Jonathan Mok: Your book surveys the politics, economics and culture of Iran. You first studied economics. Why and when did you extend your interest to history and literature?

Homa Katouzian: I taught economics for eighteen years and dropped it in favor of history, politics and literature, partly because I became disillusioned with economics once I discovered that economists did not adhere to the scientific methods which they proclaim in the abstract, but more importantly because there were no further issues in economics that I wanted to study, whereas there was plenty in Iranian history, comparative history, Persian literature and Iranian studies in general. I had kept up with these subjects all the while, and I did all the necessary research for my literary biography of Sadeq Hedayat and my political biography of Mosaddeq while I was still teaching economics.

Iran is an oil-rich state. It has remained a developing country, however. What are some of the reasons for its relative underdevelopment?

The problem with oil revenues is that there is no comparison between the cost of production and the revenues gained. As such, I have described them as ‘manna from heaven’, like the food that descended from the heavens for the people of Moses. Moreover, the revenues are received and disbursed by the state. The state’s development strategy for economic progress therefore becomes crucial.

In Iran, the state has increased its power and patronage over the rest of society, giving rise to a renter class, and tends to encourage import substitution, rather than export promotion strategies. The system also encourages the waste of resources… For example, Iran is heavily dependent on importing petrol, largely because of the incredibly low prices at which it is sold by the state, thus encouraging unnecessary public consumption of petrol, congestion on the roads, and pollution in the air. I have discussed these issues more fully in The Persians, and also in my The Political Economy of Modern Iran, which I wrote more than thirty years ago.

Your book analyzes the ruling years of both the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini. Any similarities between them?

The shah succeeded his father in 1941. For the first twelve years he was a constitutional monarch. From the coup d’etat of 1953, he was a dictator at the head of a loyal political and religious establishment. Launching his White Revolution ten years later, he jettisoned that establishment and became an absolute and arbitrary ruler in the style of the pre-constitutional Iranian regimes. Such a ruler is most powerful because he is not bound by any independent laws outside of his own will. But this results in the alienation of not just the less privileged but all social classes from the state. The state thus does not have a social base, and when it is weak not only some social classes but also the entire society rises against the state, as happened in the Iranian Revolution of February 1979.

Homa Katouzian

Khomeini was not only a senior religious pontiff but also a highly charismatic, shrewd and pragmatic popular leader. Although some of his supporters were alienated in the 1980s, he still had a large social base when he died in 1989. He was the patriarch and an arbiter of the last resort in the Islamist regime which he had created, but was not an absolute and arbitrary ruler. There was consultation, participation and representation in politics and government among the Islamists while he was still alive, but the modern and secular groups of society were in effect politically dispossessed, as they still are.

While the nuclear issue has caused tension between Iran and the West, repeated statements by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Israel and the Holocaust also draw worldwide attention. Iran and Israel have no diplomatic relations following the Iranian Revolution. What can you say about the Iranian President’s denial of the Holocaust and calls for the end of the state of Israel?

Ahmadinejad seems to genuinely believe that the Holocaust was simply invented to justify the establishment of the state of Israel, and so regards that state as illegitimate. However, even a nuclear Iran could not initiate a war with Israel, not only because it would lose it as such, but also perhaps more importantly because it would know that it would be confronting the world community. Thus, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric seems to be intended for his own supporters and, more especially, for the public opinion in Arab and Islamic countries. That indeed is what has made him popular among the ordinary people in these countries.

We keep hearing about the possibility of sanctions as a means to thwarting the Iranian determination to become a nuclear state. In your opinion, how should world leaders engage with Iran on this issue?

This is a very sensitive issue since it has tended to unite various shades of political opinion (including some of the government’s opponents) among Iranians. You may have noted that recently even the head of the atomic energy organization under the shah who lives abroad has been vociferously defending Iran’s right to enrichment. Thus, opinion is divided in the country even among the Islamist leaders and government agencies, and this must be the main reason behind the ambiguities observed in the Iranian government’s behavior.

I doubt that seriously effective sanctions could be applied unless Russia (and China) is persuaded to go along with them. Given that, IAEA’s close supervision and monitoring, trust building and negotiations seem to be the right path to follow. A siege mentality appears to be dominant in Iran at the moment, and any policy which may alleviate that and encourage the more moderate elements should be useful.

This year, the Iranian election turned out to be violent. While media outside Iran generally depicted Mousavi as the moderate leader with a wide support network, Ahmadinejad is believed to have won because of a high level of support in rural areas. How do you explain the gap between the Western media’s reports and the reality on the ground?

