Langston Hughes: The Harlem Renaissance Genius - Essay Example

Langston Hughes: The Harlem Renaissance Genius. 'The literature of the vernacular' occupies a neat slot in the canon of black literature. Often labeled African American literature, the vernacular consisted of rap songs, sermons, ballads and blues that sang in praise of the black identity. These ingredients which were well used by novelists, playwrights and essayists formed a tradition that was not only different from the American but also distinct from it. " the vernacular encompasses vigorous, dynamic processes of expression, past and present. It makes up a rich store house of material wherein the values, styles, and character types of black American life are reflected in language that is highly energized and often marvelously eloquent1." Although the roots of this African American tradition go long back, the early twentieth century, especially the 1920s was one of supreme creative activity. Much of it was focused on the district of Harlem in New York City. There was a significant increase in the scope and number of publications; literary productions including plays and songs found unprecedented popularity. Not for nothing is the period called Harlem Renaissance. The period however, is also marked by trauma and pathos. When the United States entered World War I (1914-1918) in 1917, there was a massive migration of blacks from the South to the North seeking employment and to escape the morbid living conditions that existed there as a result of the segregationist rulings of the U S Supreme Court. Chicago, Philadelphia and Cleveland were the main centers for immigration. However, it was in New York that a new sensibility got distilled. Harlem Renaissance blossomed in full bloom in this quintessential city. Of the many writers who helped to define its zeitgeist, the one who stands tall among the front ranks is Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967). The poetic credo of Hughes is best expressed in his landmark essay The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain which appeared in The Nation in 1926. We younger Negro artists intend to express our dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it does not matter. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves. Most of the poems of Hughes express this strong concern for identity. For him the self and identity were the two universal motivating factors of great literature. We shall take a sampling from his oeuvre to prove how he puts the point through. One of the most famous poems of Hughes is the short lyric called 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'. It was written in July 1920. The poem would milk more if we knew a bit of its history. During 1916-1920, the friends of Hughes introduced him to many socialist ideas by lending him classics like Ethel Boole Voynich's The Gadfly (1891) and the works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Guy de Maupassant. In July 1920, on the train to visit his father in Mexico, crossing the Mississippi river to St. Louis, Hughes wrote this lyric. "Through the images of water and pyramid, the verse suggests the endurance of human spirituality from the time of the ancient Egypt to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The muddy Mississippi made Hughes think of the roles in human history played by the Congo, the Niger and the Nile. The draft he first wrote on the back of an envelope in fifteen minutes has become Hughes's most anthologized poem2." I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi. The poem, hailed as one of the finest by Hughes, is essentially a record of the five - score- and - more - year old history of the battle of the blacks for equal rights with the whites. The long journey from Euphrates to Mississippi is resonant of the gurgling, eventful past of the blacks. The poem is dedicated to W. E. B. Du Bois, the famous Civil Rights leader. The fact that the poem was written when the poet was only 17 and that it packs into it the succinct history and philosophy of a race is an endorsement of a rare sensibility. (The poem could be compared with Emerson's 'Rivers' which is more Wordsworthian in character.) Adrian Oktenberg in his A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry (!987) points out that (the poem) " is only the beginning of a long chain of poems by Hughes which distill, confront, extend, and transform the historical experience of black peole into an art both limpid and programmatic." 'As I grew older' is a poem that is more realistic. Hughes speaks of a wall that rose to touch the sky and outsmart the sun. The wall (blackness, negritude) is to be demolished with his hands (poetry). The task is tough. But Hughes dares to dream that he should be able to do this. When one juxtaposes this with the earlier poem, there is a tangible sense of mellowness. Although 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' is a highly anthologized poem, 'As I grew older' is poem of realization and the acceptance of the challenge to existence posed by the various factors around him. The dream of egalitarianism is yet to be. But how far will the 'hands' go Only time will tell. My hands! My dark hands! Break through the wall! Find my dream! Help me to shatter this darkness, To smash this night Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech 'I Have a Dream' also speaks of a similar situation. He too exhorts his countrymen to fight the manacles of segregation and cash the check of equality and liberty given to the blacks at the time of American independence at least a century after its declaration. Perhaps one's enjoyment of this poem would be all the more if one read it along with 'Dream Deferred', one of Hughes's finest. What happens to a dream deferred Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun Or fester like a sore - and then run Does it stink like rotten meat Or crust and sugar over - like a syrup sweet May be it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode The poet considers the aftermath of deferment of dreams. Here, the dream does not stand for the transient nocturnal drama of our everyday lives, but the goal of one's life. It is what goads one to be, the ultimate destination where one strives to reach. Is Langston Hughes suggesting the dream of all blacks On is compelled to conclude thus because the consequences of not having fulfilled the 'dream' appear to be too dire. Drying up in the sun, festering like a sore, stinking like rotten meat, crusting like syrup, sagging like a heavy load, exploding are not by any limit of imagination, the dream analysis of a mortal. The poem is political in character and the dream is that of a nation, of the collective unconscious of its people. The poetic sensibility of a versatile poet like Hughes is further amplified by poems like 'Goodbye Christ'. Here the poet, already bitter and perhaps resigned, makes a mockery of the institutionalization of the idea called God. The poem is a request to Christ to give proper to the men who proclaim to be the ministers of God. One wonders whether the poem with its laconic wit, irony and humor had the germs of the British Movement poetry; whether Larkin thought of 'Goodbye Christ' when he wrote 'Church Going' (to imply that the Idea is disappearing. 'Goodbye Christ' would have been a good title for Larkin's poem too!) Listen, Christ, You did alright in your day I reckon - But that day's gone now. They ghosted you up a swell story, too, Called it Bible. But it's dead now. The popes and the preachers've Made too much money from it. They have sold you too many. It is only natural that the poem invited scandals. Once even when a sound truck was playing 'God Bless America', it is said that at the sight of Hughes shaking hands with a white, one Four Square Gospel supporter muttered:' Down where I come from, we don't shake hands with niggers.' Langston Hughes was one of the first few writers who were drawn to Harlem renaissance. He helped to define the paradigm of the period with his brilliant poetry and other writings. "Unlike most of the writers of the renaissance, Hughes's career easily survived the end of that movement; there was never a year, or even a month or a week, when he did not produce art in keeping with his sense of himself as a thoroughbred professional writer3" (1253). That he was a prodigy is borne out by his nature and extent of oeuvre which consisted of autobiographies, children's writings, novels, plays and even musicals. Hughes was the unofficial 'Poet Laureate' of the blacks. There is yet to be a poet who is as versatile and as candid in the realm of African American Literature. Works cited. 1. Atwan, Robert et al. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. 2. Oktenberg, Adrian. A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry. New York, Pimlico, 1987. 3. Gates Jr., Henry Louis and Nellie Y. McKay. African American Literature: The Norton Anthology. London: WW Norton & Co., 1997. Read More