by Peter Dimock
It seems possible to me they will be ruled integral elements of the intellectual property held in “Light Years” as an original work. Owner of copyright might then be entitled to claim back royalties. I don’t pretend to know the legal dimensions or ramifications of all of this. But I believe the announcement of the existence and the content of the lyrics themselves should be left to the discretion of Derek as Judith’s son and heir and to the executors of the Frears estate.
In the Jesuits’ version of this method the seventh day’s exercise of the fourth week is reserved for contemplations of the disciple who said, “Unless I see, I will not believe.” When Jesus came to him and ordered the saint to place his fingers inside the wound in his side (Jesus was tortured and killed in a manner reserved for the lowest criminals), the saint said, “My Lord and my God.” Compose the lyrics of a love song to your one true love without the consolation of this happy ending.
Love Song in Imperial Time
Every moment forfeit
In this history of absolute loss:
I am valuable because she came back.
If you see Leda before I do,
Sing her this song
So she does not choose another.
I will do the same for you
If, while you are away, I meet
Your one true love
And you teach me
The words. Refuse
Empire; create reciprocity.
Hold in mind the contemplations that result from this exercise with the imagined sound of the musical note constructed by combining the following elements from the method’s three tables: IV. VII. iii(a); iii(b).
Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing scene: A young woman listens to a young man speaking. This image gives way and merges with the image of Judith Takes declaring her love to a man on his birthday.). VII. Truth Statement: At first I was afraid. This familiar music demanded action of the kind of which I was incapable, and yet, had I lingered there beneath the surface I might have attempted to act. Nevertheless, I know now that few really listen to this music. iii(a). Constructive Principle (positive): A serious philosophical question of our time is the question of what Eurydice saw when Orpheus looked back. iii(b). Constructive Principle (negative): Stochastic temporality makes private, individual, and public events appear separate and incommensurate. Enlightenment reciprocity between equals, anticipated in literacy, implies a temporality past domination. Compose notes for a historical song that move beyond the constraints of what is without appeal to transcendence of any kind.
FIRST TWO DAYS OF THE FIFTH WEEK
It is to be strongly recommended that the two days remaining to complete the first cycle of this method be devoted to reviewing the method’s rules and to a close scrutiny of the three documents I have appended. (In addition to the newspaper article containing the biography of George Anderson and the official text of your memorandum of December 30, 2004, I have included a transcript of my love letter to Leda, written and delivered February 5, 2010.) Remember that in subsequent cycles of this method, you will be asked to make yourself the historical subject of the fourth week’s exercises.
DOCUMENTS
GEORGE ANDERSON
Interviewed, 1925, New Jersey,
by Marion C. MacRobert
Age: one hundred eight
b. 1817, Virginia
Enslaved: Virginia
Field hand
Up at 501 Calhoun street there is a little, weather-beaten frame house that sets back from the sidewalk, huddled between two large properties as though trying to hide its shabbiness from the gaze of the passerby. The busy public has no time to take a second look at it, so few know its secret. It is the home of one to Trenton’s very richest men.
His wealth does not consist of anything so commonplace as money. If he wanted a dollar right this minute it is extremely doubtful if he could find it anywhere in those worn old clothes of his, but he has a store house, and in it are treasures that only a man who has lived a whole century may possess—it is the storehouse of memory.
While he pursued the humble calling of a farmer time went marching by, leaving in its wake the history of three wars and the advent of the greatest triumphs of a scientific age. Best of all, from his point of view, time brought the abolishment of slavery, treasure of treasures for the storehouse. Now that age has robbed him of his once healthy body he can fall back upon this wealth and distribute it to those about him, and, after all, no man is quite so rich as the man who shares.
He is George Anderson, colored, a former slave, whose family records show him to be 108 years old. He lives with his daughter, Mrs. Fannie Coleman, who was a little girl when the Civil War ended, and whose grandchild, Cora Edna, a plump little kiddie with feet forever keeping time to some imaginary tune, is “uncle George’s” constant companion.
Uncle George is unable to walk because his poor old legs crumple up when he puts the weight of his feeble old body upon them, so that he spends the greater part of his time sitting on the side of his bed. But his eyes are bright and his memory very good. Now and then during a conversation his mind will wander off into by-paths and must be brought back sharply, but with careful handling he can tell a straightforward story of his youth and of the years before and after “the surrendah,” as he speaks of the end of the Civil War.