In fact, many of the major Western media were saying that the election result was ‘too close to call.’ Mousavi’s support came mainly from Tehran and other major cities -reformists, pragmatists and seculars, who included the better-off and better-educated. Ahmadinejad’s voters, on the other hand, were mainly people of rural areas and small townships, and many of them were radical Islamists.

What led to the astonishment and disbelief of Mousavi’s voters was particularly the fact that Ahmadinejad was declared to have won as many as 10 million votes more than Mousavi.

In the post-election violence, Neda Soltani, a young student, has been hailed as a martyr for a new Iran after she was said to be murdered by the Revolutionary Guard. In 1978-1979, students were the main forces behind the overthrow of the Shah and the support to the Islamic regime, but in the election in 2009, young people, especially in cities, called for a different rule. Can we talk about what changed in Iran since the late 1970’s on this front?

The revolution of February 1979 was eventually backed virtually by the entire Iranian society, though many of its activists were young and idealistic Islamists or Marxist-Leninists. They had little or no interest in what they regularly described as ‘bourgeois or Western’ democracy.

The roots of recent debates about democracy are in the early 1990s when the reformist movement began to emerge and spread more widely during the eight years of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005) and beyond. The movement for change is not a homogeneous one, and includes various agendas, but the present mainstream (most of whom come from within the Islamist fold itself) tend to emphasize the representative features of the Islamic Republic’s constitution, though there are others who would like to revise it as well. In fact ‘change’ was one of the leading slogans of the reformist candidates and their supporters. They were hoping to make the system more representative, and extend personal and cultural freedoms.

Youth and graduate unemployment may have played a role in this but I doubt if it was the primary motive for ‘change.’

Cathie Carmichael, Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia, tries to “show how hotbeds of nationalism, racism, and developmentalism resulted in devastating manifestations of genocidal ideology.” Carmichael’s quest to dissect famous genocides before the Second World War is the basis of “Genocide Before the Holocaust.” (Yale University Press, 2009)

The book does not live up to expectations. It would have been interesting if Carmichael had attempted to demonstrate the relationship between the emergence of genocidal ideology alongside increased awareness of the usefulness of racism and other forms of organized prejudice as political tools. Instead, Carmichael busies herself with showing how global dignitaries like Henry Morgenthau or famous composers like Modest Mussorgsky viewed the Armenian genocide and anti-Semitism respectively.

Carmichael does not even offer a historical explanation as to why there was relatively less global attention to genocide prior the Holocaust. The scope of the damage of genocide is another topic that isn’t addressed very well in the book. While Carmichael lists destruction of religious buildings and exodus of racial minorities as examples of the aftermath of racially-motivated murders, the overreaching effect on society is not given the treatment it deserves.

Equally disappointing is Carmichael’s lack of discussion of the Great Famine in Ukraine from 1932-1933. Carmichael mentions the Great Famine as something that was the result of Stalin’s transformation of the Soviet economy. Since the main theme of the book focuses on right-wing extremists’ failed experiments of achieving racial purity, one isn’t certain where the Great Famine is supposed to fit in with Carmichael’s narrative.

Carmichael does eloquently address the consequence of the suffering experienced by victims of genocides and how it is passed to their children and grandchildren. She writes,

“Once suffering has passed from one generation to another, it becomes even harder to solve conflicts. Stories that are passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth become part of a group’s lore. They often become distorted and exaggerated with time and treated as received wisdom by group members.”

Unfortunately, Carmichael does little to further illustrate the effects of this generational phenomenon. One has to wonder what she makes of the role of the Armenian Genocide on the present relationship between Turkey and the EU, for example, but the book offers little insight into such matters.

It is, however, commendable that Carmichael should add an entirely new dimension to how we view the Spanish Inquisition today. In her eyes, the Inquisition was partly an attempt of the Spanish Monarch to forge an Empire exclusively belonging to white Spanish citizens of the Catholic faith, and she makes a compelling argument here.

Ultimately, if Carmichael is aiming to provide new insight into how genocidal ideology intensified, she has been unable to deliver the goods. Ukraine’s Great Famine in particular – a much-debated, yet certainly extremely disturbing historical event – deserved a closer look here. One has to wonder if Carmichael is perhaps not entirely neutral on the issue of the Famine, considering her handling of it in the book.

