September-October 2001
Reflection in the Midst of Pain
BY Peter Burian, Chair, Academic Council, and professor of classical studies
Like so many of us, I am still trying to assimilate the brute facts of the unprecedented and almost unbelievable terror to which the many victims—and all of us—have been subjected. Like many of us, I experienced yesterday in a kind of fog, from which emerge vividly today, first the indelible images of horror, and then the hopes and fears of colleagues and co-workers whose loved ones might have been in or near one of the sites of devastation, and from whom they still had not heard.One of my colleagues, whose child both lives and works in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, said at a certain point that she was embarrassed to be so preoccupied with one person’s safety in the midst of such overwhelming horror. But how could it not be so? And in this sense, I am afraid, the reality of the losses in our own community is only beginning to be understood. The alumni office, for example, has a list of some fifty Duke graduates whose office addresses are in the World Trade Center, and we already know that there are victims among them.
The true story of this event is the collective story of all the loved ones, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, friends, co-workers, our students—the collective story of all our hopes and fears. And in sharing our feelings, in the rediscovery and reassertion of community around this terrible event, there is some small comfort. That is why we are here today. I hope we will learn from this suffering—the suffering of an almost unbearable number of victims—and from our own sense of helplessness and despair.
And what I most hope we will learn is that we cannot conquer the demons that beset us until we face and control the age-old division of the world into us and them—the instinct, if that is what it is, to turn a violation of our own humanity such as we have just suffered into a corresponding dehumanization of whole groups, whole peoples whom we too easily identify with those who have violated us. Let us not allow the legitimate need for justice slide into a brute cry for vengeance. Revenge is always meant as an end-point by those who exact it, always felt as a beginning by those on whom it is unleashed.
I would like to share a story that stands out in my memory from the horrible events of yesterday. I am teaching a freshman seminar, and yesterday almost every student was there, many with tear-reddened eyes and clearly shaken by the unfolding terror. Our subject was to have been Sophocles’ Oedipus. It is a story of peripety—the sudden, unexpected reversal of fortune—and a story of self-recognition. The underlying question that the Oedipus raises is how to make meaning out of seemingly uncomprehensible suffering and loss. We did not discuss the Oedipus, but we talked about another sudden, unexpected reversal of fortune that left us grappling for meaning in the midst of incomprehensible suffering and loss. I was taken aback by the maturity and the thoughtfulness of this group of eighteen-year-olds in confronting their feelings and trying to make sense of this tragedy of our own.
Whether there was katharsis, I cannot say. But my students, unlike Oedipus, seemed almost intuitively to grasp that all the questions we were raising were also about us—that our responses will help us recognize who we are and who we want to be. The conclusion we drew is that our sorrow would have to be turned into a basis for action if it were to have real meaning for our lives.
That is also my message for your today. We must not stop here—we must use the strength of our community to do whatever we can to uphold the fundamental human values whose fragility, and whose fundamental importance, the events of the last day have once again, and with terrifying force, made clear to us all.
These remarks were delivered at the interfaith service on the Chapel Quad on September 12 —the day after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.