We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think

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We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think Page 23

by Shirley Hazzard


  9. Ibid., 128.

  10. Folgore da San Gimignano, “Di giugnio,” in I Sonetti Dei Mesi (Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli, 1991), 45. English translation by Richard Aldington, A Wreath for San Gemignano (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Inc. 1945), 23.

  11. Giacomo Leopardi, “L’Infinito,” in Canti: Poems, trans. Jonathan Galassi (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 106.

  12. Percy Shelley, Note to “Ode to the West Wind,” in Shelley: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 577.

  2003 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD ACCEPTANCE

  National Book Award 2003 Acceptance, available at http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech​_shazzard.html#.VL0gJ8Yqq9Y. Shirley Hazzard spoke these words on being announced winner of the 2003 National Book Award. She spoke immediately after author Stephen King’s speech accepting an award for lifetime achievement.

  THE NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY DISCUSSION, SEPTEMBER 2012

  On September 7, 2012, as part of the first international symposium on Shirley Hazzard, a distinguished panel discussed her life and work. The panel consisted of Gail Jones, Jay Parini, Martin Stannard, Brigitta Olubas, and Annabel Davis-Goff. It was moderated by Jonathan Galassi and introduced by the Australian Consul-General to New York, Phil Scanlan. A recording of this panel, including Shirley Hazzard’s comments, is available at https://www.nysoclib.org/events/shirley-hazzard-literary-icon.

  INDEX

  Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

  abstractions, 7, 32, 38–40, 56, 98

  academics, 39, 114

  Accademia della Crusca, 31

  accident, accidental, 46–47

  Achilles, 15–16, 25

  Actium, Battle of, 22

  Adam, 19

  Aeneas, 19, 22, 25, 27

  Aeneid, The (Virgil), 12, 13, 17, 23, 29

  Agamemnon, 3, 43

  A la recherche du temps perdu (Proust), 76–84

  Alexander the Great, 18, 168

  amateurism, ix–xvi, 36

  American hostages, in Iran, 136–141

  Amnesty International, xviii, 109, 125, 127, 131–132, 138

  Anschluss, 129

  anti-hero, 19–21, 25

  antihumanism, 49

  Antonines, 169

  Aphrodite, 19

  Apollo, 18, 19, 45, 46

  Argentina, 61, 131, 168

  Aristophanes, 114

  arms, armor, 13, 16, 25, 26, 132, 176

  Arno (river), 179–180

  art: and authorized criticism, 8, 39; directness of life of, 7, 38; as discipline, 7, 39; human achievement of, 185–186; and illusion, 28; individual apprehension of, ix; and loss, xiv, 14, 33; Montale on, 11, 29; paradox of, 96; and politics, xi–xii; and posterity, xiv, 40–51; power of, 9; private response to, 8; as response to truth, 4; submission to, 8, 39; and technology, 7–8, 39

  artist, the: individuality of, 11; role of, 14, 33, 48, 50, 51

  artistic posterity, 41–42, 46, 48–49

  artistic purpose, 30, 48–51

  artistic vocation, Auden on, 14

  artists: Hazzard characters as, xii; Rome as gathering place for, 98

  arts, the: language and, 3–4, 31; literature and, 38

  atomic bomb, 142–145

  Auden, W. H., xiv, 4, 8, 14–16, 21, 26, 29, 31, 48, 51, 71, 99; four categories of loss, 14–15, 29; in Spain, 26

  Augustine, Saint, 19–20, 169

  Austen, Jane, 21

  Australia, ix, xii, xv, xxi, 16, 72, 73, 142–145, 168, 177, 180; literature of, 67–73, 177; social order of, 177

