Southern Lights and Shadows
Introduction The most noticeable characteristic of the extraordinary literary development of the South since the Civil War is that it is almost entirely in the direction of realism. A people who, up to that time, had been so romantic that they wished to naturalize among themselves the ideals and usages of the Walter Scott ages of chivalry, suddenly dropped all that, and in their search for literary material could apparently find nothing so good as the facts of their native life. The more "commonplace" these facts the better they seemed to like them. Evidently they believed that there was a poetry under the rude outside of their mountaineers, their slattern country wives, their shy rustic men and maids, their grotesque humorists, their wild religionists, even their black freedmen, which was worth more than the poetastery of the romantic fiction of their fathers. In this strong faith, which need not have been a conscious creed, the writers of the New South have given the world sketches and studies and portraits of the persons and conditions of their peculiar civilization which the Russians themselves have not excelled in honesty, and hardly in simplicity. To be sure, this development was on the lines of those early humorists who antedated the romantic fictionists, and who were often in their humor so rank, so wild, so savage, so cruel, but the modern realism has refined both upon their
love, even a very little. But as it is, a single day is life enough,
provided it is spent with thee, even though I were really destined never
to see another.
[18] This was the privilege of kings' daughters.
And she looked at him with wistful eyes; and after a while, she said:
Thou art brave, and as I would have had thee. And thou dost not believe
me: and it may be, it is better so. And then she turned to the King, and
said: O father, go away now: and leave me alone with my husband. And be
not afraid, either for thy honour or my own, for there shall be as it
were a sword between us. But I wish to have him all to myself, until the
end. And when the time has come, let the gong be sounded, and I will
send him out to thee, and thou canst show him the way to death. And
thereupon the old King went away as she desired, moaning and muttering,
and wringing his hands with grief.
So when he was gone, those two lovers sat together all day long, gazing
at each other like the sunflower and the sun. And he utterly forgot the
morrow, but it never left her mind, even for a single instant. And she
made him relate to her his whole life from the very beginning, drinking
in his words, and hanging on his lips, and watching him keenly, with
eyes that never left his face, holding all the while his hand, with the
grasp of one who knows that her husband must be led to execution in the
evening. And she said to herself, at every moment: Still he is here:
still he is here. And when the sun set, she sent for food and delicacies
Introduction The most noticeable characteristic of the extraordinary literary development of the South since the Civil War is that it is almost entirely in the direction of realism. A people who, up to that time, had been so romantic that they wished to naturalize among themselves the ideals and usages of the Walter Scott ages of chivalry, suddenly dropped all that, and in their search for literary material could apparently find nothing so good as the facts of their native life. The more "commonplace" these facts the better they seemed to like them. Evidently they believed that there was a poetry under the rude outside of their mountaineers, their slattern country wives, their shy rustic men and maids, their grotesque humorists, their wild religionists, even their black freedmen, which was worth more than the poetastery of the romantic fiction of their fathers. In this strong faith, which need not have been a conscious creed, the writers of the New South have given the world sketches and studies and portraits of the persons and conditions of their peculiar civilization which the Russians themselves have not excelled in honesty, and hardly in simplicity. To be sure, this development was on the lines of those early humorists who antedated the romantic fictionists, and who were often in their humor so rank, so wild, so savage, so cruel, but the modern realism has refined both upon their