William Styron: Heritage and conscience (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

Angol Filológiai Tanulmányok V.Hungarian Studies in English V.Debrecen, 1971HungaryCharlotte KretzoiWILLIAM STYRON : HERITAGE AND CONSCIENCE" .Always remember where you came from, the ground is bloody and full of guilt where you were born and you must tread a long narrow path toward your destiny. If the crazy sideroads start to beguile you, son, take at least a backward glance at Monticello."*The work of Styron is determined to an exceptional degree by the fact that he is a Virginian, or more exactly, a native of the Tidewater region. In his novels he struggles with the ambiguous inheritance of an American who belongs neither to the Deep South sunk in its archaic doom nor to the Yankee blend of purposefulness and inferiority complex. He is a brooding Virginian with a sensitive conscience, emotional, in search oflocal and at the same time universal truths, pessimistic and disillusioned, but persisting in his quest with the stubbornness of a man who is unable to give up hope in the face of disheartening experience.The affiliations of his favourite spokesmen are obvious: they are basically pious if not downright religious, gradually relinquishing organized religion but still retaining the need for a benevolent Governing Principle. They are liberals following in the footsteps of enlightened Virginians like Jefferson, and Democrats accepting and even idealizing F. D. Roosevelt's policy in contrast with that of Eisenhower. They are humanists, though never militant ones, with an awareness of unavoidable defeat as an outcome of their basic passivity. They are wise with the wisdom of the hard-earned knowledge of realities. The older, passive spokesmen are conservative but not in a rigid, offensive way; the younger generation is embittered after several attempts at vague and unsuccessful rebellions. These spokesmen are not always identical with the main heroes, but they appear from time to time, and represent a philosophizing Southern type (best known from Robert Perm Warren's novels). They are: Peyton and the father of Milton Loftis in Lie Down in Darkness; Peter Leverett's father and Cass Kinsolving in Set This House on Fire; Samuel Turner and even Judge Cobb in The Confessions of Nat Turner.Using the Tidewater region of Virginia and the special problems of people belonging there as a point of departure, Styron gradually transcends the barriers of the particular, achieving the dimensions of nation-wide, global, universal human problems. Styron uses his knowledge of a broader horizon of the world to write authentically of the microcosm in which he has his roots.The most fascinating problems to be considered in the Styron world are: inherited and individual guilt, the gradual acccptance of responsibility and heroic behaviour, the classical tragic situation of unavoidable sin against oneself and others, the problem of*Lie Down in Darkness, p. 74.121