  Austria, xvii, 109, 129, 131

  Austrian Nazi Party, Waldheim’s involvement in, xvii, 129

  autobiography, xx, 9, 59, 87

  ayatollah. See Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah

  Bangladesh, 120

  Barzun, Jacques, 5, 34, 71

  Baudelaire, Charles, 24, 25, 26, 50

  Belgium, 139

  belles lettres, x, xvi

  Bellow, Saul, 45

  “the Big Wow-Wow,” 21

  biography, xiii, xv, xvi, 90, 99, 187n1

  Bloom, Alexander, xi

  bomb: atomic, xix–xx, 142–145; hydrogen, 143; neutron, 144

  Bonaparte, Napoleon, 94

  bookshops, on UN territory, xvii, 112–115, 132

  Boswell, James, 85, 87

  brevity, as literary value, 5, 34

  Brezhnev, Leonid, 132

  Brombert, Victor, 25

  Brooke, Rupert, 47

  Brooks, Cleanth, 51

  Browning, Robert, 86

  Bulstrode, Mrs. (Middlemarch character), 36

  Burchardt, Jakob, 176

  bureaucracy, xi, xviii, 38, 65, 119, 132, 134, 138

  Burns, Robert, 21

  Byron, Lord [George Gordon], 10, 17, 21, 22, 26, 35, 40, 41, 44, 45, 51

  Caesar, Augustus, 13, 37

  Cambodia, 120, 128, 139; relief for, 139

  canon. See literary canon

  Canton, xxi, 149–166

  Carter, Jimmy, 138, 141

  Casaubon, Edward (Middlemarch character), 36

  censorship: of Confucius by the UN, 125; of Solzhenitsyn by the UN, 112, 115, 125

  character: Hazzard’s, ix, 163; literary, xv, 20, 36, 58, 59, 60, 68, 71, 75

  Château, The (Maxwell), 105

  Chateaubriand, François-René de, 44

  Chesterton, G. K., 40

  Childe Harold (Byron), 42

  Chile, 49, 125, 131, 137

  Chinese pirates, 153

  cholera, xv, 63

  Christ, as anti-hero, 19

  Christianity, 18, 19, 32, 172; and aesthetics, xviii; Christian hero, 19; Christian ideal, 19, 145; Christian thought, xiii; era of, 18, 32

  Churchill, Winston, 33

  CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 130

  citizen, Hazzard’s sense of her responsibilities as, x, xvii

  citizenry, world, 120

  citizens: investigations by, 110; movements, xviii, xix; and the UN, 119, 125, 132

  City University of New York, 125

  civilization, 28, 64, 99, 125, 169, 171, 175.

  civilized society, 30

  classical: authors, 19, 23, 94; era, xiii; literature, 20, 32; philology, 174; sites, around Herculaneum, 173; world, 28

  Cleopatra, 22

  Clough, Arthur Hugh, 24, 65, 175

  Cocteau, Jean, 11

  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 31

  Collier, Peter, 81–82

  colonial: Hong Kong, 149–150, 161, 164; privilege, xx

  “Combat, The” (Muir), 25

  communications, 7, 11, 38, 51

  comprehension, 7, 39, 71, 89, 176

  consciousness, 3, 11, 13, 30, 32, 45, 47, 48, 71, 83, 143; human, 3, 32, 48, 71; Western, 13; of women, 47; of the writer, 11, 13, 30, 35, 45

  Confucius, 114, 116, 125

  conservatism, Hazzard’s perceived, xii

  Constant, Benjamin, 88–90

  correspondence: of Hazzard, xvii, 188; of Maxwell, 103; writers’, 48; of Zélide, 88

  Countenance of Truth (Hazzard), x

  cowardice, 110

  critics, literary, xi, 6–8, 30, 35, 38–39, 47, 59, 67, 77–78, 99

  criticism: literary, xiv, 6, 11, 35, 38, 99; of the UN, xii, xvii, 109–141, 188n13

  curiosity, public, 58

  Cyprus, 131

  Daiches, David, x

  daily life: of the ancient world, 167; as heroic, 24; language as medium for, 31; literature in, 3

