Langston Hughes still laughs and smiles in this
centenary portrait of North America, if we adjust to the 1912 year written in
the letter sent by Jimboy in the
chapter III of the novel, no matter it has been published until 1930.
This book makes its way in at least three different
paths: Literature, American racial history, and Music.
Literature
For literature it is a work of craftsmanship, where every
character speaks with its very own voice, not only in the psychological sense,
but also in the phonetics of the transcribed vocabularies.
The author enhances through subtle variations of the
language the multiple social backgrounds in the same group: the adults freed
not so much time ago from slavery, the boys and girls who attend the school so
conscious but innocent of the racial differences, the nomadic musicians, the
wise liars, the white folks.
The descriptions are detailed, almost cinematographic:
one could draw a precise storyboard from every chapter because all of the persons
and even every object have a specific position, their own movement and color.
It is inevitable to read this novel, written inside
the Harlem Renaissance movement, and not to think about the writings of the Jazz Age of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as
their "white" counterpart, yet their books were published by the same
years, and both authors were born with a difference of only six years.
Curious symmetries: though not the main character in
the work of Langston Hughes, at the end of the novel, Jimboy goes to the war
in Europe, while Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby
comes
from the war in Europe. Both characters were from rural mid west and later
established themselves in big cities (Chicago and New York, respectively).
American racial
history
If it
were necessary to define this book in a word, I would choose kindness.
Kindness is a proper term if you have to deal with the
shameful facts that had at that time, and still do now, a painful remembrance for
many people. Hughes was capable to tell a history of racism with a proud voice,
sometimes with obvious rage, but without hate.
No matter the described humiliations, there is always
an implicit kindness, an explanation though not a justification of these, while
the offender invariably bears with the shame. Hughes doesn't want to deprive us
of the joy of reading: be it poverty, prostitution, illness, racism, or death,
his characters confront extreme situations with dignity.
He tells a social story through the deep motivations
of the colored people, their needs and dreams, their aspirations and frustrations, the
transition from rural communities to urban landscapes.
Hughes had the virtue of pointing out the social
implications of the black hues to the "white folks" which until then,
viewed only an homogenized landscape of colored people:
In the words of Jimboy:
"We too
dark for 'em, ma," he laughed. "How they gonna see in the dark? You
colored folks oughta get lighter, that's what!"
Hughes made the people saw beyond the darkness,
giving them some chromatic precisions, of which I found more than thirty along
the book, and here are some examples:
Leather-colored, clay-colored, biscuit-colored,
mustard-colored, yellow, lemon-yellow, mahogany-brown, maple-sugar brown,
autumn-leaf brown, dark-purple, coal-black, blue-black, powder-grey, ebony,
orange, tan, creamy-gold.
Music
I have to limit this comments to a literary
analysis, but I dare that musical elements are so complex in this book that
they would need a separate essay.
The constant references to the lyrics themes and their
vocabulary; the origins of the American black music: slavery, hard work, and the
lodges; the description and integration of bands and instruments; the names and
nicknames of the musicians; the evolving rhythms: all of this would deserve a
complete analysis. In fact, I found there are some academic books about this
matter, and I tried to track some of the musicians names to verify them, and I
found they are...well, made up.
Hughes filled this story with a sort of blues cadence, with lyrics as those
heard by Sandy in the great chorus out of the black past at the end of the
infamous Children's Day:
There's a star
fo' you an' me,
Stars
beyond!
I would like to finish pointing out one paragraph so
full of poetry and rhythm, that it seems to be the musical climax of this novel;
unbelievably, it brought to me some dickensonian echoes, as fresh in my mind was
the recent reading of Bleak House.
This paragraph is located in the chapter of Not
Without Laughter titled Dance:
The earth
rolls relentlessly, and the sun blazes for ever on the earth, breeding,
breeding. But why do you insist like the earth, music? Rolling and breeding,
earth and sun for ever, relentlessly. But why do you insist like the sun? Like
the lips of women? Like the bodies of men, relentlessly?
"Aw, play
it, Mister Benbow!"
