PARTISAN lt.EVIEW
which falsifies and degrades his fine comprehension of the moral dilem–
ma of the decent guilt-ridden Southerner.
I think he was compelled to this not alone by a compulsive love of
the South but also by the fact that he has lost his belief in the South
as a unique region; he can reaffirm that belief only by imagining a
mystic separation from the North, since his will to justice does not want
a South unique because of its brutality to Negroe3. He must believe
that the contemporary Southerner is still close to his history, still roman–
tically doomed, unable to forget the old disgrace, a proud, driven, image
of the past. "For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but
·whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two
o'clock on that July afternoon in
1863,
the brigades are in position be-
hind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the
furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with
his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword
in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the
word...."
But this is unimaginable; it is literary, flamboyant, historically
ridiculous in terms of AIOerica today. And it is also inconceivable, that
the citizens of a few states are actually prepared, as Faulkner suggests, to
risk their lives, their children, their futures, their wealth, or even their
time in any sustained, hopeless revolt against the will of the country
to which they are tied and which they need as much as anyone else.
This is romantic, cowboy play acting, the election of Talmadge, the
hootings and posturings of the Dixiecrats notwithstanding. The rebel
yell on the radio--an unmistakable scream of buffonery and self–
mockery. It is the end, not the beginning, the end of Faulkner's imagin–
ary kingdom and he is terrified by it.
The Negroes have migrated in vast numbers to the North and those
who are left no longer feel tragically or gloriously fused with the
de~tiny
of the South. There are no Dilseys today, neither in the South nor in
the North, neither black nor white, and Faulkner's immense, loving
memorial to the Negro servant is not only a remarkable creative achieve–
ment but a contribution to social history, a painstaking study of a lost
relationship which will appear, a few generations from now, as queer
and archaic to the American as the role of a duenna. The white South–
erner himself is ruled by the ambitions of the rest of the country which
are all he can call upon if he is to survive and manage the American
present.
Faulkner has caught up with the confusion of the country today,
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