  D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 27

  Dante, 20, 29, 126

  Daoudy, Adib, 137

  Day Lewis, Cecil, 27

  Dead Sea Scrolls, 169

  de Charrière, Madame. See Zélide

  de Charrière, Monsieur (Charles-Emmanuel), 88

  Defeat of an Ideal (Hazzard), xvii, 188–189n13

  de Staël, Madame Germaine, 89–90

  Depression, the (Great), 143

/>   d’Hermenches, Constant, 86

  Dickens, Charles, 10, 38, 40

  Dido, 19, 20, 22, 24

  disbelief, 23–24, 50

  discrimination, by UN against female staff, 110, 120

  dissidents, xi, xvi, 17, 28, 109, 125, 137, 189n15

  Don Juan (Byron), 21, 40, 41

  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 25, 29, 50

  doublethink, 113

  Douglas, Norman, 32, 171

  drama, 6, 37

  Drummond, Eric, 114, 123

  Dryden, John, 37

  Dubliner, 25

  Dubuffet, Jean, 49–50

  duty, 20, 24, 113, 123

  Eclogues (Virgil), 18

  Edward VIII, 22

  Eliot, George, 10, 36–37, 74, 127

  Eliot, T. S., 5, 25, 27, 34

  Empson, William, 37

  English language, 35, 37, 183

  Enlightenment, the, 89, 90

  Ennius, 39–40

  Enright, D. J., 81–82

  epic, 13, 16, 19, 21–22, 37, 169

  epic hero, 19

  ethical choices, of Hazzard’s protagonists, xi

  ethical dilemmas, of Hiroshima bombing, xx, 142

  ethical proof, Hazzard’s as author, xiv

  Everyman, 20, 25, 27

  Excellent Women (Pym), 74–75

  expatriatism, ix, 12, 60

  explication, 7, 11, 32, 38, 49, 9

  Eye of the Storm, The (White), 67–73

  falsehood, 5, 33

  fame, xiii, 41, 43, 47, 51

  fascism, 13, 27, 114, 131

  FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), xvii, 122, 123, 130

  fiction: Hazzard as reviewer of, xv; Hazzard as writer of, ix, x, xi, xvii, 145; and the hero, 20, 36; and pleasure, 184; relation of novelist to, 9, 10; William Maxwell’s love of, 103; by Zélide, 87

  film world, 58

  Flaubert, Gustave, ix, x, 4, 5, 25, 32, 34, 77, 84

  Florence, 12, 50, 95, 98, 175–180

  Flying Cloud airfield, China, 158–159

  Ford, Ford Madox, 40

  foreigner, xx, 71, 92, 98, 175

  Forster, E. M., 176

  freedom of information, 113, 115–116, 124

  Freud, Sigmund, 24

  Fugitive, The (Proust), 76, 81

  Gabriel (in Paradise Lost), 37, 194–195n77

  Garrick, David, 44

  Gauss Seminar Series, xiii, 191

  Geneva, xvii, 89, 112, 115, 179

  genius, 10, 25, 37, 43, 55, 67, 77, 85, 89, 97, 124, 127, 170

  genocide, 131

  Georgics (Virgil), 17

  Getty, J. Paul, 172–173

  Getty Museum, 172–173

  Gibbon, Edward, xvi, 78, 169

  Gigante, Marcello, 174

  “La Ginestra” (Leopardi), 42, 99

  Gladwyn, Lord, 122

  globalized world, xx

  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 98

  Gozzano, Guido, 45

  Great Fire, The (Hazzard), xi, xxi

  Great War. See World War I

  Greece, 22, 45, 131

  Greene, Graham, xv, 25, 102, 188n12

  Guardian (UK newspaper), 128

  Gulag Archipelago, The (Solzhenitsyn), 112–114

  Guizot, François, xv–xvi, 78

  Hamlet, 20, 37, 40, 44; Garrick’s cello performance of soliloquy, 44

  Hammarskjöld, Dag, 122, 130

  Hardy, Thomas, 10, 24, 99

  Hazzard, Shirley: characterized as a conservative, xii; correspondence of, xvii; employed at UN, ix; as expatriate, ix; friendship with New York Intellectuals, ix, xi; as international author, ix–xxi; international perspective of, ix, x, xix; leaving Australia, ix; marriage to Steegmuller, ix, 102; as public intellectual, ix

