In 2003, the Kurdish peshmerga sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein. After the first Gulf War, the UN sought to establish a safe haven in parts of Kurdistan, and the United States and UK set up a no-fly zone. Iraq: In 1986–89, Saddam Hussein conducted a genocidal campaign in which tens of thousands were murdered and thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed, including by bombing and chemical warfare. The situation is worse in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the Kurds are a minority people subjected to ethnically targeted violations of human rights. In Iran, though there have been small separatist movements, Kurds are mostly subjected to the same repressive treatment as everyone else (though they also face Persian and Shi’ite chauvinism, and a number of Kurdish political prisoners were recently executed). After World War I, their lands were divided up between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds, who share ethnic and cultural similarities with Iranians and are mostly Muslim by religion (largely Sunni but with many minorities), have long struggled for self-determination. But the truth is, ideologically and politically these are very, very different systems. right now, yes, the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so it’s very important to have a unified focus. Hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur the fact that they have very different politics. And the tension resolves by overflowing at last into a full-length paragraph of multiple sentences and complicated rhythms. The one-sentence paragraphs grow in length, in complexity, and in tension. There are a series of short one-sentence paragraphs (or, in the case of the second paragraph, a very short two-sentence paragraph, corresponding to the second, colon-broken, one-sentence paragraph of the first strophe). The second strophe turns out to be instantly recognizable-a recapitulation of the general shape of the opening strophe. Next comes a paragraph of three sentences, announcing a change of topic-a paragraph that serves as a transitional bridge to the chapter’s second strophe. The fifth paragraph consists of five sentences of varied complexity, containing two colons and three semicolons-a paragraph of rich tones, with a conversational ease instead of the attention-attracting qualities of the one-sentence paragraphs that have come before. The growing length and complexity of these four one-sentence paragraphs build an energetic tension, and the tension, having mounted step by step to its high point, overflows at last into the fifth and final paragraph, which is altogether different. Paragraph four: a single sentence, this time longer yet, and knottier-a sentence of several clauses, broken up with a semicolon. Paragraph three: a single sentence, this time absolutely longer, with four main components instead of two-a sentence-paragraph that has begun to shake off the constrictions of simple structures and tranquil rhythms. Paragraph two: a single sentence broken in the middle, this time by a colon, which makes for an even sharper caesura-a very short one-sentence paragraph, briefer even than its predecessor, yet, because of the severity of the colon, with a sound that lingers slightly longer in the ear. The one-sentence paragraph conveys, as alexandrines so easily do, a tone of serene lucidity. Paragraph one: a single sentence, fairly short, broken in the middle by a comma, roughly the way the “caesura” or traditional pause breaks up a classic French verse line or alexandrine. “The Jury in the United States,” set in verse, begins with an extended strophe of five lines or paragraphs, in this form: Tocqueville is a writer of immense emotional power, and the secret of that power lies in the poetic rhythms of his prose and, in the whole of Democracy in America, no chapter offers a clearer or more vivid demonstration of those rhythms and their effect than “The Jury in the United States Considered as Political Institution.” The editors of Dissent have selected their sundry quotations for commentary from that one chapter but, with the readers’ indulgence, I would like to restore the quotations to Tocqueville’s original setting in order to lay out, in the imagination, the entire chapter in free verse. Style and Passion in Tocqueville Paul Berman ▪ Winter 2008
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