A Confederacy Lost

"I can hardly remember my father's look, I cannot
Answer his voice as he calls farewell in the misty
Mounting where riders gather at gates.
He was old then--I was a child--his hand
Held out for mine, some daybreak snatched away,
And he rode out, a broken man. Now let
His lone grave keep, surer than cypress roots,
The vow I made beside him. God too late
Unseals to certain eyes the drift
Of time and the hopes of men and a sacred cause.
The fortune of the Lees goes with the land
Whose sons will keep it still. My mother
Told me much. She sat among the candles,
Fingering the Memoirs, now so long unread.
And as my pen moves on across the page
Her voice comes back, a murmuring distillation
Of old Virginia times now faint and gone,
The hurt of all that was and cannot be."

Donald Davidson's "Lee in the Mountains"

I find this poem very interesting because in reality this is a poem written about General Lee's son who edited and published General Lee's memoirs. The first person speaker is Lee's son, and he describes his father's nature, his father's endeavors, his father's life. The poem provides a look into General Robert E. Lee's life, and a son's admiration. In fact, Robert E Lee's son loved his father greatly, thus he speaks so highly of him in this poem. The son has never witnessed the wartime brutality, yet he speaks of his father's life, almost vicariously living through his memories. It seems the poem is about a son's devotion and love for his father, a love for what his father stands for--a Southern way of life. The excerpt is pivotal in understanding the son's anguish because he never truly knew his father, but he has his memoirs, the sole remaining evidence of who his father truly was and the South as it used to be. Robert E Lee was a true Southern Confederate, a thing of the past, a memory that has no voice.

General Lee's life and story are not remembered by the many. He fought and died in vain. He fought for a place which admonished change and new influence, a place of conservative thought and understanding. General Lee is gone as is the Southern confidence of his time. The poem highlights a son's struggle to be at peace with himself and his father's legacy. Throughout the poem there are various undertones about the historical Southern past, and of times which used to be, and he notes "old Virginia times now faint and gone." The speaker even notes the old Confederate cry, the march of the armies, the young going to fight for their long-instilled Southern beliefs and ideals, only to die. The speaker references various facets of the old South, and a time that used to be, but can no longer hold true in current society. Thus, the poem highlights an implied view of Southern life, and its gradual detriment.

Discussion Question: How does the death of Robert E. Lee and his failures prove pivotal to the detriment of the Southern mentality in the poem? Although there is a clear split between Northern ideals and Southern conservatism, why does the poem highlight aspects of Southern Life to be a thing of the past, a dream forbidden?

Eyers and Archetypes, O'Connor and Senility, First Reflections

Edward Eyers and Southern Archetypes

Edward L. Ayers does a nice job in his abbreviated chapter highlighting (mis)conceptions, identity topics, and archetypes of the South. He highlights the problems and the necessity of conceptions about the south, from within and without the region. He states that the intra-conceptions are necessary, economically, that "The South needs these internal differences....needs as much diversity as it can be made to contain" and that much of "Southern culture is made to order" (5). He questions the reality of self proclaimed southern identity among blacks, stating that they have "made parts of Southern states their own through sweat and sacrifice" emphasizing the spacial and physical, as he says "they have loved certain farms, houses, and streets" (4). This selective southern love is definitely not sparse in literature. It reminds me of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. The piano in the play serves as a medium for the character’s modern struggle and desire to simultaneously shed their past slave narrative as well as forge their own generations continuum of their ancestors struggle.

The Piano

Prison Work Song (Mississippi) from the film adaptation

 A particular aspect of Ayer's writing struck me as interesting. As he speaks of the archetypes involved with the identity of the South, he writes on the self generated aspect of it and the potential consequences involved. I noticed that Ayer's words contained instances of this self-proclimation, and a bit of generalization on his part, as he says that "In their eyes, the Southern Trough is a sheltered valley, shielded from the most corosive effects of Yankee greed and rudeness" (3). This seems to be a bit blanketed for my taste, but perhaps the statement rings more true than I am aware. I also noticed that he places himself within a Southern archetype. He writes that "Being Southern, I automatically made conversation with the young woman behind the counter as she filled my order" (6). This type of rhetorical appeal seemed a bit distasteful to me. I would like to suggest a replacement for Ayer's that may work a bit more in his appeal toward understanding. "Being a friendly person, I automatically made conversation with the young woman behind the counter..." or, perhaps he needs to establish difference much like his conception of the South.

•  Discussion Qustion: Is studying the South as an "outsider" akin to being an Orientalist? Do I (or any other students not from the South) have enough "credability" to say that Ayer's self identification as a "friendly Southerner" is a bit too much?

 

Flannery O'Connor and Dark Humor

The short story titled A Late Encounter with the Enemy by O'Connor struck me as quite brilliant so I decided to write about it a bit. The dark humor presented by the quite selfish and foolish characters provided an interesting take on some thoughts that Eyers wrote about. Sally Poker Sash seems to have a passive internalized distaste for education and "the upstarts who had turned the world on its head and unsettled the ways of decent living" (19), and wishes to show them all by presenting her comically senile grandfather who had served some part in the Civil War, although "he didn't remember that war at all"

A colloquial language identity is presented in the grandfather's speech, as he calls girls "guls", national "nashnul", and tuxedo "tuxseeder" (20). He seems to be proud of his role in a "national" event and that "It wasn't a thing local about it". His senility seems to have created a lapse in his extreme Southern pride, and he now only cares about beautiful women. 

Sally Poker Sash's desire to return to history, the old ways, perhaps the Southern ways, at first annoys her grandfather on stage, as "He had no use for any of it. What happened then wasn't anything to a man living now and he was living now" (22) and later drives him into a fit of seemingly violent involuntary memory involving high levels of stress and fear, which kills him as he satirically becomes a "corpse, in the long line at the Coca-Cola machine"

• Discussion Question: Is O'Connor suggesting that extreme historical and Southern pride are silly, through Sally, or suggesting that the loss of this history and identity can be tragically silly as well, through the grandfather?

-Adam Amrani