The Confederate Monument on the Oxford Square facing
south became a very crucial statue in Jefferson,
Yoknapatawpha county--Faulkner's literary world. Benjy
Compson in The Sound and the Fury, when turning around
the monument clockwise, "he bellowed. Bellow on bellow,
his voice mounted, with scarce interval for breath. There
was more than astonishment in it, it was horror; shock;
agony eyeless, tongueless; just sound". But when he goes
counterclockwise, "at once Ben hushed. . . . The broken
flower drooped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and
blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothｌｙ
once more from left to right; post and tree, window and
doorway, and signboard, each in its ordered place."
Lafayette County Courthouse was erected in 1873. The original
building was destroyed by Union forces in 1864. The courthouse
is the most important architecture in Faulkner's works. He described
it as: "the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in
the center of the county's circumference like a single cloud in
its ring of horizon, laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim
of horizon; musing, brooding, symbolic, and ponderable, tall as
cloud, solid as rock, domi- nating all: protector of the weak;
judiciate and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian
of the aspirations and the hopes". (Requiem for a Num)
Faulkner and Estelle Oldham Franklin were married here on June 20, 1929.
Faulkner was a member, but he seldom attended church services except Easter,
Christmas, weddings and funerals. Faulkner's daughter, Jill was married
here.
"ST.
PETER'S (1851),