by Edward Green
In an article I wrote—“Contempt: the Cause of Racism”—for the magazine U.S. African Eye, I quoted this urgent, kind question asked by Eli Siegel, the great American educator who founded the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism:
“What does a person deserve by being a person?”
This is the most important question in the world today. Aesthetic Realism, for the first time, makes it clear and conscious; but on every continent, wherever people are fighting for social and economic justice, this question is at the heart of it. And, as I want to show in this month’s column by looking at two contemporary short stories of Africa, what a person deserves from us is likewise the central matter in family life—in how a husband sees his wife; a child, his grandfather.
1. How Should People See Other People?
“The most important thing about every person,” Eli Siegel wrote in 1973 in the international journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, “is that he comes from, represents, and is related to, the whole universe.” All art arises from and stands for this deep, wide, respectful way of seeing. And yet, Mr. Siegel explained, there is a drive in everyone—which he identified as the hope for contempt—to make ourselves important by seeing other people as existing only for our comfort, glory and superiority.
These two possibilities of mind, I learned, are what humanity now is debating: Should we hope to increase our respect for other people, or to see them with contempt? And it is plain, there can be no lasting kindness in a family or economic justice in a nation until that debate is settled honestly.
A story which powerfully illustrates the fight between contempt and respect—and how it has to do both with economics and family life—is “In the Hospital,” by the Liberian author Similih M. Cordor, published in Charles Larson’s valuable 1997 anthology, Under African Skies (Noonday Press, NY.) Mr. Cordor’s story is, among other things, a criticism of how the medical profession is corrupted by the desire to make profit.
It is hard to imagine anything less civilized than a society in which sick people and their families, terrified of what may happen to them, have to worry that a doctor, or a hospital, may be less interested in their well-being than in their money. Yet this is the case in America, Liberia, and many other nations of the world.
As the story begins, Kollie, a 45 year old carpenter who has brought his family to Monrovia in search of work, comes home from the shop to find his wife, Marwu, who is pregnant, lying coiled in pain on a mat, feeling—as she has for weeks—desperately ill. Marwu is still suffering from the effects of an operation seven months earlier; nor has she recovered from the ordeal of her last pregnancy, which, two years before, required a cesarian section. Kollie wants to be kind. Though money is tight, and medicines expensive, and his own work back-breaking, he says to his wife, who feels bad that her illness has prevented her from doing any work, “You ain’t supposed to worry about money in you condition.” And Marwu is worried: now that the family has only one source of income, the food supply for their young children is nearly exhausted. Maybe, she tells her husband, they can no longer afford to send money to the “old people upcountry.” “I know things are hard on us,” Kollie answers, “but we won’t forget our own people in Voinjama ’cause they’re depending on us.”
2. Kindness and Selfishness
Kollie is trying to be fair to what other people deserve from him. Though Marwu is terrified of returning to the hospital, where she nearly died before, he insists that they go. He is worried about her safety and that of the child to be; but his conscience is troubled. Cordor explains:
Kollie didn’t want to admit to himself that his strong desire for another son had been the main reason for wanting Marwu to get pregnant, even though she wasn’t willing because of the cesarean section.
What men and women everywhere are yearning for, Aesthetic Realism makes resplendently clear, is to be seen with good will, which Eli Siegel described as: “the hope that good things happen to things (things include people); with the desire to know what those good things are.” Kollie feels the more sons he has, the more impressive he will be. Because of this, he is not interested deeply in seeing what is best for his wife. Kollie was willing to risk her life to swell his own importance.
Though it takes different forms in different societies, men all over the world have felt we had a right to impose our will on women—to see them as “lesser” beings who existed to serve us, make us comfortable. This attitude to women—that they exist for our selfish advantage—is evil; it is akin, essentially, to other large evils in history: slavery, colonialism, and the profit system, where people see other people in terms of financial advantage. “The first victory of contempt,” Eli Siegel writes in the “Preface” to Self and World (Definition Press, NY. 1981):
is the feeling in people that they have the right to see other people and things pretty much as they please. …The fact that most people have felt…they had the right to see other people in a way that seemed to go with comfort—this fact is the beginning of the injustice and pain of the world. It is contempt in its first universal, hideous form.
