QUOTE : History is not a conversation with the past, Instead, in Warburg, memory is carried forward to us, objectively, by the sequence of pathos-formulas. We do not choose our past, it chooses us. This was not an entirely direful story. The pathos-formulas register danger but they also ward it off, apotropaically. Art creates the psychic distance that gives mankind a chance in its struggle with hostile nature or with the gods.