The Carnegie Hall recital CD (EMI/Virgin 2009) is a recording of the Anderszewski concert in New York City in December of last year. The concert covers works from various German, Czech and Hungarian composers. They include Bach, Schumann, Janacek and Beethoven. Bartok’s Hungarian Folksongs from the Csik District is the encore.

In the Bach Partita No2, Anderszewski’s flexible but sophisticated style of playing vividly reveals different characteristics of each section of the work. The difference within the work ranges from soft melancholy in Allemande to Dance suite in Capriccio. And Anderszewski brings out the slow, melodic nature of Janacek’s In The Mists almost to perfection.

However, the performance of Schumann ’s Carnival scenes from Vienna is disappointing. In the third movement, Anderszewski’s interpretation turns the slow section into a sad depiction of the Carnival. Also, during the fourth movement, Anderszewski plays too fast. The Polish pianist fails to let listeners experience the joyful, happy atmosphere of the Viennese party.

Above all, through the excellent idiomatic interpretation of Bartok, Anderszewski’s new record defines a wonderful evening in New York, the sort of experience one would definitely want to go through in person. I recently had a chance to speak with Anderszewski briefly about the record, and here is what we talked about:

Jonathan: Why did you decide to perform works of German, Hungarian and Czech composers for your concert in New York?

Piotr: I had not the composers natinalities in mind when deciding the programme.But it is true that in general middle European music is the one I feel the most affinity with.

Jonathan: Among all works you performed, which did you find the most challenging to interpret?

Piotr: The most challenging was the Schumann piece, by far.

Jonathan: Can you tell our readers more about what you have coming up?

Piotr: My future plans after this CD is maybe a Schumann CD and I would like to record Bach’s English suites.

Can we talk about why this book was written? What were some of the challenges of writing it?

The USSR conducted extensive espionage operations in the United States in the decades leading up to the Cold War, and hostile American public reaction to revelations in the late 1940s about the extent of that espionage played a significant role in shaping public and government attitudes in the opening years of the Cold War. Consequently, an accurate account of Soviet espionage assists in more fully understanding the history of that period.

The chief challenge of a reliable historical account of Soviet espionage in this period has long been the paucity of archival documentation. The investigative files of security agencies such as the FBI, trial transcripts, and testimony before congressional investigative committees are useful but only tell part of the story. The continued closure to research of the leading Soviet intelligence agencies has been a major barrier to a more accurate account. But the combination of the release by the American National Security Agency of some 3,000 deciphered KGB cables (mostly 1943-1946) and, more importantly, the 1,115 pages of Alexander Vassiliev’s transcriptions and summaries of KGB archival documents allow a much more comprehensive account.

It is still early to say too much about the reception of the book. But those specialists in espionage history who have had the opportunity to examine the book and its underlying source, Vassiliev’s notebooks, are impressed. The June issue of the prestigious Journal of Cold War Studies carried five articles by leading historical specialists all based on Vassiliev’s notebooks. The articles themselves were earlier presented as papers at a heavily attended conference in May at the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. There is, of course, a shrinking group of academics who loudly insist on the innocence of Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg, dismiss Soviet espionage as a vastly exaggerated myth, and desperately seek to keep doubt alive by explaining away the new evidence rather than, as is a historian’s job, to explain the evidence.

In the current academic climate, does it sound politically-incorrect even just to try to explain the motives of someone like McCarthy?

There is a widespread misunderstanding about Joseph McCarthy’s role in bringing Soviet espionage to the attention of the public. He was, in fact, a Johnnie-come-lately to the issue. He was not publicly identified with the issue until 1950, when he made exaggerated charges that the Truman administration had failed to remove security risks from the State Department. But the issue of Soviet espionage had been a public matter for several years by that point.

Senator McCarthy did not take up the Communist/espionage issue until 1950, and his chief use of it was as a partisan club to accuse key leaders of the Truman administration of being participants in “a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” McCarthy’s charges against Acheson and Marshall were utter nonsense without documentary support then or now. Senator McCarthy’s contribution to the anti-Communist cause was negative due to his wild exaggerations and use of the issue for partisan purposes.

Did the KGB attempt to infiltrate either the Republican or Democrat Party? Any links between the KGB and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and American Federation of Labor?

None of our research has shown any KGB interest in the ACLU or the American Federation of Labor. The KGB did recruit several of its engineer spies from the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians, a tiny union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations led by secret members of the Communist Party. FAECT’s role, however, was chiefly that of a recruiting pool because many Communists with engineering and scientific degrees joined it.