It is part of Cordor’s artistic power that we see the irony of Kollie’s life. As a husband, he has insisted on having his way with his wife; but as a worker, he is the recipient of contempt—it is he whose needs and feelings are scorned. Though he works long, hard hours to make money for the boss, his family of six can only afford a “dimly lit single room.” And he’s afraid he’s going to have to pawn the little furniture they have to pay for Marwu’s stay at the hospital. He tells a doctor: “My bossman ain’t give me any medical insurance.”
3. Ill Will and Good Will in a Hospital
This story shows powerfully: medical care must be separated from the desire for profit! Marwu’s life is saved at the hospital, and the baby is born healthy. Yet the visit is surrounded by financial brutality. As they arrive, the supervisor detains Kollie and Marwu at the door, saying: “Don’t you know that you must throw something in my hand before going inside?” And a doctor insists that Kollie sign a “death certificate” before he will treat Marwu. By signing it, the doctor informs Kollie:
you and your family are waiving all your rights to hold any doctor, nurse, midwife, or hospital administrator responsible for anything if your wife should die—or even develop any complication before, during, and after surgery.
Having no choice, Kollie signs. The doctor has taken advantage of Kollie’s fear for his wife’s health to protect himself and his colleagues. No matter what hurt the hospital might inflict, there will be no possibility of legal remedy.
The doctor then coldly tells him, surgery will be withheld until the bills are paid, and “possibly in advance.” Marwu’s life is being held hostage to the profit system. And near the end of this story there are these chilling sentences:
Kollie felt somewhat disappointed that he didn’t get a boy child. But he felt that something might have gone wrong in the Baby Pool. He had heard rumors that… sometimes rich men gave large amounts of money to nurses and midwives to give them the boy children if their wives had given birth to girls…Kollie tried to believe Miss Washington, who was the first person to tell him that Marwu had delivered a girl child. But he wondered if the senior midwife wasn’t part of trading babies in the hospital.
4. What Literature Has Gone For
“Literature has constantly gone for giving a self to people who weren’t usually seen as having one,” Eli Siegel said in his lecture “What Has the Past Gone For?,” a report of which is now included in the Definition Press book Goodbye Profit System: Update (1982). “The whole history of literature is about man’s wanting to be seen fairly by others and to see others with the fullness of meaning they may have.”
These words are beautiful, and so important. Poor people in a poor country, Kollie and Marwu are given richness of meaning by Similih Cordor, who wanted to see them truly.
Aesthetic Realism explains, and art is the great evidence for it: whenever we are fair to what is not ourselves, we benefit! Cordor, hoping to give this struggling, and oh-so-representative couple the kind understanding they deserve, has also taken care of himself: he has expressed himself, and earned the respect of his readers. And we, the readers, are enriched, too; our selves are kinder, deeper, more perceptive.
The logic of art, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, needs to be carried over to every aspect of life, including politics and economics. The world will not be honest or civilized until people everywhere feel: “I am being good to myself by making sure others get what they deserve! And at a minimum that surely includes: adequate food; a home to live in with dignity and ease; education that brings joy and clarity to people’s minds; and health care whenever a person needs it.
5. Grandfathers: African and American
I go now to the second short story, “A Handful of Dates” by Tayeb Salih of the Sudan, included also in the Larson anthology, and translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. It is a story that compels us, usefully, to ask: how do we use the people nearest us, our families—to see all of humanity with more justice, or less?
Throughout the story, the narrator is remembering his childhood. And the very first thing we learn is this:
While I don’t remember exactly how old I was, I do remember that when people saw me with my grandfather they would pat me on the head and give my cheeks a pinch.
Soon the reason is clear: his grandfather is the wealthiest man of the village, and people are afraid of him.
He has gotten his wealth by craftily observing another man, Masood, who inherited a good deal of land. He waits for the moments when Masood is under the greatest financial pressure—and that way, bit by bit over forty years, he takes advantage of Masood, and gains possession of two thirds of that land. With a cold pride, he tells his grandchild, “I think that before Allah calls me to Him I shall have bought the remaining third as well.”
This Sudanese grandfather triumphantly has used difficult circumstances in another’s life to aggrandize himself. But—and the author, Tayeb Similih, presents this very keenly—the grandchild also exploits his grandfather’s weakness: the older man is looking for comfort and flattery:
I used to know when my grandfather wanted me to laugh, when to be silent; also I would fill the ewer for his ablutions without his having to ask me.
