{"id":66316,"date":"2015-05-21T10:10:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T09:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=66316"},"modified":"2017-03-23T15:25:09","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T15:25:09","slug":"padraig-reidy-james-rhodes-poetry-of-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=66316","title":{"rendered":"Padraig Reidy: James Rhodes and the visceral need to be heard"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"James

James Rhodes, classical pianist, performed at the 2009 Classical Brits Nominations Launch at the Mayfair Hotel in London, UK (Photo by Ghmp – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
\nYes, there will be singing.
\nAbout the dark times. <\/em>
\n– Bertolt Brecht<\/em><\/p>\n

In an address to the first conference convened by the International Writers Center, held in St Louis in 1996, American poet Carolyn Forch\u00e9 described the ordeal of Hungarian poet Mikl\u00f3s Radn\u00f3ti, who was forced into slave labour during World War II.<\/p>\n

Radnoti managed to secure a small notebook in which he recorded his experiences in 10 poems written before he was executed.<\/p>\n

A coroner\u2019s report written when his body was exhumed after the war recorded:<\/p>\n

\u201cA visiting card with the name Dr. Mikl\u00f3s Radn\u00f3ti printed on it. An ID card stating the mother’s name as Ilona Grosz. Father’s name illegible. Born in Budapest, May 5, 1909. Cause of death: shot in the nape. In the back pocket of the trousers a small notebook was found soaked in the fluids of the body and blackened by wet earth. This was cleaned and dried in the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forch\u00e9 noted that the story of Radnoti did not end in a mass grave. Rather, his work, like that of others survived as \u201cevidence of the dark times in which they lived\u201d. This is what Forch\u00e9 calls \u201cthe poetry of witness\u201d, work forged in instances and circumstances when the \u201cpersonal\u201d and \u201cpolitical\u201d cannot be kept separate.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of Forch\u00e9 and her concept of witness when I read the reactions to the court decision that would finally allow pianist James Rhodes to publish his memoir, Instrumental.<\/p>\n

Rhodes\u2019s candid book detailed his sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher. He had been raped, leaving him with spinal damage. An extract from the book published on the Guardian website describes the horror and the aftermath:<\/p>\n

\u201cI went, literally overnight, from a dancing, spinning, gigglingly alive kid who was enjoying the safety and adventure of a new school, to a walled-off, cement-shoed, lights-out automaton. It was immediate and shocking, like happily walking down a sunny path and suddenly having a trapdoor open and dump you into a freezing cold lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to know how to rip the child out of a child? Fuck him. Fuck him repeatedly. Hit him. Hold him down and shove things inside him. Tell him things about himself that can only be true in the youngest of minds before logic and reason are fully formed and they will take hold of him and become an integral, unquestioned part of his being.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book fell victim to an injunction preventing publication after Rhodes\u2019s ex-wife insisted that the account of his father\u2019s abuse would be emotionally damaging to their son.<\/p>\n

In overturning the injunction, presiding judge Lord Toulson noted: \u201cThere is every justification for the publication. A person who has suffered in the way the appellant has suffered, and has struggled to cope with the consequences of his suffering in the way that he has struggled, has the right to tell the world about it. And there is the corresponding public interest in others being able to listen to his life story in all its searing detail.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reaction to the news was overwhelmingly one of relief: both for the author but seemingly others too.\u00a0Stephen Fry tweeted<\/a> that he was \u201cstupidly teary\u201d about the judgment, which he saw as a vindication for Rhodes.<\/p>\n

Vindication seems an odd concept to summon, as no-one seemed to be questioning the veracity of Rhodes\u2019s story. But I think I understand what Fry means.<\/p>\n

Rhodes\u2019s case goes beyond the usual reasons we give for reporting child abuse: that it may help others to come forward, or that it may help snare past and future perpretators. While these are valid reasons, they are not the thing in itself. As the judge pointed out, Rhodes has a right to tell his own story and the denial of that right is a further abuse of a man who has already suffered. To deny the story is to inflict further harm.<\/p>\n

In the Ten Stages of Genocide, developed by Gregrory Stanton of Genocide Watch<\/a> (and explored in a new play, No Feedback<\/a>, opening this week in London), denial is listed not as the aftermath of genocide, but as an intrinsic part of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDenial is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes…\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus insult goes hand in hand with injury. This is far beyond the idea of free speech, of the ability to bear witness, as a utilitarian idea: the right to speak is essential, like the right to eat. Denied communication of our experience, we, creatures who rely on social interaction, are starved (Forch\u00e9 describes \u201cthe social\u201d, the place where one bears witness, as \u201ca place of resistance and struggle, where books are published, poems read, and protest disseminated. It is the sphere in which claims against the political order are made in the name of justice.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The effect of denial imposed on individuals and societies can be seen everywhere from Rhodes continued anguish to Armenia\u2019s entry in this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest, it\u2019s title Don\u2019t Deny a pointed reminder on the centenary of that nation\u2019s still-disputed trauma.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, in free expression arguments, people will argue not that there is a right to speak, but no right to be listened to: this may be true, but there is a visceral need to be heard, to have our stories acknowledged. For it is our stories that make us. In that sense, the publication of James Rhodes\u2019s memoir, after the attempts to deny him his chance to tell his tale, marks his vindication not as a pianist or a writer, but as a human being.<\/p>\n

This column was posted on 21 May 2015 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reminded of poet Carolyn Forch\u00e9 and her concept of witness when I read the reactions to the court decision that would finally allow pianist James Rhodes to publish his memoir, Instrumental <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6903,581,21],"tags":[7089,7085,7090,590],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66316"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86936,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66316\/revisions\/86936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}