Michael Ondaatje Quotes
Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.
Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion. McClelland and Stewart, 1987.
Nations come and go—are born and die, but generally the cities remain as part of the new state or empire.
Blight was referring to one classic example where the myth developed in the South and spread to the rest of the country, that the Civil war motivation was not to maintain slavery but a noble fight for freedom and states rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the seceding states had a legislative declaration of secession and all of them stated maintaining slavery was the cause of the war and secession. None mentioned a general principle of states’ rights. As a matter of fact the State’s rights issue went the other way. It was the Northern states that refused to obey the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court to return fugitive slaves. The Northern states claimed State’s rights and the South responded that states had no right to nullify a Federal Law that had been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. The historical myths that nations create, puts a more acceptable veneer on disreputable behavior of the past. The United States does this but other nations do as well, and some of the myths cause conflict and violence hundreds of years later as with the Balkans where each ethnic subgroup has its own myths all of which are wrong but believed.
Philip Michael Ondaatje CC FRSL, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller Prize, the Booker Prize, and the Prix Médicis étranger. Ondaatje is also an Officer of the Order of Canada, recognizing him as one of Canada's most renowned living authors.
