Hobsbawm, Unrepentant

A resistance to political power that economic degradation inspired remained the lens through which he understood fundamental social change. Left out of Hobsbawm's voluminous writings is anything distinctly interior about the person himself, despite the almost Zelig-like aspects of his life: present at more than a few world-historical moments, whether in the late Weimar period watching Hitler's rise, engaging Spanish Republicans, or translating for Che Guevara in Havana. A first marriage, we learn, was less for love and more for lust and party discipline but left him nonetheless discombobulated, obsessive, and meditating on suicide. [...]Hobsbawm's comme ilfaut emotional register won out as the historian wondered what ached him more-the ending of his marriage or the execution of the Rosenbergs.