Nor did the KGB target either major political party as an organization. It did recruit for a few years in the late 1930s on a monetary basis (not ideological sympathy) one corrupt member of Congress, Representative Samuel Dickstein (Democrat-New York). The KGB also provided secret campaign funds to William Dodd, Jr., an already recruited KGB agent, for Dodd’s attempt to unseat an incumbent Democratic House member in the Democratic primary in 1938, but Dodd was defeated. The KGB also recruited one congressional staff member who was a useful source of information for some years, Charles Kramer. But with the Republicans taking control of Congress in 1946, Kramer lost is congressional staff position and never returned to U.S. government service.

In the book, confirmed spies such as Alger Hiss and Alfred Dean Slack were Ivy League graduates or well-known universities such as Wisconsin-Madison. These people were part of the most educated group in the country back then. What factors drove great men and women to the Communist Party?

Communism was never a mass movement in the United States, and public sentiment was generally hostile to it. But in the 1930s a small segment of young professionals from elite and Ivy League backgrounds were radicalized by the economic deprivations of the Great Depression and the emergence of Nazism and Fascism in Europe.

Most spies illustrated in your book had Jewish background. Example include Harry Gold, Charles Kramer ( Charles Krivitsky) and Maurice Halperin. Do you find a relationship between American anti-Semitism and the large number of spies being Jewish?

Certainly there were a number of Soviet sources who were Jewish, but there were plenty who were not. For example, of the spies in the State Department noted above (Hiss, Field, Straight, Duggan, and Wadleigh) none were Jewish and one of the unexpected finding of Spies, the long hidden identity of the Soviet atomic spy hitherto known only by the cover name “Pers,” was Russell McNutt, a Kansan of old-stock Ango-American origin.

There was also an evolution of attraction to the American Communist party. At its founding, Slavic immigrants from Eastern Europe dominated the movement. But by the mid-1920s the largest ethnic group in the American Communist party was Finnish Americans. In the 1930s the party’s ethnic makeup shifted again with Jews constituting the largest group.

While receding, there continued to be widespread anti-Semitism in American society at the time combined with illusions that communism in the USSR had ended anti-Jewish prejudice likely contributed to the attraction of a minority of Jews to the Communist Party. Concern about the violent anti-Semitism of the rising Nazi movement in Germany further reinforced this attraction. This also coincided with the second generation of Jewish immigrants obtaining higher education, particularly in technical fields, and during World War II the KGB recruited a number of its technical/scientific spies from young Communist engineers of Jewish background.

Did Soviet spies inside the American government try to influence American foreign policy in the Middle East?

In the period dealt with in Spies, the 1930s and the 1940s, the Middle East was a very low priority to the KGB stations operating in the United States, and there is no documentation of any KGB interest in influencing U.S. policy toward that region in that era.

The book ends in the context of the 1950s. Had the KGB made attempts to establish a spy network inside American soil after that? For example, did the KGB try to recruit spies during the waves of Soviet Jewish immigration to the United States from the late 1970s onward?

After the 1940s, while there continued to be occasional recruitment of Soviet spies on the basis of ideological sympathy, most Soviet espionage recruits were motivated by more traditional means: money, resentment against superiors or other personal grievances, thirst for adventure and intrigue, and occasional sexual blackmail. Given the overwhelming anti-Communist and anti-Soviet attitudes of Jewish immigration from the USSR to the United States in the 1970s and later, it is extremely unlikely that there was any significant KGB recruitment from that group.

What kind of lessons would you perhaps like your readers to take away from the book?

Ideological spies present a particularly disturbing challenge in a country where citizenship has never been defined by blood and heritage— with the partial exception of blacks and Native Americans—but by commitment to a set of democratic ideals. Citizens accused of allegiance to a foreign power have engendered outrage, whether it was Aaron Burr, allegedly seeking to dismember the Union, or German-Americans suspected of disloyalty during World War I. But those who have rejected the principles of the Constitution for another vision of government have earned particular wrath. No era of American life saw so many accusations of espionage and covert activities on behalf of a foreign country as the decade after World War II.

The McCarthy era has long since attained iconic status in American history as the symbol of paranoia about “reds hiding under the beds.” Although the postwar attack on the CPUSA preceded Senator McCarthy’s rise to prominence, the picture of a relentless governmental persecution of a perhaps annoying but ultimately harmless movement is regularly invoked as an object lesson in the erosion of civil liberties.

