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Jewish World Review Dec. 16, 2010 / 9 Teves, 5771 The Empty Chair By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The most striking feature of this year's presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize was the empty chair reserved for the winner. Liu Xiaobo could not attend; he had a previous engagement imposed in December of 2008. That's when he was sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment for "inciting subversion of state power," that is, advocating freedom in To prosper, even to survive in a typical people's democracy, which is neither the people's nor a democracy, it is advisable to watch your speech, or even the look on your face -- to hold your mouth right, as they say. Though he was unable to deliver the traditional Nobel Lecture, there are some silences that speak more eloquently than the longest speeches. Just as the absence of a great man is felt so much more powerfully than the presence of the mediocre. The aura surrounding that empty chair said it all -- and said it so well that the authorities in the People's Republic erased pictures of it on Chinese websites. Despite his absence, a statement from the Nobel Prize winner and prisoner was read at the ceremony in "I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who have monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies. ... For hatred is corrosive of a person's wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation's spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and block a nation's progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes ... to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love." No prison can hold the spirit of such a man. For his is a power beyond the state's, a power his warders fear but may never understand. Till the day it overthrows them. Add the name of Liu Xiaobo to that of Solzhenitsyn, whose words from prison and exile were far more powerful than the pronouncements of those in mere political power. Whether issuing orders from the Kremlin or the Forbidden City, How long, oh how long, must Time and again I wonder how long the night will be. -- Although he is still imprisoned, the statement from Liu Xiaobo at the conclusion of his trial will do as well as any Nobel Lecture and better than most. Much like Far from defeated, this prisoner sounded victorious. He was not forlorn but full of quiet hope: "I firmly believe that
Liu Xiaobo's absence from the ceremony in As another Nobel Prize winner put it in his acceptance speech, man "must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." ( One unafraid man is more than a match for a state full of fear. No such state can stand forever against a man whose courage is rooted in the faith -- in the knowledge -- that love is stronger than hate. Nor is Liu Xiaobo's love only abstract, a love of principle or people in general. Ideologues regularly declare their love for The People. It's just people they despise, especially those who might have opinions of their own and refuse to be cowed. It's easy enough to love in general; it's loving someone in particular that is the challenge, the real test and triumph. Here is something else Liu Xiaobo said at the conclusion of his trial in a statement that would turn out to be his Nobel Lecture two years later: "Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I'd say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Water lilies bloom on the Great River. Brilliant red on the green water. Their color is the same as our hearts. Their roots branch off. Ours cannot be separated. -- The Emperor Wu of Liang (464-549) There is no defeating a spirit compounded of courage and love, uncontaminated by any desire for revenge, full of hope for the future despite everything. At the end of his statement, Liu Xiaobo declared: "I hope to be the last victim of
For sophisticated critics, Ponce's music is insufficiently abstract, dense, minimalist, teutonic -- name your favorite curse. Sophisticated: a word akin to sophist. The third movement of the string trio (Cancion: Andante expressivo) is indeed a song sung slow and expressive, as sad and noble as a long ago time still burning us with its gaze, demanding: You must change your life. You can hear it all in Ponce's music, Todo el Then comes the Rondo -- scherzoso, and business picks up. You can almost hear the Gershwin-like taxi horns around the Zocalo. Funny -- funny strange and funny just funny -- how you remember just where you were when you first read a great book. In this case, Why must they have the musicians at such concerts deliver an always too-long introduction to each composition and composer? What ever happened to Concert Notes? It's the same mistake announcers on some classical music stations make. My, they do go on. But it's worse when musicians do it. When they can play so well, why waste their talent talking? Interspersed on the program was some work of composers who are Mexican in name only. The pieces could have been written at any up-to-date conservatory. Like so much of modern music, they are more modern than music, more exercises than compositions. There's nothing wrong with exercises; they sound beautiful overheard in the hall of a music school, or listening to a symphony orchestra warm up. But they should not be confused with the kind of art that speaks, and lets you know: You must change your life. The high point of the evening, since a Pan-American program must include America, too, is the Dvorak quartet. (No. 13 in G, Op. 106) Naturally, the most American number on the program would be by a foreigner. We're a Nation of Immigrants and all that. It's a truism, but at the heart of every truism is a truth.
Then the players walk away, and the audience disperses into the cold, now music-charged night air. The concert ends. The music doesn't. Neither does its power, its demand, its imperative. I really must change my life.
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