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| The start of Lincoln's draft of the Gettysburg Address. |
In the beginning was the absence of words.
No words could express the horror of Sept. 11, 2001, it was said again and again. No words could soothe the souls of the living or the dead. No words could express what the city had experienced; no words could convey the collective sorrow. On such a day, in such a time, words would not do.
Now the first anniversary approaches, and again there will be no words. There will be a citywide moment of silence, bagpipers, vigils, the recitation of names. There will be the Gettysburg Address and the Four Freedoms and an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence. But no original words.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's decision not to include a single original speech in the city's daylong observance on Sept. 11 may well accomplish what he is said to have intended: to avoid any possibility of politicizing the event, to head off controversy and to enable the families of the victims to pay their respects in comfort and peace.
But his decision also renders impossible precisely what was achieved at a moment he has chosen to hark back to, the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, where Abraham Lincoln spoke: the courageous reaching for words to honor the fallen, to put their sacrifice in historical context, to find meaning in carnage and to inspire the people to carry on.
"The importance of this moment is not that the words found will be sufficient," said Roderick P. Hart, a professor of communication and government at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied modern presidential discourse. "Because the horror is too great, too intense, too recent to know that words will actually fully fix things.
"But I don't think that's what we expect from one another," he said. "What we expect is that our leaders will make the effort to find some words appropriate, and we will identify with their effort. Not necessarily with the exact judiciousness of the words selected, but with the courage to try to find words."
The plans for the ceremony, made public last week, include readings of The Gettysburg Address and parts of the Declaration of Independence by Gov. George E. Pataki of New York and Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey. Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is to begin a recitation of the names of the approximately 2,800 victims.
Taps will be played, bells will toll, families will carry roses down onto the site. President Bush is to visit in the afternoon. Mr. Bloomberg will read Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. An eternal flame will be lighted. There will be candlelight vigils into the night.
The specifics of the program arose out of the positive response to the May 30 ceremony marking the completion of the ground zero cleanup, said Mr. Bloomberg's press secretary, Edward Skyler. People appreciated the absence of talk. The program eliminates any chance of politicization, Mr. Skyler said, and, above all else, Mr. Bloomberg wants the families to be comfortable.
It does avoid the obvious pitfalls. If Mr. Bloomberg had let one politician speak, he would have had to allow at least three. And Mr. Pataki is in the midst of a re-election campaign. Because Sept. 11 falls one day after the primary for governor, any original speech he might make would expose him to accusations that he was exploiting the moment.
Furthermore, the assignment would be daunting. It is not immediately apparent which current political leader has the kind of oratorical skills that would be useful in trying to rise brilliantly to this particular occasion. Finding a speaker outside politics would court controversy, too; one might choose a religious leader, but from which faith?
"To say something really worthwhile, you'd probably have to say something that not everyone would agree with," said Hendrik Hertzberg, a writer for The New Yorker and a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. "Maybe you would change the way people are thinking about this, but you would change it in a way that some people in power wouldn't like."
There is a long history to the idea that words are inadequate for certain experiences, scholars point out. It extends back, some say, as far as the Jewish tradition of the ineffability of the name of God. People have long made the case that the most profound and powerful events are inexpressible, or that they demand the simplest possible language.
There is also a long tradition of memorializing by listing names, a tradition that encompasses everything from Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam memorial in Washington to memorials to those who died in the Civil War. It is an approach that has been used especially after World War I and in situations in which bodies were not recovered, one historian said. Names become stand-ins for bodies.
"Historical context is not necessarily what people want when they're mourning, when they're angry, when they've lost something that can never be given back," said Sarah Farmer, an associate professor of history at the University of California at Irvine who studies the relationship between history and memory.
She added, "On the one hand, people want to understand it; on the other hand, the fact that it's beyond comprehension gives it an importance to people."
Speechlessness may also suit the times. Politicians are not trained in oratory, and their audiences are skeptical and impatient. In a society fragmented by race, ethnicity and class, it is harder to find language and allusions that resonate widely and to find meanings that can be broadly embraced. Visual images are easier, more elastic.
"When someone walks forward with a rose, there are a thousand possible interpretations of that moment," said Karal Ann Marling, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has written on memorials and patriotism. "You can remember your prom or think about walking down the aisle of a church or think about the fact that flowers bloom in spring with a promise of life."
Yet, there have been extraordinary speeches about horrible recent events.
There were President Bill Clinton's deceptively simple remarks at the memorial service for the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — words that some say helped remake his presidency: "Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life."
There was President Ronald Reagan's statement to the country after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986.
"Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, `Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy,' " President Reagan said in the speech, written by Peggy Noonan. He went on later: "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them."
And he ended with the now-famous line: "We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and `slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.' "
What President Reagan did was capture the dreams of the astronauts and put them back into practice, Professor Hart said. He made the case that some part of them and their hopes would continue. The speech had specificity; it named each astronaut individually and defined their collective spirit. Though relatively brief, it was beautiful.
As for Lincoln, he had not been expected to give a great speech, said Garry Wills, the author of "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America" (Simon & Schuster, 1992). That task had been left to Edward Everett, the orator of the day. Lincoln was the ribbon-cutter at Gettysburg, but in 272 words he achieved a revolution in thought, Mr. Wills said.
"He had perfected his arguments on the meaning of the war for a long time, and he boiled them down to a very compact statement," Mr. Wills said last week. "So, in effect, he defined the whole nature of the Civil War and how we should think of it ever after."
Speeches like the Gettysburg Address are few and far between, and the meaning of Sept. 11 is likely to take a long time to sort out, but many who have written speeches or studied them say those arguments miss the point. More important than the perfect selection of words for an occasion like the Sept. 11 ceremony is the heroic struggle to find words at all.
"The culture loves it when people rise to the occasion," Mr. Wills said. "There are people who can rise to the occasion, and it's cowardice not to try." Among other things, he said, "It's an insult to the dead at the towers, that you try to slap on the label from somebody else's tragedy."
Professor Hart said: "We all respond to eloquence. Because it's the language of the emotions that we feel but cannot label. It is the great speaker who can label those things. As long as there are humans, there will be that need. The question is whether or not people can fulfill it."