Most American Communists were not spies; the KGB did not need or want the CPUSA’s fifty-to-sixty thousand members as agents. But the documents in Vassiliev’s notebooks make crystal clear that the CPUSA’s leadership in the 1930s and 1940s willingly placed the party’s organizational resources and a significant number of its key cadres at the service of the espionage agencies of a foreign power. The CPUSA as an organized entity was an auxiliary service to Soviet intelligence. Dozens of its members working for the American government or employed in scientific research handed over information, sometimes with the full knowledge that they were serving the Soviet Union, sometimes comforting themselves that they were only informing the CPUSA leadership, and occasionally willfully deceiving themselves about the ultimate destination of the material.

It was no witch hunt that led American counterintelligence officials to investigate government employees and others with access to sensitive information for Communist ties after they became cognizant of the extent of Soviet espionage and the crucial role played in it by the CPUSA, but a rational response to the extent to which the Communist Party had become an appendage of Soviet intelligence.

The new release, Midsummer Night, is Royal’s third CD with EMI. It is also the second time for her to work with Orchestra of English National Opera and conductor Edward Gardner. The collection includes works that depict poetic and romantic scenes composed by Britten, Korngold, Walton, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Lehar, Barber, Herrmann and Alwyn. As the title suggests, all of the works on the record illustrate the beauty of early evening. The particular focus here is on women.

Royal is fantastic here, singing in a voice that’s particularly pure. She demonstrates her capability for switching between different roles, from the idealistic Miss Julie longing for the end of class distinctions to Rusalka, who wants to be a full human in order to live with her mortal lover.

Royal’s collaboration with the chorus works particularly well on The Merry Widow of Lehar, when Royal (as Hanna) and the chorus sing about a huntsman possessed by a dryad. The orchestra itself makes for excellent company on this release. Royal has demonstrated her ability to be a top-notch singer, in line with such greats as Natalie Dessay and Anna Caterina Antonacci.

Midsummer Night is available from EMI Classics.

Bibi’s ideas are not new. Israel as the Jewish state, Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel and the Palestinian abandonment of the right of return have been the top priorities of successive Israeli governments. The only difference between the mainstream left and right in Israel lies in the growth of settlements. The One-State Solution supported by Benny Elon of National Union Party has never been popular. Benny Elon calls for formal annexation of Judea and Samaria. Palestinian residents in West Bank then become citizens of Jordan.

But why have the Two-State Solution and One-State Solution negotiations failed? In his book, One State, Two State, Benny Morris chronicles peace negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah and predicts the future of the relationship between Israel and Palestine.

Morris is professor of history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. Before entering academia, Morris worked as a journalist for the Jerusalem Post. Once considered a left-wing historian, Morris has largely been seen a member of the right-wing bloc since 2004. In an interview with Haaretz, Morris stated that the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was necessary to create a Jewish state. Morris also found fault with the country’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, for not expelling all Palestinians. The refugee issue, Morris suggested, could only be overcome through the “Iron-Wall” solution. It called for total Jewish domination of Palestine.

image ⓒ Yale University Press

The problem with Morris’s thesis is his argument that democracy has never taken root in Palestine. Morris writes, “…Arab communities, are deeply religious and have no respect for democratic values and no tradition of democratic governance.” Morris’s view is inaccurate. Democracy exists in Palestine.

Palestinians had a free democratic presidential election in January 2005. The Palestinian Parliament also had a free election in 2007. The fact the United States, Israel, the European Union boycott Hamas should be interpreted as a sign against democracy in Palestine. The boycott should be perceived as a move to stop the rest of the world from contacting Hamas for future peace talks.

In fact, boycotting a political leader winning a general election is not a unique occurrence. When Jörg Haider won the Austrian election in 2000, the European Union stopped contacts with the new Austrian government for as long as Jörg Haider praised the Nazi Party and Hilter’s economic policies.

Equally disturbing is Morris’s pessimistic view on the future of Israel and Palestine. Morris explains his negative position on the possibility of co-existence between Israel and Palestine by describing all Palestinians as law-breakers. Worse, Morris justifies his baseless position using the crime and lethal car accident rates aming Israeli Arabs. Morris writes, “Arabs, to put it simply, proportionally commit far more crimes (and not only ones connected to property) and commit far more lethal traffic violations than do Jews.”

In what way does the crime rate among Arab Israelis represent Palestinians living in West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem? Can crime and car accident rates even be used in estimating the possibility that Palestinians may launch attacks against Jewish Israeli citizens once Palestine becomes a state? Morris’s explanation of why Israeli Jewish society cannot co-exist with Palestinian society makes him come off as irrational.

