It is hard to overstate the importance of William Faulkner (who is responsible for the quote in the title) within the reemergence of (post Civil War) Southern literature and culture.
Though formally declared part of the Union after its defeat, the question of the South's "reintegration" lingered through decades of political and social wrangling. In fact, the first president ever impeached by congress, Andrew Johnson, endured that fate as a result of that precise question (he vetoed a constitutional amendment put forth by Northern congressmen - without any Southern representation - that would have dissolved the Southern states and reorganized them in five separate districts under the rule of martial law).
Of course, it's easy to understand why that was the case.
The South had been ravaged by the Civil War. Its economy, built so heavily upon an enslaved work force, was in shambles; its communities, pillaged and burned by General Sherman's Total War (as he made his way, state by state, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic); and its people, defeated and demoralized by the victory claimed by the North.
In almost all quarters, reconstruction and reintegration were just as much a question for the South as they were for the North. In fact, much of the literature that emerged from the South, shortly after this "war of Northern aggression", focused on the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, romanticizing the South as noble and chivalrous, whose superior military prowess was simply overwhelmed by the North's numerical and industrial advantage.
It is, of course, with no small irony that the South envisioned itself in the roll of the noble savage, its agrarian culture making it closer to the land than the modernized and greedy North who, by superior technical and industrial advances - but without heart or soul - was able to overcome and subjugate the South to its will. Yet, that narrative persisted into the early years of the 20th century.
However, with time (and distance from the conflict), came a fledgling critical spirit.
In the 1880's, men like George Washington Cable and Mark Twain began to criticize the racism of the South and mock its supposed chivalry; a decade later, Southern journalists began to question the intellectual mediocrity of their leaders; and, by 1903, an academic, at (what would become) Duke University, was calling Booker T. Washington "the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years."
Yet, the problem with the critics and the romantics is that they only
perpetuate conflict, each digging out their own particular trenches from which to attack the other.
So, it wasn't until the 1920's and 30's, through the writing of Faulkner and his peers -- members of the "Southern Renaissance" -- that the foundations were laid for the South's reemergence as a contributing and respected part of America as a whole.
Faulkner achieved that end through neither criticism nor romanticism but through inviting his fellow Southerners to remember.
See, both the Romantics and the Critics, avoided (honest) memory in some way. The Romantics could not admit anything worth criticizing, while the critics could not admit anything worth praising.
But, memories are not so neat and tidy. Memories are personal and as such are neither easily white-washed nor condemned. Through our memories we face equally those things of which we are proud and those of which we are ashamed.
For example: on the one hand, Faulkner's novels -- told in his distinctive style, as the stream-of-consciousness memories of his characters -- ring with the sensibility and culture of the Southern gentry and add to them an almost Gothic weight. His characters speak not as outsiders, by choice or birth, but as members of the South who find neither artifice nor superficiality, but deep reservoirs of communal identity in their individual experiences. However, on the other hand, they are also not blind to the horrors of slavery, to the dehumanizing aspects of owning people and treating them as commodities.
Thus, in Go Down, Moses, a series of stories told as an old man's recollections about the events and people that shaped his life, the memories we are shown both celebrate the Southern community's historic connection to the land (as displayed through ritualistic hunts), and stagger at its prejudice (when the old man remembers a letter between his uncles, which finds them unwilling to admit a slave could be capable of the broad and abstract thought that leads to suicide). In fact, the old man, himself, displays this dual nature, as he ultimately rejects his inherited plantation (lest he perpetuate the cycle of abuse) but then objects to the marriage of a white man and a former slave (lest it violate the social and cultural norms of his time).
Through the use of memories, Faulkner was able bypass the defensive stance of his Southern peers, to invite them into his stories, and evoke their own memories, which were much more nuanced than either the romantics or the critics were willing to accept. As a result, he and the other members of the Southern Renaissance were able to build bridges for the South to emerge from the darkness of their heritage of slavery without being forced to abandon the light of their agrarian and communal identity.
-~@~-
It should probably not surprise us, that the Bible -- which is equally concerned with building bridges out of darkness while reclaiming light -- would also be written not as list of critiques or romantic ideals, but as a history, the collective memory of a people, about the events and the People (YHWH / Jesus / Holy Spirit) that shaped their identity.
Indeed, the Scriptures positively resound with both the command to and the act of remembering.
When God reveals himself to his people, he often does so in ways that appeal to memory:
"I am the God of your fathers...
...of Abraham...
...of Isaac...
...of Jacob"
"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt"
"Before Abraham was, I am"
Whenever God encourages his people to obey, He does so on the basis of their memory:
"Remember my commands"
"Remember how I fed you in the wilderness"
"Remember how I brought you out of Egypt"
"Remember the result of your Fathers' disobedience"
And, as with Faulkner, this is an earnest history that portrays both the good and the bad.
The same Noah who built the Ark, finds his way into a naked, drunken stupor when the waters recede.
The same Moses who led the Israelites to freedom, began his adult life with the murder of an Egyptian guard.
The same David who defeated Goliath as a display of the faithfulness of YHWH, the archetypal Israelite king, steals a man's wife and has that man murdered on the battlefield.
The same Paul who spent his life carrying the good news of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, not only participated in the arrest of believers but approved of their stoning.
In this sense, when we interact with the world in terms that are purely romantic (become a Christian and everything will be amazing!) or critical (you must abandon everything you know about yourself and your life, because it's all wrong!) we are actually acting in a way that is unbiblical.
However, when we remember, when we deal honestly with both our failures and that which is valuable from our past - even before we were believers - we invite others into our story (in the same way that Faulkner invited his fellow Southerners into his stories), and build bridges for them to emerge from their own darkness while also avoiding the insistence that they had no light to begin with.
And maybe -- through our willingness to accept that there is light out there, outside our own particular tradition, that the imago Dei is not exclusive to those with whom we agree -- just maybe we might be humbled and realize we are still in need of our own bridges out of our own darkness.
Isn't that the point of all this, anyway?
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