25 September, 2002

My New Yorker arrived last week, the issue commemorating the one-year anniversary of September 11. I hadn’t expected it to be a commemorative issue, an oversight of fairly dramatic proportions on my part since every other periodical and magazine in the country seemed to have done something to remember that dark day. The cover of The New Yorker that appeared a year ago was solid black, or so it seemed until you held it in just the right light, at which time you saw the ghostly presence of the two towers. You had to look hard to see them, and if you were a New Yorker accustomed to seeing them every day, you had now, I guess, to look hard into your memory to find them. This year’s commemorative issue caught me off guard because its cover was done in pastel colors—peach, orange, red, blue-green across the top, all safe, nurturing colors--and it didn’t much look like the New York skyline I’d seen the few times I’d visited, or the one I grew up with in photographs and TV shows. In fact, I didn’t suspect it was the New York skyline at all until I flipped to the table of contents and saw that the cover, by Ana Juan, was called “Dawn Over Lower Manhattan.” I’m sure you get the point. From the abysm, a year ago, of September 11 to the new rising sun, a year later. From death to resurrection—that kind of thing. And if you look carefully, two of the buildings, one very prominent, the other one much less so, are topped by domes that have a faintly Islamic shape to them.

I don’t know if the artist intended this reference or not. And maybe it’s my imagination—I’m not an architectural historian. Either way, after our Congress stopped singing “God Bless America” long enough to start calling for moral clarity, all you heard was a general cacophony in the answering, American voice because the only thing that was generally clear was that all of us were feeling very moral in very different ways, and clarity wasn’t a part of the chorus. Everybody who was anybody published something on the disaster, and did so with the slurred reasoning we normally associate with intemperance: Noam Chomsky, Dinesh D’Souza, William Bennett, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker all wrote things that seemed to be trying hard, too hard, to respond before the dust had settled at Ground Zero. As Louis Menand pointed out in his article in this latest issue, each of these national personalities simply confirmed our impressions of their national personalities: Chomsky wanted us to know how aggressive America is in other countries, and what a bad thing that is, while D’Souza wants us to know how aggressive we are in other countries, and how fine a thing that is; Bennett thinks it’s the right time now to make a bid for moral purity; Vidal is worried about the slumping imperial giant we’ve always been; and Walker wants us to wear threads on each wrist, a red one to represent the feminine, and a brown one to stand for whatever endangers the feminine.

Most Americans, including myself, lost neither friends nor family to the events of September 11. Still, I grieved. However, as I read the brief essays in The New Yorker written by a few of the women who were widowed when the planes went down, I realized that my own grief was ceremonial: it took a recognizable, publicly authorized form. I expressed my sadness in the appropriate tone of voice (subdued, indicating sincerity); I shook my head gravely to indicate incredulity, particularly to confess disbelief at the inhuman barbarity of the attack; I marveled at those who survived it, acknowledging the wandering hand of fate in our lives; I lauded those who’d played a role in the rescue efforts, and I spoke of genuine bravery. As deeply as I might claim to have been moved by these events, however, I couldn’t say what Ellen S. Bakalian said of her husband’s death, a man who’d shared her own passion for traveling: “It’s a new level of grief—a new place I have traveled to, wretchedly, without my husband by my side.” My grief took a recognizable form—I mourned, as so many said, with the nation; my grief traveled the well-worn path of elegy. Ms. Bakalian’s loss, however, has no road signs; the commemorations that occur at Ground Zero cannot ultimately, however well intentioned they are, speak to her loss. Personal grief, national mourning—they’re two different things. I mourned nationally; Ms. Bakalian grieved personally.

This became clear to me as I read Othello this year for the Venetian section of the third semester of the Honors Humanities Project. Near the end of the play, with Othello about to commit suicide, with Emilia and Desdemona already dead, and with Iago injured, the general delivers a speech that our class memorized. It’s not the most important speech in the play, but coming, as it does, just before his suicide, it’s a kind of auto-eulogy, a chance for Othello to write his own obituary. He wants the Venetians to remember that he served the state, and did so effectively; to know that he loved wildly and unwisely; and to know finally that he acknowledges his part in this tragedy, and will proceed to punish himself for it in the only way that he knows. And so he kills himself. We had our class memorize it because the speech strikes to the heart of Othello’s character: strong, impetuous, self-willed, gullible, jealous, authoritarian, proud, responsible, and all of this in just over fifteen lines. Fairly efficient writing. Commit these lines to heart, we reasoned, and you’ve got Othello for the rest of your life. At any rate, Othello’s last oration is a state speech spoken by an oddly state-less figure, and Lodovico, seeing Othello crumpled over on top of his dead wife, has only one thing to say about it: “All that is spoke is marred.”
Lodovico clued me into the fact that Ms. Bakalian and I were doing different things really, as we exercised our different forms of grief. Lodovico’s not grieving, exactly, but he knows one thing well: he knows that however he might attempt to explain what has just happened, however he might try to understand this massive, sprawling tragedy that has befallen the Venetian state, all such attempts will ultimately fail, will ultimately be marred by their insufficiency. Certain tragedies, like Ms. Bakalian’s, cannot be represented by the public rhetoric of sadness and grief. It is to Othello’s credit that he seems to know this, and that he largely avoids the maudlin in his final speech, even though he has to shift from the first to the third person to do it.

So a single line spoken by a relatively minor character in a major tragedy returns to speak again, to take on new associations, to work its influence in another corner of another life in a brand new century. Othello taught me something about grieving that I had known dimly, but hadn’t articulated until September 11 forced me toward that articulation. It’s the traditional argument for higher education, nicely put by Edward Shils, one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished theorists of the university’s mission. “Universities,” Professor Shils has written, “have a distinctive task. It is the methodical discovery and teaching of truths about serious and important things.” Very simple. Notice the plural form of “truth.” On a university campus, one truth will not do. There must be, and are, many truths. And pay attention to the benign neglect behind his choice of the word “things”—not “values,” not “beliefs,” not “facts,” not “ideals.” Just things. Serious and important things. There’s room to move here between that grand plural and this integrated universe of things. So read, think, ask, define, accept, reject, write—in short, move. And keep moving, book to book, idea to idea. The Honors Program of Fulbright College, which graduated its first students nearly 50 years ago, has put together a curriculum that will help you do just that.

I don’t know what Othello would think about that cover of The New Yorker, with its slight suggestion of Islam rising in lower Manhattan. But it’s worth thinking about. Othello’s voice, as our country ponders military action in Iraq, would be authoritative just now. Having characterized himself as a turbaned Turk and a circumcised dog, he has been both infidel and defender of the faith, and so he’d recognize the carnage that can arise from differences held to be absolute and unwavering. He’d see as well the necessity for rebuilding, and as a military leader he’d understand the dire psychology of the vanquished more than the rest of us. All of these issues, difficult and essential, are worth considering. You’ve been given several years in your life now to pursue them with the energies and talents that we believe you possess. As Bob Dylan once reminded my generation, I’ll remind yours: this time won’t come again. Good luck in the pursuit of your passion. The Fulbright College Honors Program will be happy to help you in any way that we can.