Morris does not utilize Arabic sources, further weakening his thesis. His book is full of English and Hebrew sources, and is therefore lopsided.

Morris does do a good job of analyzing the Palestinian National Chapter (PNC) and how it should be changed if the Palestinians are to recognize the Jewish State. For example, if Palestinian leaders agree to live in peace with Israel, they should eliminate the 22th clause of the PNC. The clause calls for “(destroying) the Zionist and imperialist presence…”

Morris is right to argue that the Palestinian authority cannot occupy two worlds, one of war and one of peace, if it wants to find some common ground with Israel.

While Morris may have a good reason for doubting Palestinian intentions, his views on democracy in Palestine and the future between Israel and Palestine are unnecessarily hopeless. Worse yet is the fact that Morris does not bother to provide a solid basis for his exaggerated claims.

Jonathan Mok: Can you tell our readers when and why you first became interested in Taha Muhammad Ali and his work?

Adina Hoffman: Taha Muhammad Ali is a remarkable poet and a remarkable man—someone who is at one and the same time absolutely extraordinary and utterly ordinary, and it was that combination that drew me to him. When I say that Taha is extraordinary, I mean that he has lived through some of the most devastating historical and personal events it’s possible to imagine—he lost his village, his homeland, and many of the people closest to him, and his culture is in serious danger of erasure—and yet he has emerged from that crucible with a love for life that is, in my experience unrivalled. He is neither bitter nor angry, but curious, ebullient, even joyous. More extraordinary still, he has managed to transform those devastating experiences into art of the very first order.

At the same time, Taha is deeply ordinary: many of the ordeals he has suffered are the same ordeals that most Palestinians have had to endure. In this sense, his story is in no way his alone, but stands as a more emblematic tale. And to extend that still further, this story—of exile, loss, and displacement—isn’t just a Palestinian story. Many other people (and peoples) have experienced similar tragedies.

I first met Taha in 1995. A few years later, my husband, the poet Peter Cole, began to translate his work into English; in 2000, Ibis Editions, the small press we run in Jerusalem, published a volume of Taha’s work in English, and since then Taha and Peter have been invited to read together all over the US and Europe. I’ve gone along for the ride, and as we’ve traveled together, all three of us have become very close. My decision to write about Taha was a natural extension of that bond.

Jonathan: What are some of the similarities, as well as differences, between Muhammad Ali and poets such as Mahmoud Darwish?

Adina: It’s important not to generalize, of course, since each of the poets in question has his own distinct style, temperament, and passions, and the work of each has evolved in complicated ways over time. That said, the most famous Palestinian poetry—poetry written in the late 50s and throughout the 60s and 70s by poets like Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Zayyad— tended to fall under the loose rubric of the “literature of resistance,” which is to say that it made a direct political point by means of clear, forceful rhetoric and a pronounced metrical pulse.

Most of Taha’s poetry was written after this period, and it takes up a quieter tack. It’s at once plainspoken and gently sophisticated; it tends to include characters that come from a village setting; it has a distinct, slightly eclectic music that doesn’t involve meter or rhyme; it takes up a strategy of dramatic indirection. He likens his own poetic method to playing billiards. “You shoot over here—” he’ll point a finger to the right, “to reach over there—“ and the finger will bend sharply to the left. His poems are, in other words, political, but in saying that I mean that they pertain to citizens (which is at the etymological root of the word “politics”) and that what is at stake in them is the basic humanity and dignity of a whole array of very specific individuals and the culture from which they come.

Adina Hoffman

Jonathan: What place does Muhammad Ali occupy in Palestinian and Arab poetry?

Adina: Taha has a kind of underground reputation in the Arab world: he’s widely respected by other writers, and deeply appreciated by those readers who know his work. His reputation is definitely growing—and in the US and Europe he has a devoted following, with his American book, So What: New & Selected Poems, achieving what amounts to bestselling status for a book of poetry. There’s also a British edition of that book, and translated collections of his work will be coming out soon in Germany and France.

I should say that getting his poems out into the Arab world hasn’t been easy: being a Palestinian Israeli has made the distribution of his work difficult, especially because Taha has never been affiliated with a political party or movement, which is the single way that the poetry of Palestinians on what’s known as “the inside”—that is, within Israel—has reached the rest of the Arabic-speaking world. But that is slowly changing.

