Abstract
F. R. Ankersmit's 'Sublime Historical Experience' (2005) seems to be the counterpart of Paul Ricoeur's 'Time and Narrative' (vol. 3, 1984-85). Both studies deal with the relationship between an experience of time and a special form of temporality in history writing. However, there are important differences between the two studies. While Ricoeur recognizes a relationship between time experience and narrative temporality and stresses that each time is continuous, Ankersmit denies the existence of such a relationship and considers the historical time experience as discontinuous. Ankersmit's experience of time originates in a sublime-traumatic sensation of time as a paradise lost. The world Ankersmit has lost is the world of the ancien régime. In the footsteps of Karl Mannheim, Ankersmit identifies himself with the (romantic) conservatives to whom he ascribes the same loss of identity as he himself feels in connection to the ancien régime. It is questionable whether the conservatives, mentioned by Mannheim, had the traumatic experience Ankersmit suggests they had. In earlier studies Ankersmit has always stressed that historians remove time in their historical narratives. Therefore, Ankersmit sees no relationship between his sublime experience of time and a special narrative form of temporality. Contrary to Ankersmit's view, there is such a relationship. Involuntarily, Ankersmit demonstrates this in his admiration for microhistory and for the works of Jakob Burckhardt and Johan Huizinga.