BORN IN SLAVERY
Born in slavery on a plantation near Danville, Va., he knew no other life until he was 46, when the slaves were freed. If his lot was a hard one he did not realize it; slaves were slaves and masters were masters, and between them there was no question of freedom for the black man. He was owned as his master’s mules and other stock were owned.
Slaves were meant to be beaten if they deserved it, and Uncle George witnessed beatings time and again, escaping them himself because he had worked out a plan of his own and found it good. He knew whippings hurt terribly, found it out when he was a very little boy and saw how the slaves suffered under the lash. But always there was an excuse back of the flogging, the colored man had stolen or committed some other misdemeanor, or he had shirked at his labor.
“If I do what I am told,” he said to himself, “and never do the things the other folks are punished for, they’ll never need to beat me.” He held to this maxim and is thankful that among his recollections there is not one of the feel of the lash.
Uncle George has a wonderfully soft voice and the mellow accent of the southern reared Negro, the tone and accent that cannot be reproduced on paper. His voice grows softer still as he tells of one episode in his life that he wishes he could forget.
“My master was a minister,” he told the writer, “he was a strict man who preached every Saturday and Sunday and on the other days gave his attention to the farm. If he thought a black man needed flogging he’d tie him to a post and do it himself if the overseer was busy. One day my brother stole something. It was not the first time; he had been punished for it before, and the master said that this time he should have a lesson he would never forget. So they began to beat him early in the morning, and when his back was all cut open they put salt on it and pounded it in with a paddle. Then they whipped him again, and when the overseer’s arm would get tired the master would take the whip. By and by, late in the afternoon, my brother did not cry out anymore, just swayed from side to side, side to side, going lower all the time until he went down and did not come up again. ‘That ought to settle him for good,’ said the master. ‘He’ll never steal again.’ My brother didn’t, for they had beaten him to death.”
Uncle George said he did not feel any special resentment against the master. He had known slaves to be beaten to death before and his brother was only another one, but he lived in fear of the whipping post and for this reason made himself the most docile of servants.
He married a slave woman and began to raise a family and when he was in the early forties he heard of the war being fought to give slaves their freedom. It didn’t interest him mu
ch, for he was reasonably satisfied with his lot. There was enough to eat and a place to sleep, and he and his family were clothed after a fashion. In winter they suffered with cold, but the winter was short and there were long months of sunshine. There was no waste on the big plantation, he says. The slaves were fed whatever was most plentiful, and sometimes their fare consisted only of buttermilk, which they drank from great wooden tubs. Their eating implements were usually mussel shells, easy to find and to replace. They were a healthy lot, and contented, and never gave freedom a thought. Uncle George was considered too old to go along with the southern troops as a handyman, though a few of the younger slaves from the plantation were sent.
After a time came disturbing news, and then long lines of tired men in gray straggling back to their homes. Lee had “surrendahed,” the cause of the south was lost. Mrs. Coleman remembers seeing the soldiers return. She was a tiny little girl and the memory is not very distinct, but it is there. Nothing had been said to Uncle George about his freedom and he didn’t ask about it, but news drifted in now and then, and finally great droves of negroes passed the plantation singing as they went.
FREEDOM
“Come on,” they shouted to Uncle George one day. “We’s got freedom.” But before he could answer them the master walked out of the door with a club in his hand.
“Don’t bring any of that d———freedom inside my gates,” he yelled to them, and they didn’t.
Nothing more was said to the plantation negroes, but one day several weeks later, the master went to Uncle George and told him that he was no longer a slave.
“I will give you all records about yourself,” he said, “and you must put them in a safe place. You were just 46 years old at the time of the surrender. You were born on the plantation. You needn’t stay here unless you want to. I need you as much as ever and if you want to stay and work, I will pay you.”
So life went on much as before except that now and then the Negroes received a small sum of money. When the master died Uncle George found a little farm of his own where he worked harder than ever and where his boys and girls finished growing up. By and by, wife and children were gone and then Mrs. Coleman sent for him. He farmed for a time near New Hope and is still a member of a church there.
He declares until he came north he never knew that it was possible for colored folks to live as comfortably as whites.
“Up here,” he says, “I have always had enough to eat; enough clothes to keep me warm; a dry roof over my head and peace and comfort.”
Though he is unable to move about, his days are by no means unoccupied. He likes to sew, and he always takes care of his own clothes in addition to helping with the family mending. When a needle is ready to be threaded, the bright eyes of Cora Edna are at his service.