Jonathan: Finally, having lived in Israel for a long time, what status has Arab poetry and literature gained in Israel? I remember that in 2000, when the then Education Minister, Yossi Sarid, suggested teaching Mahmoud Darwish poetry in Israeli high schools, Sarid’s suggestion created a firestorm.

Adina: Unfortunately, Arabic poetry in Israel is still read primarily as a way to “know the enemy.” The controversy that you mention—concerning the teaching of Darwish’s poetry in Israeli Jewish high schools—is emblematic of that: Sarid’s idea was to get beyond such a reductive and demonizing reading, and there was a huge public uproar at the mere suggestion of such a thing.

That said, Taha’s poetry has actually found an interested, open audience among Israeli Jews—a book of Hebrew translations of his work, by the novelist Anton Shammas, came out a few years back—and though that’s not a huge audience, it does seem to me that he has managed to speak to people who wouldn’t ordinarily be drawn to Palestinian literature. And because his poetry is so deeply human—and so disarming in its angle of approach—I do believe that certain Israeli Jews may have, in some small way, allowed themselves to think of Palestinians like Taha as being somehow like them and so to begin to feel something like compassion. That’s no small thing.

Book Review

Last year, Palestinians lost poet Mahmoud Darwish. Without Darwish, who can speak for Palestinians, even including those that stayed in Israel after 1948?

In her book, Adina Hoffman suggests that one of the best living poets in Palestinian literature and Arab world is not a figure working for academia. Neither is this person a member of any political parties or a university graduate. The great poet in Hoffman’s book has a souvenir shop in Nazareth, the birthplace of Jesus. The poet relied on learning of Arabic, Hebrew and English by himself. His name is Taha Muhammad Ali, and he first became known through the translation of his work by Hoffman’s husband, Peter Cole. Hoffman’s book chronicles the life of Taha Muhammad Ali from his childhood until his emergence on the world poetry stage.

Hoffman’s ability to connect historical events to the life of Taha Muhammad Ali makes this book an excellent read. Muhammad Ali insisted on seeing himself as a normal person having no interest in politics, but he was heavily affected by war and its aftermath. Muhammad Ali’s separation from his first love, Fatima, in the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was a great example of the impact of political events on individual lives. Fatima escaped to Lebanon with her family and has never been allowed to return to Israel.

The book would have benefited from some discussion of Muhammad Ali’s opinion on of Israel as a Jewish state, the failure of peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and the radicalization of Arabs. It would have been particularly interesting to read of Muhammad Ali’s thoughts on the exclusion of Arab literature in the Israeli high school curriculum and the little interest it arouses among the public and intellectuals.

On the whole, Muhammad Ali emerges as a subject deserving of the greatest respect. His story is particularly inspiring –  a man of no money, with no education, has become a widely-respected figure in the poetry world, and he didn’t even have to rely on a storm of controversy to get there.

My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness
Adina Hoffman
Yale University Press (2009).

A native of China, Wang was trained at the Beijing Conservatory before moving to Canada at the age of fourteen. She then moved to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, in the United States. She is going to perform with Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Claudio Abbado this coming summer – so here is a chance to see her live.

The debut CD features the works of Frederic Chopin, Gyorgy Ligeti, Alexander Scriabin, and Franz Liszt. While Wang is a young performer in need of more confidence, her growing maturity is demonstrated through the Chopin’s Piano Sonata no.2.

Apart from retaining the romantic nature of the Sonata, she is able to bring her own interpretation – full of rich sounds. The full tone Wang generates in the second movement produces a warm and lovely atmosphere. However, in the third movement, Wang can be slow in her pace – so as to the bring out the nature of the third movement as a funeral march. In the last movement, the excellent performances picks up. Wang plays out the speedy, romantic fast movement with great skill.

For the two short works of Ligeti , Etude 4:Fanfares and 10: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – no words other than “Master” can be used to describe Wang’s style. She thoroughly illustrates the fast, yet mechanical nature of Etude 4. For 10: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Wang creates an impressive sound through showing the rapid pace – she is great at switching between theup and down tones in different sections of the work.

When it comes to Scriabin’s Piano Sonata no.2, Wang exerts great control over the flow of the first movement. The pace Wang creates in the first half of the movement strikes the right balance between the slow and speedy parts of the work. It must be noted, however, that the excessive lower sound Wang produces makes the second part of the first movement full of sadness, instead of reflecting the state of peace and harmony associated with this work. Much like with Chopin, Wang compensates her Scriabin performance with her terrific concentration.

