re Beethoven
Reader comment on item: Ahmadinejad Bans Western Music in Iran

Submitted by Jascha Kessler (United States), Dec 24, 2005 at 14:48

Dear DP,
As you might recall, neither Bach, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Schumann, Brahms, et al, meant anything at all about the level of civilization when Schickelgruber came to power and took most of his people with him on the grand road to the 1000 year Reich. I doubt if modernization runs in synch with the history of the arts, even literature, for that matter. Each form has its own history and development and/or evolution/and/or change. Islam has a deep tradition of martyrization.

I have done two women poets into English from the Persian, one considered the foremost innovator of verse in 400 years: FORUGH FARROKHZAD, BRIDE OF ACACIAS, Caravan Books, with supporting materials by Amin Banani, who suggested the project, and his student, Ms Milani, now a prof of Persian at U of Virginia. Fine book, and you should read it sometime. This past year my translations of a true martyr, TAHERIH, SELECTED POEMS, Kalimát Press,with lots of biography and materials, came out, from a Baha'i Press. Fascinating life story: she was a judge in her 20s, was garrotted and flung down a well, in 1857, I think it was. A great personality indeed. The mullahs who seized her, even under protection of the royal household, from the household itself, are no different from the riffraff running the shebang there now...and of the same ilk as Adolf, alas. What is to be done? to quote Lenin. Time is running out, and the escalation of violent rhetoric from the very top in Tehran means either they are desperate to get to the hour they want to begin their assaults, or they are anxious about the West's possible awakening to their threats. Where is a Churchill in our time? Who will see what is before our eyes? And even he was banned from speaking over the BBC from 1936-1939....
Jascha Kessler
Prof. Emeritus of English & Modern Literature, UCLA

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