Chekhov’s Mistess

December 29, 2004

Regarding the Loss of Others

 

How can we be truly sad for the death of those we don’t know?

I question how I can feel for the thousands of people who died this week, lost in a moment’s shift of the earth’s surface, or those who violently died in Iraq or, perhaps unnoticed by all of us, those who met death quietly in some shanty town or slum somewhere. I saw a picture in the NY Times today of a woman kneeling over the bodies of her children killed in the tsunami. As a parent, that woman’s reality is my greatest fear. I wonder if the sadness evoked by this photograph is not just a recognition of my own fragility or ephemerality in an uncertain world.

A skeptic I am, of emotions and responses to them, so I probe here my own feelings more than our culture’s. Despite the horrific tragedy this week and the suffering that I can’t see but know is out there, I felt utterly sad in a way that I can’t explain for the death of one person who I am only barely acquainted with, Susan Sontag.

Not long ago I met Ms. Sontag, but only briefly. After a concert at Carnegie Hall, I nearly pushed her out of my way trying to get back stage. A few minutes later, she was there too in this cramped space where the artists greet their friends and fans after a performance. I didn’t say anything to her other than an awkward apology for breezing by her as she convinced the usher to let her in (I had a pass). Her sweeping streaked hair exaggerated her height and her weathered, intelligent face – actually quite young looking for her nearly seventy years – exuded an aura that I couldn’t escape. I looked at this mythical woman nearly the entire time we were in the same room together, trying to speak to her telepathically – my only alternative since I was too intimidated to talk to her by any other means. Having failed in establishing communication, I consoled myself by buying a book of her early essays the very next day.

Writers more than other public figures reveal themselves through their work. Just last week I read a transcript of Ms. Sontag talking with an old friend of hers, Richard Howard, about poetry ( “The Writer, The Work,” Pen America, Vol. 1 Issue 1, Winter 2000/01). Reading their reminiscences I was envious of her depth of intellect and devotion to literature. I was also impressed with her attitude toward promoting art and how that seemed to be ingrained into her every action. Salman Rushdie, author and president of Pen America, the writers’ organization, confirms my impression with his comments on Ms. Sontag (who herself was president from 1987 – ’89) in a press release issued today by the organization:

“She was a true friend in need. After the 1989 Khomeini fatwa against the author, publishers, and translators of The Satanic Verses, she led PEN in that battle for freedom of thought. Her resolute support, at a time when some wavered, helped to turn the tide against what she called ‘an act of terrorism against the life of the mind.’ I will always remember her determination with gratitude and admiration.


”Over the next fifteen years, Susan remained an active and stalwart PEN member and supporter, taking leading positions on a host of issues and traveling to many countries in defense of persecuted writers. She was particularly emphatic about the urgency of opposing American cultural parochialism and indifference to writing and ideas from abroad. An extraordinary champion of new writers from other countries and of literature in translation, she helped to introduce authors as diverse as Danilo Kis, W. G. Sebald, and Orhan Pamuk.

It is this persona of an outspokenly committed writer, critic and patron of serious literature that I have lost. I say persona because I did not know her. I know the facts, which are interesting, but just a sketch telling no more than anyone reading this site might know about me. When a famous actor or writer dies, someone who we as a public have a piece of, we mourn for our culture’s loss and we mourn for our own loss. We own them in a way. We feel as though they are ours and we have a right to their continued existence. We feel as though we know them.

In the case of Susan Sontag, it is indeed everyone’s loss, even those who didn’t know of her, much less know her. According to what I’ve read about her, she was not only a controversial intellectual, but activist as well. This from the London Times:

“Sontag’s political writings caused considerable public controversy. Impelled, she said, by grief, she wrote on America’s involvement in Vietnam, on Cuba, communism and the wars in Yugoslavia. She valued Hanoi and China, in particular, as sensibilities alternative to that of the West. At a 1982 rally for Polish Solidarity in New York, she famously declared communism to be ”Fascism with a human face“, which was widely but erroneously read as a conversion to the Right. Her political activism and concern for human rights also took her to Yugoslavia in the early-1990s, where she called for international intervention to put an end to the erupting civil war there.”

Impelled by grief, she said. Perhaps Ms. Sontag knew the answer to the questions I’ve posed.

• posted by Bud Parr
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