Leonard Bernstein: on violence

Leonard Bernstein on the Only True Antidote to Violence and His Moving Tribute to JFK

“This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Three days later, as a devastated nation processed its shock and grief, the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York transformed its 25th annual fundraising gala, “Night of Stars,” into a memorial. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson had been scheduled to speak, but canceled. Instead, legendary composerLeonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918–October 14, 1990) delivered the address to 18,000 of the country’s most distinguished artists, writers, and other public figures. His speech was not only a passionate tribute to JFK and his vitalizing support of the arts, but also a piercing meditation on violence, tussling with the same eternal questions that Tolstoy and Gandhi pondered in theircorrespondence on why we hurt each other and which Einstein and Freud addressed in their letters on violence and human nature./.../