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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: poet who wrote (29331)	6/18/1999 10:23:00 AM
From: melinda abplanalp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Hi Poet!! How goes it. Hope well. Cheers Melinda

To: poet who wrote (29331)	6/18/1999 11:36:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

There is much great Southern literature, some of it unknown. But you look pretty much in vain throughout its history for literature that exalts the human spirit. I contrast the Faulkner's Nobel Speech with twisted, deficient people who dominate his works. Faulkner writes of a ravaged land, broken defeated people, long after the war that no one can forget or fails to idealize. I hate it that so few white Southerners have denounced the shame of slavery or fought it when they could, or struggled for justice for blacks and poor whites. I think the burden of its history is far too heavy for most of the good people in the South, and surely there are many of them -- silent, hidden. I know of no culture where many of its most glorious sons and daughters carry a sense of guilt and shame for the wrongs their ancestors did while somehow managing to make excuses for them. My parents' lives were ruined and distorted by the hatreds of the South. My brother and I with simple beliefs in human equality and freedom had to leave. I was denounced as a communist and a nigger-lover. Every job or family visit was disrupted over race. I admit my guilt. I never could keep quiet. A discovery of a half-breed Indian woman and in another branch a mulatto woman in the family tree turned the families in to feuding haters of each other. During the 40's and 50's I was persona non grata because of my political opinions. And many of my relatives were among the best people in their towns by conventional designation. It would be fine with me if I could denounce my ancestors as bad people living in a romantic place and time. But I read Olmsted's travels as well as Lee's Lieutenants. I idolize Robert E. Lee this side God. But he is a man whose pride of family brought a heavy curse on all Southerners. Had he drawn his sword for liberty and union, the world could not but have been a better place. Lincoln was Southern-born and left to save the union. I think he hated Southern institutions and family pride (like his wife's) as much as anyone. I cannot find a single Southerner from before the war (even Hinton Rowan Helper) who speaks to me. Even Lanier is sickly, metaphysical, unengaged with Truth, sunk in the rotting stinking marsh of despond. Everyone I know from the South has had to struggle to free himself from the clinging stench of guilt of association with an unjust land and people.