Though he is a child, and certainly is not consciously plotting it the way his grandfather plotted the ruin of Masood, there is a kinship of purpose here, which the author clearly wants his readers to feel. Neither grandfather nor child is asking: “What do other people deserve?” Instead, they are thinking: “How can I use other people to feel superior?”
And the child gets his wish. He comes to feel superior to the other children in his family. The narrator tells us:
I believe I was his favorite grandchild: no wonder, for my cousins were a stupid bunch and I—so they say—was an intelligent child.
Reading this story affected me very much. Like this child of the Sudan, I too used my grandfather to become cold to other people: I got his approval; I saw that he didn’t like other people too much; and I came to the conclusion that I was, therefore, superior. It didn’t occur to me that my grandfather was unjust to people, and inaccurate in making so much of me.
The choices we make as a child, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, affect centrally our later attitude to the whole world—and often these choices are very unwise. I came to see that without knowing it, I had spent my life judging every person I met by the standards I established with Joseph Spieler, my grandfather. If a person made me feel special and superior, then this person loved me; if someone had criticisms of me, that person was cruel.
This wrong way of mind would have persisted my entire life had I not had the great good fortune to study Aesthetic Realism. In a class discussion, Eli Siegel, with deep good will, asked me questions which enabled me to reconsider the decisions I had made, so unconsciously, early in my life. And he showed me that the way of seeing people I had was not only unjust to them, it was against my own life and what mattered to me most—my work as a composer of music. With such kindness he asked:
So you feel, Ed Green, your capacity for sentiment was somewhat exhausted by the feeling you had for your grandfather? Did you feel you had any room for your father?
“I don’t think so,” I answered. And Mr. Siegel said:
Look—as a composer, have all the emotion you can get! If you are using your grandfather to see the whole world better with, it is a fine sentiment. If you are using him to see other things as less, it is not good.
6. The Poison of Ill Will
At the conclusion of Tayeb Salih’s story the grandchild begins to see how his grandfather has other people—not just him—in his mind. And what he sees he doesn’t like.
It is the day of the harvest of Masood’s crop of dates, and the grandfather is planning to pressure Masood into relinquishing more of his land. But on this day Masood says something which makes the grandchild see that this man—whom his grandfather had trained him to despise—sees the world and people in a way that has beauty and largeness.
A boy perched high on a palm tree is hacking carelessly at a clump of dates with a sharp sickle, and when Masood sees this, he shouts: “Be careful you don’t cut the heart of the palm.” Those words stir something deep. The narrator says:
I pictured the palm tree as something with feeling, something possessed of a heart that had throbbed. I remembered Masood’s remark to me when he had once seen me playing with the branch of a young palm tree: “Palm trees, my boy, like humans, experience joy and suffering.” And I had felt an inward and unreasoned embarrassment.
His grandfather gives him a handful of dates to eat. But as he eats them, he sees the vicious selfishness of his grandfather.
The harvest has not yielded enough dates to pay off Masood’s debts:
I looked at Masood and saw that his eyes were darting to left and right like two mice that have lost their way home. “You’re still fifty pounds in debt to me,” said my grandfather to Masood. “We’ll talk about it later.”
What happens next is symbolic—and it is powerful. It stands, I believe, for what is felt now all over the world: the disgust, the organic objection to the contempt and ill will on which profit economics is based. The story ends:
I ran off into the distance. Hearing my grandfather call after me, I hesitated a little, then continued on my way. I felt at that moment that I hated him. Quickening my pace, it was as though I carried within me a secret I wanted to rid myself of. I reached the riverbank near the bend it made behind the wood of acacia trees. Then, without knowing why, I put my finger into my throat and spewed up the dates I’d eaten.
As his grandfather’s favorite, he knows all this land will eventually come to him, make him comfortable and important and powerful. But he can not stand the basis of it—that it would come at the pain of another person; and we respect this child!
On May 22, l970, in an historic lecture entitled “We Have with Us the Triumph of Good Will,” also reported on in the book Goodbye Profit System: Update, Eli Siegel said this—words which explain the power of Tayeb Sahlih’s story; and explain the feelings of people now all over this globe. With these kind, great sentences, I end my column:
The world is saying: We don’t want ill will to hurt and poison our lives any more…I say that the whole purpose of history is to show that the greatest kindness in the greatest power.