ANTIQUES

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2001 by Wendell Garrett

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-Second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.

W. H. Auden, "September 1,1939"

In Memoriam

September 11, 2001

The catastrophe that turned lower Manhattan into a hellish inferno on the morning of September 11 involved the largest violent taking of life on American soil on any day since September 17, 1862, when nearly twenty-three thousand Union and Confederate soldiers fell on the banks of Antietam Creek in Maryland.

New York City has never suffered a more shocking act of God or man. This monstrous dose of reality has delivered the city, the nation, and indeed, civilization, into a world we may never fully understand. In the space of several hours on that gorgeous Tuesday morning we left behind rituals of normalcy and the assurance of reliability and entered a world of fear and grief.

American freedom of motion--one of our prides--has taken a hit. We shall miss the America that was convinced it was different, apart, and protected; open to the world yet immune from its worst evils. This was the thrill, the irresistible pull, the deepest promise of this country, as every immigrant knows. America is not only a place, but also an idea. It has been the beacon that kept freedom and hope alive for millions over the globe for more than two centuries. In this sense what has been done to the country has been done to the collective conscience of the world--to those who have come to rely upon the United States as "the last best, hope of earth," as Abraham Lincoln said in the darkest hours of 1862.

In the present sad uncertainty Americans have taken refuge in the unifying symbol of our flag. It preoccupied the painter Childe Hassam too, when for several years during World War I New York City was festooned with the flag as it is today. Hassam painted more than thirty canvases incorporating the American flag, including the one on the cover, which shows a stretch of Fifth Avenue later torn down to make way for the Empire State Building.

Wendell Garrett