A Palestinian apologist and a pianist.

(From The Korea Herald)

Edward W. Said sadly passed away last week, after courageously fighting leukemia for more than 10 years. The man who spent his whole life challenging Western prejudice against the East, the critic who preached that literary criticism should be worldly and thus the world must be read as a text to decipher, and the self-imposed exile who always thought of himself as an uprooted, eternal expatriate, Said was a perpetual inspiration and encouragement to us.

I first met him in New York City in 1982 when I was a doctoral student at Columbia University. At 46, Said was already a world-class celebrity and a chaired professor with his monumental books, "Beginnings" and "Orientalism." Every semester, hundreds of students wished to enter his class, but only 15 were admitted through an interview. Since only those who have sufficient prior knowledge about the subject were admitted, the chosen ones were as proud as Green Berets. And yet, there were always those who wanted to learn from him despite the result of the interview. On the first day of class, Said found that there were 16 students instead of 15. He seemed disturbed and annoyed and I was curious how he would deal with the intruder. "You're here against my wish," declared Said solemnly.

" I just want to sit in, that's all," pleaded the uninvited guest. "Sorry, but we have a 15-student limit policy with no auditing. I can't make an exception." The intruder stubbornly refused to move nonetheless. Perhaps he did not want to lose the "once in the lifetime opportunity." "This is a new experience to me," muttered the professor, and let him stay at last. That was Edward Said; he was thoughtful and humane, and had the capacity of bending the rules and embracing extremes. Perhaps that was why he decided to remain on the intellectual left, refusing to be labeled as a Marxist. When Stanley Fish came to Columbia to give a talk one evening, Said asked me to reserve a seat in the back for him. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about it until the last minute. Luckily, I found one seat still available on the left wing of the lecture hall. When Said came in and sat there, Stanley Fish began his talk, saying, "I'm a bit nervous this evening with Edward Said sitting on my left." Everybody laughed at his fine joke. ...