Wagner and "Gone with the wind"

"...I wonder, he said, I wonder not only what will become of us at Tara but what will become of everybody in the South.

In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilisation breaks up.

The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out.

At least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Götterdämmerung.

A what ?

A dusk of Gods.

Unfortunately, we Southerners did think we were Gods.

For Heaves'sake, Ashley Wilkes !

Don't stand there and talk nonsense at me when it's us who are going tot be winnowed out !"

Two female authors quarrel about a book

"Gone with the wind",p.637 : "Accepting Uncle Tom's Cabin as revelation second only to the Bible,

the Yankee women all wanted to know about the bloodhounds which every Southerner kept to track down runaway slaves.

And they never believed her when she told them she had only seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff.

They wanted to know about the dreadful branding-irons which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves. "

THE BORGIAS AND GONE WITH THE WIND.

"...Scarlett's eyes turned to Rhett Butler, who leaned against a tree.

Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that there is not a cannon factory south of the Mason-Dixon line ?

Or how few iron foundries there are in the South ?


Have you thought that we would not have a single warship and that the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbours in a week, so that we could not sell our cotton abroad ?

Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance.

Sir, said Stuart heavily, what do you mean ?


Rhett looked at him with polite but mocking eyes.

I mean, he answered, what Napoleon - perhaps you've heard of him ?- remarked once ,


God is on the side of the strongest battalion.


Arrogant devil, isn't he, he observed, looking after Butler.


He looks like one of the Borgias.

Scarlett thought quickly but could remember no family in the County of Atlanta or Savannah by that name. I don't know them.

Is he kin to them ? Who are they ?

An odd look came over Charles' face, incredulity and shame struggling with love.

Love triumphed as he realised that it was enough for a girl to be sweet and gentle and beautiful, without having an education to hamper her charms, and he made swift answer :


The Borgias were Italians.


Oh, said Scarlett, losing interest, foreigners. "