Last but not least is Liszt’s Piano Sonata. Wang, apparently, has found this one an especially difficult piece, but she does a marvelous job of suddenly changing the tone from slow to very fast at the beginning of the first movement. Wang also inhabits the sad, melodic second and third movements like a natural.

For a debut CD, this one is a keeper. Most importantly, it is instantly obvious that with more experience, Wang will most likely conquer new heights. Time – something she has an abundance of – will tell whether she will become the next Chinese super-pianist. A career similar to the likes of Yundi Li and Lang Lang could very well be Wang’s future.

© Paulus Productions

How is this piece different from the works you composed in the past?

It is probably the longest work for chorus and orchestra that I have written. It is the only one with 4 soloists and a cantor and it also is the only one to deal with a serious social and political subject

What was the creative process like? Did you face any challenges composing this?

The inspiration for this work comes from the serious nature of the subject matter and the words of Michael Dennis Browne. He and I are long-time collaborators and have a wonderful way of working together. This project was no different from the other 15 or so that we have co-authored. One of the challenges was to say something new about the subject and to do it with sensitivity and skill.

Why did you name sections of your work as Renewal, Remembrance and Visions?

The names for the 3 major sections (I. Returning, II. Renewal and III. Remembrance) grew out of my decision to group the work into three major concepts. I felt strongly that people would be able to get their ears around the subject more easily if the many disparate little sections were grouped under major headings. I think it does work.

Can we talk about the significance of using music to mourn the victims of the Holocaust, from your point of view?

Music has so much power to move, to inspire and to create real change. It has the ability to make words more powerful in their content and delivery. It measures and metes words out at a pace determined by the composer who can at least attempt to calculate their effect.

Review of To Be Certain of the Dawn:

Vatican-Jewish relations have been full of tension for years. The latest debacle in this relationship was caused by Briton Richard Williamson, a member of the extremely conservative Society of Saint Pius X. Williamson has denied the existence of the Holocaust, something the current Pope failed to remember when he lifted his excommunication.

Yet there have been reconciliatory efforts between Jews and Catholics. The newest area of reconciliation is music. The work of Stephen Paulus, performed by the Minnesota Orchestra and its chorus, is the latest example of how Catholics and Jews can share their celebration of the Vatican reform in 1968 and the liberation of Nazi Death Camps in 1948.

To Be Certain of the Dawn is a work in three sections, with a great arrangement between the soloists and the chorus. The chorus is able to recreate the atmosphere of blindness and ignorance towards the sufferings of Jews during the Second World War. In the “Vision” section in particular, the chorus does a wonderful job of outlining both the sorrow and hope of people tortured and killed in the Holocaust.

The most important aspect of this work is the reminder that music is the common language of humanity. It creates a new atmosphere, bringing more clarity than simple rhetoric. Actions may speak louder than words, but music can give actions more profound depth – and this production is a testament to the latter.

In More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor In The Inner City (W.W. Norton, 200), Professor William Julius Wilson of Harvard University discusses the complex relationships between government policies, “living habits” within African-American communities, and the problem of poverty.

He uses the phrase “social structural discrimination” to describe government politics in urban planning and allocation of education budgets. He also speaks of “cultural habits” that impact African-American job seekers, influence acceptance of teenage motherhood and allow for tolerance of communal violence.

Instead of favoring liberal scholars such as Jennifer Rothschild, Wilson has aroused a debate by justifying certain conservative arguments that claim the African-American community that can ensure its future success. By referring to his own ethnographic research on the high crime rate in neighborhoods of Chicago, Wilson has created a more immediate, as opposed to solely ideologically-driven, study of social phenomena.

Wilson’s comparison of European and American attitudes toward the causes of poverty is equally good, bringing a balance to the work. Blaming blacks for under-performing while allowing them to remain cut off from decent educational opportunities has been practiced under the guise of individualism by white Americans, Wilson argues.

The main problem of Wilson’s book is a familiar one – there is a lack of solutions to tackle both discrimination and cultural factors. For example, while Wilson makes a compelling case when he argues that teachers’ low expectations toward African-American students contribute to lack of academic achievement among the children, he does not discuss possible strategies to combat this – such as allowing parents greater choice in selecting schools, so that racist environments experience lower enrollment.

Considered in its political context, the book is timely. Now that change has really come to the U.S., society is at an important crossroads in regard to race. In that sense, More Than Just Race marks a new beginning for both scholars and the general public.