Yourcenar, et al.: Styron’s Sources for The Confessions of Nat Turner

Page 1 of the manuscript of The Confessions of Nat Turner, box 9, folder 1, William Styron Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Used by permission of the William Styron Estate. Image supplied by the author. JAMES L. W. WEST III Pennsylvania State University Yourcenar, et al.: Styron’s Sources for The Confessions of Nat Turner MOST OF THE ATTENTION GIVEN TO THE SOURCES FOR WILLIAM STYRON’S The Confessions of Nat Turner has been focused on historical and quasi-historical documents. Among the most important of these are Thomas R. Gray’s original Confessions (1831), Frederick Law Olmsted’s A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), and William S. Drewry’s The Southampton Insurrection (1900). Styron read all three before he began composing The Confessions of Nat Turner and incorporated text from all three into his narrative. He relied upon these writings for information, language, atmosphere, and detail; they were useful to him in establishing the chronology of the Nat Turner rebellion and in creating historical verisimilitude.1 In this essay I want to investigate a different group of “sources.” I will consider four books that Styron read and drew upon, not for information about the Nat Turner rebellion but for ideas about how to recapture the past and how to recreate Nat Turner’s voice. I believe that these four books had at least as much influence on the shape and intent of Styron’s narrative as did the historical documents mentioned above. The books are Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, and Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian (1951, 1963); Erik H. Erikson’s Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1958); Stanley M. Elkins’s Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959); and Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). The Confessions of Nat Turner, published in 1967, belongs in company with these books. All four were innovative and controversial when published. All four were anchored in the distant or recent past but had broad contemporary resonances. Styron wanted to write this kind of book—not a conventional historical novel but, to use his term, a 1 Gray’s prefatory statement “To the Public” is reproduced on pp. xv-xviii of the first edition of The Confessions of Nat Turner.; Richard Whitehead’s sermon to the slaves on pp. 96-101 is taken from Olmsted; the account of the treatment of Nat Turner’s body on p. 428 is from Drewry. Styron’s reading about the history of slavery is detailed in West, William Styron 331-43. 32 James L. W. West III “meditation on history” that would speak to the present moment. As he observed in his “Author’s Note” to the first edition, “The relativity of time allows us elastic definitions: the year 1831 was, simultaneously, a long time ago and only yesterday” (ix). By attempting to recreate his protagonist’s voice Styron was seeking not factual or verifiable truths but a broader set of truths about race, society, and humanity. The four books discussed in this essay, all of which Styron read while composing The Confessions of Nat Turner, were useful to him as models. The authors of these books were in pursuit of the same goals and ends that he sought. Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987), born in Belgium to a French father and a Belgian mother, wrote in French but lived for more than half of her life in the United States. She was an author, a student of ancient history, and a teacher of comparative literature. Something of a recluse, perhaps because of her bisexuality, she lived for almost forty years withhercompanion and translator, Grace Frick, on a remote island off the coast of Maine. In 1951 she published Mémoires d’Hadrien with Librairie Plon in Paris. The book, which can best be described as a biographical novel, is an attempt to recreate the life and voice of a subject from the distant past, in this case the Roman emperor Hadrian (76–138A.D.).Mémoiresd’Hadrien. wasanimmediatesuccessinFrance, earning Yourcenar awards, honors, and praise—including, eventually, membership in the Académie fran...