  Hazzard, Shirley, works of: Countenance of Truth, x; Defeat of an Ideal, xvii, 189n13, 203n10, 205n17; essays in New Republic and Partisan Review, xii; essays in New York Times, xiii, xvii, 115, 189, 197, 198, 199, 202; The Great Fire, xi, xxi; People in Glass Houses, xi; The Transit of Venus, xi; travel writings, xx; works published in New Yorker, ix, xvi, 102, 103, 206

  Heian court, in Japan, 46

  Heidegger, Martin, 30, 31, 33

  Hephaestos, 15–16

  Herculaneum, 42, 170–173

  hero, 19–28, 41, 132, 176

  heroic, the, xiv, 13, 18, 22, 71

  heroine, 60, 75

  heroism, 129; collapse of, xiii

  Hiroshima, xix–xx, 142–145

  historian, 6, 35, 78, 91

  history, 13, 18, 21, 22, 27, 51, 64, 114, 138, 141, 145, 150, 169

  “History” (Montale), 18

  History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The (Gibbon), 169

  Homer, 19, 22, 25, 29, 30, 32, 39, 41, 95, 153, 167, 169

  Hong Kong, xx, 81, 142, 149–158, 161

  Horace, 3, 27, 43, 45, 171

  Horatio, 40

  Hugo, Victor, 25

  human rights, xvi, xviii, 109, 112–114, 120, 125, 127, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 189n15; Human Rights Day, 109; movement, 132

  humanism, xiii–xiv, 6, 20, 23, 37, 90, 111, 176–177

  humanistic values, 177

  hypocrisy, 21, 61, 69

  idealism, 24, 110

  “idiot,” the, 18, 25

  Iliad (Homer), 15, 22

  illusion: in art and literature, 15, 21, 24, 28; and disillusion, 15, 21, 24, 28; Leopardi on poetry and, 23, 96; Montale on, 15, 21, 28, 29, 45; related to civilization, 175–176; of social continuity and order, 11

  individual: apprehension of art, ix; experience of travel, xx; gestures, 145; lives, 169; quality, 176; response to art, 39; responsibility, 37; rights of UN employees not protected, xvi; UN hostility to, 131, 132, 137; voices in literature, 6, 37; writers, 21

  individualism, 18, 177

  individuality, 183–184

  individuals, humanitarian action by, xviii, 131

  information, 6, 11, 35, 112–116, 129, 134–135, 136, 142, 185

  intellectual, 7, 30, 95, 98, 102, 110, 111, 112, 113, 118; Hazzard as, ix–xxi

  international: agencies, 120; civil servants, rights of, 139; civil service, 123, 129–130; community, 137; conference on human rights, 136; conventions, 139; Hazzard as ix–xxi; human rights, 189n15; law, 122; Partisan Review as, x; politics, ix; relations, 118; staff of the UN, 112; territory of the UN, 113–115, 130; UN and League of Nations as “international enterprises,” 118; women’s conference, 128

