Jean Toomer (1894-1967) grew up in Washington D.C. and
attended six universities or colleges in Wisconsin, Massachusetts,
Illinois and New York (graduating from none), before returning to New
York City in spring 1919. He claimed as his heritage "seven blood
mixtures: French, Dutch, Welsh, Negro, German, Jewish, and Italian"
(letter in the Liberator of 1922). He was also, as Robert M.
Crunden has said, in Body and Soul, a man of many enthusiasms: socialism, Buddhism,
Theosophy, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Quakerism, Jungian psychoanalysis, and
eventually Scientology (Crunden 27-28). He formed a close friendship
with Hart Crane. He loved Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919), and one can see its influence in Cane (1923),
(see below for more on this topic) which grew out of experiences he had as the substitute principal of the
Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute, a co-educational African
American institution founded in 1910 in Hancock County, Georgia (about
100 miles southeast of Atlanta), an area where his own father had been
born into slavery. He had never been in the deep South before, and it
made such an impression on him that he began writing the poetry and
sketches that eventuated in Cane. He submitted the long story "Georgia Night" to the Liberator in New York while he was still in Sparta.
Before completing Cane, he returned to the South in 1922 with his friend, Jewish novelist, historian, literary and social critic, Waldo Frank. Toomer had light skin, often "passing" for white, but it had been darkening in the intense sun of the South, so they had to travel at times in Jim Crow rail cars, and since Frank was swarthy, they posed as black academics. Crunden says that Cane "remains a mélange of poems, meditations, and sketches and is not a novel," and that it "combined naturalism, realism, symbolism, and surrealism," and "excited Toomer about his black heritage" (29). However, when the publisher Horace Liveright wanted to advertise the book as by a black author, Toomer objected loudly: "My racial composition and my position in the world are realities which I alone may determine," he said, telling Liveright that he did not "expect to be told what I should consider myself to be, and further that any "statements I give will inevitably come from a synthetic human and art point of view, not from a racial one" (qtd. in Crunden 29).
In a letter to Sherwood Anderson, dated 18 December 1922, Jean Toomer wrote about the travels that preceded his writing of Cane, and the influence of Anderson upon his work. This passage bespeaks a closeness of the two writers, and it would seem as though Anderson's work is indispensable to understanding what Toomer tried top achieve in Cane--if Toomer can be taken at his word:
Before completing Cane, he returned to the South in 1922 with his friend, Jewish novelist, historian, literary and social critic, Waldo Frank. Toomer had light skin, often "passing" for white, but it had been darkening in the intense sun of the South, so they had to travel at times in Jim Crow rail cars, and since Frank was swarthy, they posed as black academics. Crunden says that Cane "remains a mélange of poems, meditations, and sketches and is not a novel," and that it "combined naturalism, realism, symbolism, and surrealism," and "excited Toomer about his black heritage" (29). However, when the publisher Horace Liveright wanted to advertise the book as by a black author, Toomer objected loudly: "My racial composition and my position in the world are realities which I alone may determine," he said, telling Liveright that he did not "expect to be told what I should consider myself to be, and further that any "statements I give will inevitably come from a synthetic human and art point of view, not from a racial one" (qtd. in Crunden 29).
In a letter to Sherwood Anderson, dated 18 December 1922, Jean Toomer wrote about the travels that preceded his writing of Cane, and the influence of Anderson upon his work. This passage bespeaks a closeness of the two writers, and it would seem as though Anderson's work is indispensable to understanding what Toomer tried top achieve in Cane--if Toomer can be taken at his word:
Just before I went down to Georgia I read Winesburg, Ohio. And while there, living in a cabin whose floorboards permitted the soil to come up between them, listening to the old folk melodies that Negro women sang at sun-down, The Triumph of the Egg [i.e., The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life in Tales and Poems (1921), by Anderson] came to me. The beauty, and the full sense of life that these books contain are natural elements, like the rain and sunshine, of my own sprouting. My seed was planted in the cane- and cotton-fields, and in the souls of black and white people in the small southern town. My seed was planted in myself down there. Roots have grown and strengthened. They have extended out. I spring up in Washington. Winesburg, Ohio, and The Triumph of the Egg are elements of my growing. It is hard to think of myself as maturing without them.
Ther[e] is a golden strength about your art that can come from nothing less than a creative elevation of experience, however bitter or abortive the experience may have been. Your images are clean, glowing, healthy, vibrant. . . . . It seems to me that art in our day, other than in its purely aesthetic phase, has a sort of religious function. It is a religion, a spiritualization of the immediate. And ever since I first touched you, I have thought of you in this connection. . . .
Wont you write and tell me more in detail how my stuff strikes you? And at first opportunity I would certainly like to have a talk with you.
