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For both, the issue of identity
and self-identity is indeed very complex. They grapple with the
intractable problem of affiliating with the Other. The policies
of partition and exclusion, of late become a passion with
politicians, disconcerts them a lot. The distinction they draw
between the politician and the artist, musician and writer by
implication, is very apt. The politician dissolves the conflict
to serve his interest. Poised at the extremes, the artist
grapples with all the intricacies to achieve some accord between
them. Both hold that the failure to resolve the Palestine
imbroglio rests with the absence of imagination from the ambit
of negotiations.
Now that their
conversation shifts to music, the inner life of the musician,
his engagement with history, politics and society, they find the
utter lack of it in atonality. Making Adorno's perception as his
own, Said holds that musician's mediation with society, so
creative till Beethoven and in him with amazing profundity, is
no more true of musical composition and performance. The problem
of home again crops up. Barenboim holds that "creating a
sense of home, going to an unknown territory and then returning,
was Beethoven's forte." At this stage, they have some words
to spare for the Oslo Accord. Employing musical terminology,
Barenboim finds it failing due to a discord between speed and
tempo. In the literary diction of Said, "it was texts
written down, that did not conform adequately to the reality of
the situation."
It is their
intellectual and artistic orientation that then claims their
attention. Pinpointing his role as a professor of literature,
Said explains how he seeks to go beyond technique and expertise
to literature's affinity with society, history, politics and
culture. He arrived at this position without much help from his
teachers. So he is always disposed to stand against power and
authority. Barenboim's trajectory of growth is different. He
grew up under the great influence of his father who taught him
"to put the extremes together, not necessarily by
diminishing the extremity of each one but to form the art of
transition." To play some composition for the sake of it is
the worst crime in his eyes. In a parallel vein, Said finds the
teacher a criminal if instead of enhancing the curiosity, he
resorts to their indoctrination. After uncovering the
intricacies, reading and writing involve on the one hand and
composing and performing on the other, they reach a consensus in
which paradoxes and parallels cohere at the same time.
Their discussion
of Richard Wagner and Beethoven is very erudite but in no way
does it turn hermetic. They find Wagner a cult figure for
reasons within and without his musical personality. Due to the
excessive emphasis he put upon acoustics, magnitude and
flamboyance, authoritarianism did mark his compositions and
performances. In no way can it be termed as anti-Semitic. So the
authorities in Israel were monstrously authoritarian in
restricting the performances of his compositions.
However, their
highest appreciation and deepest regard is reserved for
Beethoven. For Barenboim, he was "completely a
musician." Only through music would he make sense of all
the turmoil of life. According to Said, it was ethics, "the
fullest realization of what is contained in music" that
formed a way of life for him. To resolve the Palestine
imbroglio, a mind of his kind is required who can bring to bear
upon it the qualities of memory, imagination, creativity and
wonder.
Towards the end of
Introduction, Said has this to say: "It is in the nature of
conversation at its best to be engrossing for everyone, as well
as to take even the speaker by surprise." This, the book
has in ample measure. At the same time, it has more to enhance,
what Said fondly called, emergent thinking.
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