  internationalists, 109, 111

  interpretation, 7, 8, 72

  intimacy, 7, 8, 9, 39, 88

  Iran, xix, 127–128, 134, 136–141

  irony, 59, 71, 114, 124, 169

  Issues and Answers (ABC television program), 127

  Italian government, neglect of antiquities by, 171–172

  Italy, xiii, xxi, 12, 43, 45, 90, 92, 94, 97, 98, 171, 175–180

  Jaeger, Werner, 18, 28, 32

  Japan, 22, 44, 46, 72, 142, 144, 161, 165

  jargon, 7, 38

  Jarrell, Randall, 48

  Jerome, Saint, 19

  Johnson, Samuel, 6, 35, 50, 175

  Judt, Tony, xviii

  Juvenal, 14

  Kafka, Franz, 55

  Kai Tak airfield, Hong Kong, 156

  Keaton, Buster, 83

  Keats, John, 42, 99

  Kessler, Ronald, 133

  Keynes, John Maynard, 111, 118, 121

  KGB, 130

  Kheel, Theodor, 134

  Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 128, 134, 138

  Kilmartin, Terence, 76–81

  King, Stephen, 183, 208

  Kirkup, James, 44

  knight, as exemplar, 20

  Knight, Carlo, 172

  Kure, Japan, 142

  Lake Geneva, 89

  language: abstract, 39; ancient, 33, 48, 183; Auden on, 48; Chinese, 46, 154; degradation of, 8, 39; English, xxi, 35, 37, 79–80, 83, 183–184; illustrating character, 36; immediacy of, 4, 33; inspired, 33; Italian, 31; Japanese, 46; poetic, xiii; powe
r of, 17, 30; as primary medium, 3–8, 31; responsibilities of, 6, 31; Shakespeare’s, 31; Spark on inflections of meaning in, 57; White’s distinctive, 71; writer’s vigilance over, 35; written, 173, 183

  laurel crown, 29, 41, 45–46

  League of Nations, 111, 114, 123, 127, 131; High Commissioner for Refugees of the, 117; and international governments, 117–118, 121, 123

  Left, the (political), xii, 188n8

  “Lemons, The” (Montale), 46

  Leopardi: A Study in Solitude (Origo), 92–100

  Leopardi, Giacomo, xv, xvi, 23, 32, 42–43, 51, 64, 94–100, 171, 178; Canti, 97; Canzoni, 97

  “Letter to Lord Byron” (Auden), 26

  Lewin, André, 115–116

  Lie, Trygve, 122, 129–130; collaborations with US State Department and FBI, 130

  Lippe-Weissenfeld, Prince Alfred zur, 131

  literary canon, ix, xiii, 39

  literary form, 13

  literary hero, 19, 26

  literature: authentic response to, xiv; classical, 20; in contemporary world, xiii–xiv; and criticism, 7, 38–39; disillusion in, 24; emotion and, 11; and human subject, 15; individual speech in, 37; Japanese, 46; King on high, xxi; Leopardi on, 51; and loss, 14; love of, 9; pleasure in, 3, 184; and politics, xi; public role of, xix; relationship to society, xi; Seneca on beauty of, 39; and truth, 11, 30; value of, xiv; virtue in, 24

  logos, 31

  loss: Auden on, 14, 21, 26; death and, 47; of humanistic values, 177; Leopardi on, 97–99; literature and, xiv, 14–15; of need for silence, 51

  Machiavelli, Niccolò, 20, 50, 95, 126

  Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 40, 77

  Malaparte, Curzio, 64

  Malibu, replica Villa dei Papiri at, 172–173

  Malraux, André, 27

  man of honor, 20

  Marc Antony, 22

  Marston, John, 49

  mass advertising, 7, 38

  mass communications. See communications

  mass culture, 7, 29, 38

  mass society, 7

  Maxwell, William (Bill), xv, xvi, 101–105

  Maynes, Charles, 133

  Mayor, Andreas, 76

  Mazower, Mark, xii, 189n17

  McCarran Internal Security Subcommittee, 133

  McCarthy, Joseph, 122, 130

  McCarthyism, 110; surveillance of UN employees, xviii

  McDonald, James, 117

  medieval: character types, 37; morality plays, 6, 20; romance, 20

  Mediterranean, the, 168, 172, 176

  Memento Mori (Spark), 75

  memory, 3, 13, 18, 21–22, 24–25, 27–28, 30, 42–43, 45, 46, 70, 80, 82, 144

 

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