Crunden, Robert M. Body and Soul: The Making of American Modernism. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
A Jean Toomer Reader: Selected Unpublished Writings, ed. Frederik L. Rusch. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. See pp. 17-18.
I'm drawn to Toomer's use of the phrase "creative elevation of experience" in his letter to Anderson. Toomer found himself in a unique position wherein he essentially straddled the divide between black and white, refusing to let others box him in to either designation, yet, according to the introduction to the Norton Critical Edition of Cane, still identifying as Negro at certain times of his life. Toomer imbues his characters with the same sort of longing for identity that he seemed to have. For example, Becky, a white woman who births two black sons, gets no sympathy from either side; or biracial Paul, who, like Toomer, makes attempts at passing as he tackles college life and his love for Bona, who is white.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense that Toomer's personal struggles would result in a narrative as fragmented as Cane, which fragmentation certainly qualifies as the aforementioned "creative elevation." Knowing something about Toomer's history makes the reader conscious of how Toomer is using his storytelling ability to transcend his own experiences, a literary exorcism that sets its sights on issues of equality and repression and love. Toomer's use of repetition within many of the pieces feels like a way to concretize the narrative as it travels from region to region, from poem to prose to tragic drama ("Kabnis"). It's a shame that Toomer's publishing experience with Cane was marred by marketing issues, especially since the author had no trouble identifying as black at various times in his life. Perhaps this was just another way for Toomer to experience a "creative elevation," opening his characters up to the world's criticism while keeping control of how he himself was perceived.
Cane is in many ways an autobiography of Toomer, expressed through a variety of creative mediums. Kabnis clearly is based upon his experience as substitute principal of the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute. The stories set in Georgia feature characters hemmed in by race, characters assaulted on both sides when they refuse to be anything but stereotypical representations of “their” race. As Toomer refused to identify wholly as African American, he experienced this prejudice from both white and black people, transitioning these negative experiences into, as Michael put it, “creative elevation of experience”. While the stories are largely critical of southern societies, the poems are often romanticized, expressing what Toomer saw as the beauty of the south and it’s people. I think by doing this he was illustrating how southern culture is best when experienced rather than analyzed. Expressed in finite, narratives, many southerners have difficult lives. Becky has a difficult life, as does Karintha and Carma. When analyzing the lives of individuals, the south can seem very bad indeed. But taken as a whole, when examining, for example THE Georgia Dusk, we see the land in terms of crunching pine needles, sweet-smelling cane, sunsets and music. Many of the poems remain critical of course, such as Face, but by at least acknowledging the south’s more romantic elements, Toomer expressed his own belief that all experiences have a silver lining, “however bitter or abortive the experience may have been.”
ReplyDeleteIn his letter to Sherwood Anderson, Toomer describes his experience in the south as if “[his] seed was planted in cane- and cotton fields.” It is clear that his time spent in Georgia put him in touch with an aspect of himself and part of his own heritage. Although, it seems as if the south planted its “seed” in him much in the same way he feels that he planted his own “seed” by giving him such an overwhelming source of inspiration to write Cane. His short visit to the south definitely afforded him the ability to wholly absorb the aura of the natural and geographical elements of the cane stalks, the sunsets, and the smoke swirls to such a degree that he deftly encapsulated these elements in his writing to create something as spiritually and aesthetically beautiful as Cane. The south obviously had such a profound impression on him that the only way he knew how to respond to his impressions of the south was to blur the lines between the reality and the romanticism of it through his writing, while at the same time expressing his own conflicted sense of duality by depicting the dualities of his own cultural roots.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to learn that Toomer attended six different universities without ever graduating. Toomer's writing in "Cane" evinces the same level of capriciousness. That is an unwillingness to settle on one format. Toomer is not a poet or a novelist or a playwright. He is simply an artist. In fact, I'd venture a guess and say that Toomer found those aforementioned titles as uncomfortable as the racial categorization his publisher attempted to foist upon him.
ReplyDeleteBe that as it may, I found "Cane" a little uneven. Granted, this is only my first read through, but the sprawling, autobiographical "Kabnis" isn't nearly as enthralling and evocative as "Blood-Burning Moon" (my favorite piece from the book). I'm sure others will disagree.
I'm sure everyone is going to be annoyed with me for saying this, but were moments while reading Cane that I was reminded of Stein's 3 lives and Tender Buttons. Not only is there the same combination of poetry and prose, but there is similar use of repetition of images and phrases as well. For example, the story Rhobert repeats the sentence "he is an upright man whose legs are banty-bowed and shaky because as a child he ha rickets" is resemblant of Stein's repetition of "Melanctha had a break neck courage". I think in both Stein's and Toomer's works this creates a poetic naturalness to the language that captures the humanity they're trying to portray.
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