There is one subject of conversation of which he never tires. He is a devout Christian and his faith is beautiful. He can quote chapter after chapter from the Bible, and God is very real and very near to him. Let those who will discuss evolution, the divinity of Christ, virgin birth or any of the other things that tend to contradict the things in the wonderful old Book. Uncle George accepts it all literally, and in his opinion there is not room for one question. He likes to tell how he was converted at a Southern camp meeting many years ago.
“When I knew I had found my Savior I got right up in that meeting and told everybody so,” he explains; “and since that time I have never been alone. I did not cast off the chains of slavery at the time of the surrender, they fell off at that camp meeting.”
The aged man has another firm belief, and will listen to no arguments to the contrary. He believes that he started to die three times. His feet went first, he says, and then death crept up to his knees and on steadily toward his heart. But the staunch old heart refused to even hesitate and then death crept away again baffled.
“Sometime it will come again,” says Uncle George, “and I’ll go on up to Heaven.”
Such is the faith of the man whom it is believed is Trenton’s oldest citizen. It may be just as well to explain that the accompanying picture was taken some time ago, possibly on his 100th anniversary. Great age is now written plainly on his face and form and there seems to be no reason to doubt the correctness of the old master’s record, which says that Uncle George was 46 years old “time of the surrendah.” [Trenton State Gazette, April 6, 1925.]
December 30, 2004
MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL
Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms. This universal repudiation of torture is reflected in our criminal law, for example, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A; international agreements, exemplified by the United Nations Convention Against Torture (the “CAT”)1; customary international law2; centuries of Anglo-American law3; and the longstanding policy of the United States, repeatedly and recently reaffirmed by the President.4
This Office interpreted the federal criminal prohibition against torture—codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A—in Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A (Aug. 1, 2002) (“August 2002 Memorandum”). The August 2002 Memorandum also addressed a number of issues beyond interpretation of those statutory provisions, including the President’s Commander-in-Chief power, and various defenses that might be asserted to avoid potential liability under sections 2340-2340A. See id. at 31-46.
Questions have since been raised, both by this Office and by others, about the appropriateness and relevance of the non-statutory discussion in the August 2002 Memorandum, and also about various aspects of the statutory analysis, in particular the statement that “severe” pain under the statute was limited to pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Id. at 1.5 We decided to withdraw the August 2002 Memorandum, a decision you announced in June 2004. At that time, you directed this Office to prepare a replacement memorandum. Because of the importance of—and public interest in—these issues, you asked that this memorandum be prepared in a form that could be released to the public so that interested parties could understand our analysis of the statute.
This memorandum supersedes the August 2002 Memorandum in its entirety.6 Because the discussion in that memorandum concerning the President’s Commander-in-Chief power and the potential defenses to liability was—and remains—unnecessary, it has been eliminated from the analysis that follows. Consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the President’s unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture.7
We have also modified in some important respects our analysis of the legal standards applicable under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A. For example, we disagree with statements in the August 2002 Memorandum limiting “severe” pain under the statute to “excruciating and agonizing” pain, id. at 19, or to pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” id. at 1. There are additional areas where we disagree with or modify the analysis in the August 2002 Memorandum, as identified in the discussion below.8
The Criminal Division of the Department of Justice has reviewed this memorandum and concurs in the analysis set forth below.
I.
Section 2340A provides that “[w]hoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”9 Section 2340(1) defines “torture” as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.”10
In interpreting these provisions, we note that Congress may have adopted a statutory d
efinition of “torture” that differs from certain colloquial uses of the term. Cf. Cadet v. Bulger, 377 F.3d 1173, 1194 (11th Cir. 2004) (“[I]n other contexts and under other definitions [the conditions] might be described as torturous. The fact remains, however, that the only relevant definition of ‘torture’ is the definition contained in [the] CAT. . . .”). We must, of course, give effect to the statute as enacted by Congress.11
Congress enacted sections 2340-2340A to carry out the United States’ obligations under the CAT. See H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 103-482, at 229 (1994). The CAT, among other things, obligates state parties to take effective measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under their jurisdiction, and requires the United States, as a state party, to ensure that acts of torture, along with attempts and complicity to commit such acts, are crimes under U.S. law. See CAT arts. 2, 4-5. Sections 2340-2340A satisfy that requirement with respect to acts committed outside the United States.12 Conduct constituting “torture” occurring within the United States was—and remains—prohibited by various other federal and state criminal statutes that we do not discuss here.
The CAT defines “torture” so as to require the intentional infliction of “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental.” Article 1(1) of the CAT provides:
For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.