BARNARD
PANEL CONSIDERS SEPTEMBER 11TH'S LEGACY
By
Matthew Schuerman
NEW YORK, N.Y., November, 28, 2001 — Literature
holds promise as a force for consolation and
comprehension following the September 11th terror
attacks – but Americans have not yet embraced
books in the way they have music and ritual,
a panel of Barnard teachers and authors said
Tuesday evening.
From the newspaper profiles of the World Trade
Center victims to nightly reports on Afghanistan,
there has been no shortage of words in the last
two months. But the panelists, speaking to more
than 50 people in the Julius S. Held Auditorium,
said the country had so far failed to mine great
books for the kind of understanding that literature
can help provide.
"As a nation, we don’t seem to be
sharing words that comfort us, that illuminate
the issues we now face," said Helene Foley,
a professor of classics. "I doubt the same
would be true in other countries that still
have a literary tradition."
Other panelists and audience members suggested
that that was just as well, that a literary
legacy would take time in coming, or even that
it was preferable if each reader selected his
or her own choice.
It was the fifth Community Forum at the College
since Sept. 11. At least two more are planned
for the spring semester, Provost Elizabeth S.
Boylan said. [For information about the past
community forms, including panelist remarks
and video clips, as well as general resources
regarding the September 11th tragedies, click
here.]
The four panelists and the moderator, Catharine
Thiemer Nepomnyashchy, a Slavic professor and
director of the Harriman Institute, did say
that literature should make people understand
the mentality of terrorists and the dangers
that may lurk in the way the United States is
reacting. And each speaker mentioned authors
with which to start.
Foley, the classicist, pointed to Aeschylus’s
"Oresteia," a trilogy of plays that
tells of Agamemnon’s murder and the revenge
taken by his son, Orestes, who is driven mad
as a result. Michael Levine, chairman of the
German department, and Elizabeth Reich, a recent
Barnard alumna and teacher at The Fieldston
School in the Bronx, both cited the Holocaust
poet Paul Celan.
Nepomnyashchy, the Slavist, mentioned both "Crime
and Punishment" and "The Brothers
Karamazov," noting, "No one understands
terrorists better than Dostoyevsky, and while
he loathed them, no one spoke better for them."
Auden
Reconsidered
English professor and writer Mary Gordon, took
to task all those people who had been reciting
in recent weeks W.H. Auden’s poem on the
advent of World War II, "September 1, 1939."
Auden, Gordon said, later repudiated the poem
in part because of its heavy reliance on aphorisms,
which made less sense as time went by.
"The lines ‘Those to whom evil is
done/Do evil in return,’ seemed to be a
lodestone, but in truth, did Hitler’s victims
have it in them to be victimizers?" Gordon
said. "The most clear victims of evil were
dead and no longer had it in them to do evil
in return."
Instead, Gordon recommended Joseph Conrad’s
novel "The Secret Agent," about a
twisted trio of revolutionaries and a plot to
blow up the Royal Observatory in England.
Simplified
Images
Not everyone was convinced that literature should,
or could, play the sort of role Greek tragedy
had in 5th Century Athens. Barnard President
Judith R. Shapiro, who attended the forum, said
during the question-and-answer period that the
United States may be too diverse for there to
be a single piece of literature that can speak
to all citizens. Instead, we watch television.
"When we watched the towers come down time
and time again, it was something that we as
a nation were experiencing simultaneously,"
Shapiro said. "This was the reason why
we could watch a white Bronco doing nothing
but driving down a highway—it was like
an Andy Warhol movie—because everyone was
experiencing it together. These simplified images
are something we can share."
Nor did all listeners find fault with the lack
of a literary anthem that would somehow unify
the country in the way that "God Bless
America" has become the preferred musical
piece of the moment. Jesse Galdston, one of
Reich’s students at the Fieldston school,
said the solitary nature of reading had been
one of its attractions over the last two months.
"I’ve kind of felt a pressure to grieve
together when I don’t want to grieve with
everybody else," he said. "That’s
why I like literature. It’s me reading
words and asking myself, ‘What does this
mean to me?’ Obviously, there’s a
use for togetherness but literature does not
need to be thrust into this arena."
.jpg)
