Carolina QuotesEven today, many otherwise well-informed people have never heard the name Nat Turner.
William Styron Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Essay, 'This Quiet Dust' [originally published in Harper's, April 1965] - at p.15. [Page numbers per the Vintage Classics paperback collection, 2000 edition.]
- work
- This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)
- year
- 1965
- locator
- p.15
Cite this record
“Even today, many otherwise well-informed people have never h…” William Styron. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-879ED50510. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/879ed50510
More from William Styron
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
The statistics are meagre, and so we have no way of knowing the number of non-Jews who were murdered in the gas chambers prior to this cut-off date [i.e. 4 April 1943]; not many, compared to the Jews, but certainly they numbered in the tens of thousands. Yet to escape the crematoriums was, of course, to gain only the most feeble hold on the possibility of survival. Statistics regarding the non-Jews who perished during the four years of the existence of Auschwitz as a result of starvation and disease are likewise inexact but somewhat more reliable. It would appear that out of the four million who died, perhaps three quarters of a million - or approximately a fifth of the total - fell into the category which the Nazis termed Aryan. This was at Auschwitz alone.
And as I think of her, the desire swells within me and I am stirred by a longing so great that like those memories of time past and long-ago voices, flowing waters, rushing winds, it seems more than my heart can abide. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. Her voice is close, familiar, real, and for an instant I mistake the wind against my ear, a gentle gust, for her breath, and I turn to seek her in the darkness. And now beyond my fear, beyond my dread and emptiness, I feel the warmth flow into my loins and my legs tingle with desire. I tremble and I search for her face in my mind, seek her young body, yearning for her suddenly with a rage that racks me with a craving beyond pain; with tender stroking motions I pour out my love within her; pulsing flood; she arches against me, cries out, and the twain—black and white—are one. I faint slowly. My head falls toward the window, my breath comes hard. I recall a meadow, June, the voice a whisper: Is it not true, Nat? Did He not say, I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star?