September 11 event is inhabited by numbers: about 17,400 people who were in the towers when the attacks, about 15,000 people were evacuated. In the north tower, 1402 people died, including 658 employees of the firm Cantor Fitzgerald here this morning. In the south tower, 614 people died. 18 persons above the point of impact in the south tower had escaped. None in the north tower. In all, counting victims in the planes and Washington, 2819 people died. 77% of victims were male, 23% of women. Between 100 and 200 people would have fallen or jumped from the towers. 289 bodies were found intact in New York. And coroners have to study 19,858 human remains. In the case of 1717 families, there were no remains, no part of body to bury. Even today, 9 years after the attacks, the investigative work on the identity of the victims continues. In addition to two 110-story towers that collapsed in 102 minutes, 5 other buildings collapsed or were demolished because of the extent of damage. The attacks of September 11 have eliminated 124 million square feet of office space.
These numbers are both the landscape and the web 11 September: they refer to the magnitude of the event, human and property destruction. They recall the images seen and reviewed by a cloud of debris, flooding the streets. The weight of numbers is such that sometimes they are held up to stop the questions, doubts and questioned. To compel adherence: to thousands of victims and their family members, what can we really say?
There is also the symbolism of numbers: Is it really necessary to reiterate once again that irony planner that the date of the event which marked a relative failure of the emergency services phone number repeat these same services to the U.S.? Should we remember how the numbers when it comes to the Sept. 11, played an important role in the color given to the event? Now, some numbers can not exist alone, need a subtitle when they talk about something other than that morning in September of this one? Now the numbers are heavy, laden with the memory of the attacks, as if the events had also diverted surely as the planes were.
When it comes to numbers and numbers of 11, nothing seems to be truly free. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the choices made by the creators can not be free, the weight of numbers being as they are full participants in the identity of the event. Fiction raises the question of the truth when negotiating with a historic event: how to tell the real by having enough space to reinvent it? What, facts must be preserved and what can be changed? All, probably. Or maybe not.
Ian Monk, in his poem Twin Towers , works on the principle of enumeration: two columns, recalling the two towers, live on the page. The left column on most things, objects, located in the tower. The right column, it focuses on people, listing the different types of people inhabiting the World Trade Center (male, female, father / mother family, criminal, employee support, etc.). It is inevitable, looking the physical presentation of the poem, not to see the towers. The initial effect would be even more obvious in the version in the book Writing for the OuLiPo where the column widths would be reduced gradually, and where to end the top of one of the towers bend. With the version found online, I could not help but count the lines. Both the English and French versions of the poem of 112 lines. These two lines of "too much" trouble me. What do they mean? The number, too close to reality (110 floors) can not be free. The poet, he decided to add layers of towers? The number is it accidental? Is it really possible, reproducing the shape of the two towers, accidentally add floors?
I do not know. I'm intrigued by the poem, which I find rather interesting. But the numbers of September 11 haunt me, I know too much not to believe in intentionality behind this "error". The poet, he used false information? He looks behind these two stories to send a message?
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