remembering. Jack stood, lighting a cigarette, his reflection ghosted across the windowpane beside hers.

Jack: “I think you’re afraid to let go. That’s what this is. You talk about compassion because you don’t want to face the ugliness. You’d rather paint the ruins than tear them down.”

Jeeny: “No. I just think there’s beauty in the ruins. Not nostalgia — understanding. There’s a difference. Oz said he looked without nostalgia and without anger. That’s what makes him honest. Most people can’t do that. They either worship the past or curse it. But he — he simply looks.”

Jack: “That’s poetic, but unrealistic. Nobody looks at the past neutrally. Every generation rewrites it to justify itself. Even literature — it selects, edits, beautifies. Writers are liars in love with their own interpretations.”

Jeeny: “You call that lying? I call it bearing witness. Even lies reveal something true about the heart that told them. The way people remember isn’t perfect, but it’s human. That’s what literature captures — not accuracy, but emotion. That’s why it endures.”

Host: The rain began again, a soft drizzle tapping against the roof, like the rhythm of an old typewriter. The sound seemed to punctuate Jeeny’s words, giving them a kind of weightless gravity.

Jack: “So what do you do with the cruelty, Jeeny? The slavery, the wars, the corruption — do you look at those with curiosity too? With compassion?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because curiosity is the only way to understand why cruelty exists. And compassion is the only way to ensure it doesn’t repeat. When I read about a tyrant, I don’t want to excuse him — I want to understand what made him lose his humanity. That’s where literature helps us — it translates the monstrous back into something we can study, even mourn.”

Jack: “You sound like Dostoevsky. ‘To understand all is to forgive all.’”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. To understand all is to heal something — not to forgive it, but to learn from it. Isn’t that the whole point of storytelling?”

Host: Jack exhaled, smoke drifting across the light like a veil. His expression softened, though his words still cut with their usual edge.

Jack: “You talk about healing like it’s a duty. Maybe some wounds should just scar and stay that way. Maybe literature should stop romancing tragedy.”

Jeeny: “But scars are stories too. They remind us we survived. Isn’t survival worth telling?”

Host: The wind blew against the window, rattling it like the voice of the past, asking to be heard one more time. Jack walked toward the shelves, his fingers running over the spines of old books — Camus, Mann, Woolf, Oz — names that had looked back before them.

Jack: “Maybe what Oz meant wasn’t compassion for the past, but for ourselves — for how little we learn from it.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. That’s the kind of compassion we owe — not to the past itself, but to the people who lived it. To understand their flaws without rage, their hopes without worship. That’s how literature keeps us honest.”

Host: Jack turned, a small, genuine smile forming, like light breaking through fog.

Jack: “You always find a way to make the unfixable sound gentle.”

Jeeny: “Maybe because it is. The past is a teacher, not a tyrant. It can’t hurt us — unless we refuse to listen.”

Host: The rain had stopped. The city lights glowed faintly through the mist, like memories refusing to die. Jeeny picked up a book, its cover cracked, its pages yellowed. She opened it and read the first line aloud — something about love, loss, and the sea.

Jack: “What is it?”

Jeeny: “Something forgotten. Something worth remembering.”

Host: She closed the book, and the sound was like the ending of a chapter — gentle, final, but promising more. Jack reached for another, and for a moment, they stood in silence, surrounded by centuries of voices.

The camera would have pulled back then — the two figures, the lamplight, the window fog, the moth still circling. A snapshot of time, looking back at itself with exactly what Oz described: criticism, compassion, and curiosity — nothing more, and nothing less.

Host: Outside, the night deepened, but inside, the past — as always — stayed awake, listening.