Stamatis Gamvrogianis ’25 Receives “Honorable Mention” in the 2021 Historic New Orleans Collection’s Writing Contest


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.”

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