This year, the Historic New Orleans Collection’s writing contest asked students to create an original piece of writing in response to another text. This “dialogue” format follows a tradition that appeared in early Afro-Creole New Orleans newspapers, allowing people of color to share their opinions on issues of the time in creative ways. Stamatis Gamvrogianis '25 chose to respond to a poem titled “A Strange Coincidence” by Armand Lanusse (translated from the French by Clint Bruce.) In the original poem, published in May of 1863, a racist abbot bemoans the fact that, after death, he has been buried next to an African. The African provides comeuppance to the abbott in the poem’s final lines:
The Abbot’s Dream
Last night I dreamed that, at illness’s behest,
Besides a black man I’d been laid to rest.
Unable to bear his wretched proximity,
I spoke to him this, as a corpse of quality;
“Be gone, your scoundrel! Go somewhere else to rot,
For you have no business near my burial plot.”
“A scoundrel?” with utter arrogance he replied,
“You’re a scoundrel yourself; this cannot be denied,
For all are equal here, I’m pleased to say;
Ignoring the worms devouring our skin,
As you did in church, you insult me once again.”
Here is Stamatis Gamvrogianis’s response:
The Abbot’s Dream Part II
An unfair beginning to last night’s dream,
As I woke up from the daylight’s beam.
A powerful message for this has to tell,
But without a continuation of this living hell.
Falling asleep at moon’s highest point,
Drowsy and tired, hearing a familiar voice.
The scoundrel himself, back in this setting,
But now, we were truly connecting.
I had spoke to him again in a tense of equality:
“We live and die in the same way, we both turn old as we age,
So I see why not we can’t personally engage.”
“Yes, and now you understand,” he replying in harmony,
“We both revolve around the same philosophy:
The nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.
Both being considered in a sense of discipline.
Taking attention to the snakes that poison a negroe’s heart,
As you never have before, you offered your life a better start.”