Written in 1920, shortly after the 18 year-old author graduated high school. He had not yet been to Africa, and what he presents in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is not so much a record …show more content… The federal government in Washington looked the other way, ignoring the problem. The implications were that this music and food came from the deprivations the black man had to endure in an oppressive white society and, therefore, came from the soul. Write an extended metaphor connecting your spirit to some aspect of nature. Line 3 likens the human body to earth by comparing rivers to “human blood in human veins.” Line 4 personalizes that comparison as the speaker compares the depth of his soul to the depth of rivers. Speaking for the African race (“negro” was the preferred term in 1921), the “I” of this poem links people of African descent to an ancient, natural, life-giving force: rivers. But the speaker is referring to those places along the river where he “raised the pyramids above it.” Those Africans who helped build the pyramids were the Nubians who had a respected role in Egyptian society as soldiers and traders. This notion of growing, of thriving is important for Hughes, because he wants his poem to carry the same invigorating power as rivers themselves. Encyclopedia.com. For additional information on Clif…, Harlem Several prominent African-American leaders attempted to address these issues. Robinson, Cedric J, Black Movements in America, Rout-ledge, 1997. But, in almost every instance, the poems carry a subtext of anger or resistance or outrage, yet, Hughes is able to make his vision palatable to white audiences. Rampersad, Arnold, The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too, Sing America, Vol. Poetry for Students. Hughes and Countee Cullen were part of the same literary generation. Poet and World Traveler flow of human blood in human veins. Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and other writers founded Fire!, a literary journal devoted to African American culture. DuBois, a teacher and intellectual who had received a doctoral degree from Harvard. The different sections of the poem emphasize this: the speaker actually functions on two levels. the negro speaks of rivers introduction in nutshell langston hughes wrote negro speaks of while on train ride to mexico, where he would live with his father for Line 8 personifies the river by giving it the human capacity to sing. However, the speaker “heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New /Orleans”; the river was “singing” because, according to legend, when the future president saw the horrors of slavery, he vowed to eliminate that institution from the country. Despite Hughes's relative lack of real-world experience, the work embodies a wisdom and cultural awareness far beyond the poet's years. 2002 Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. However, when the Northern troops left the region in 1877, state and local governments quickly returned to white domination. A great deal of early Native American poetry is an excellent example of performative language. In his later writing, Hughes steered away from images of African primitivism, for he saw such depictions of African and African-American culture as impeding rather than advancing the cause of racial equality. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. The change may represent the improved status of African Americans after the Civil War, hope for future changes, or the power of the poet to transform reality through imaginative language. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. SOURCES In doing so, he redefines what it means to be civilized to include the cultural traditions of Africa. It ensured Egyptian prosperity. The Harlem Renaissance was a period of intense musical and literary genius in the 1920s. For one thing, the “I” in the poems does not really stand for the literal, biographical human beings Walt Whitman and Hughes. Sandra Merriweather in the Encyclopedia of American Poetry considered the poem to be one of Hughes's best works, and it has been described as his "signature" poem. Berry, Faith, Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem, Wings Books, 1996. It was the first Langston Hughes poem published in a national magazine. Choose one of the rivers mentioned in the poem and report on its current condition. ‘‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’’ is a short, evocative poem written by Langston Hughes when he was only seventeen. Hornsby, Alton, Jr., Milestones in 20th Century African-American History, Visible Ink Press, 1993. Themes. Randall, Dudley, “The Black Aesthetic in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties,” in Modern Black Poets, edited by Donald B. Gibson, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973, p. 35. However, without knowing the authors background and history, one might think it was written by a wise man of old age. Although Hughes brought rhythmic innovations from jazz and the blues to his future poetry, this classic poem, written when he was only 18 years old, stands at the gateway of his entire body of work. Hughes was also well educated, but he drew inspiration for his poetry largely from folk forms, including, most notably, the African-American musical tradition of the blues. Raymond Smith, in his essay, “Hughes: Evolution of the Poetic Persona,” argues that in both early and later poems, Hughes “transforms personal experience and observations into distillations of the Black American condition.” In his essay, “The Origins of Poetry in Langston Hughes,” Arnold Rampersad similarly argues that “personal anguish has been alchemized by the poet into a gracious meditation on his race, whose despised (“muddy”) culture and history … changes within the poem from mud into gold.” Rampersad also finds in the poem a traditional lyric concern with time and death. The Impact of the Early Years Lynching was a growing problem where he lived growing up. He returned to the United States in 1925 and resettled with his mother and half-brother in Washington, D.C. Last, the poem moves to more recent times, with the introduction of the Mississippi. The Congo originates in central Africa and flows into the Atlantic. For him, Africa is “a book one thumbs”—one written by Europeans. The Nile, too, played a central role in early civilization. 122-123. One prominent critic was W.E.B. In other words, all past African and Africa American history has flowed and emptied into him, just as a river empties into the sea. The idea of civilization is important to both Cullen and Hughes. In spite of much opposition, the Freedman’s Bureau was established; its purpose was, in large part, to protect the rights of the black population. Why was The Negro Speaks of Rivers written? THEMES Admitting to none of the conflict over heritage that Cullen expresses, Hughes looks grandly upon a past that transcends the moment of slavery, referring to its horrors only as they came to an end, “when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans.”. The second interpretation does not contradict the first, but puts events into sequence and deepens the poetry. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was composed in 1920 on the train to Mexico when Hughes was still in his teens (eighteen to be exact), and published a year later in Crisis. It flows from Turkey through Syria and modern Iraq. The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes. As Hughes’s first published poem, critics view “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” as the first indication of the poet’s lifelong themes and concerns. Next the Congo, mother to Central Africa, lulls the speaker, to sleep. so ancient as to appear timeless, predating human existence, longer than human memory.” Jemie continues by noting that as the black man drank of these essences, he became endowed with the strength, the power and the wisdom of the river spirit. Baldwin, James, “Sermons and Blues,” in The New York Times Book Review, March 29, 1959, p. 6. The negro speaks of rivers. On the surface, they seem easily accessible, perhaps even simple. Its muddy bosom connects it to the Negro mother who nurtured her babies despite the fact that they could be taken away from her at any time and despite the fact that some of their fathers were the white masters. It is easy to understand the reason for this since most of the great early civilizations grew up in river valleys. The last river mentioned is the Mississippi, the longest river in the United States, and one intimately connected to slavery. There is a fascinating tension in his poem between its formal meter and rhyme scheme—which demonstrate the author’s “civilized” discipline and respect for European literary tradition—and the powerful imagery of an imaged Africa, which speaks to the “wildness” in his soul: “So I lie, who all day long / Want no sound except the song / Sung by wild barbaric birds / Goading massive jungle herds, / Juggernauts of flesh that pass / Trampling tall defiant grass / Where young forest lovers lie, / Plighting troth beneath the sky.” Hughes denies any such tension between civilization and nature. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”appeared in June 1921 in the Crisis, when Langston Hughes was only nineteen years old. In the following essay, she compares Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” to “Heritage,” a poem by Hughes’ Harlem Renaissance contemporary Countee Cullen. Crisis magazine first published Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in 1921. In December Hughes, then a busboy at a Washington, D.C., hotel, attracted the attention of poet Vachel Lindsay by placing three of his poems on Lindsay’s dinner table. They live on through the poet, through his voice and through his poetry. HISTORICAL CONTEXT Rather than adapting a European style to his own devices as does Cullen, Hughes draws on an oral culture that is both ancient African and contemporary African American. Cullen is bent on using his art to show the struggle, while Hughes creates a poem in which the struggle has been overcome. THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS by Langston Hughes. The poem exalts the force of character, the wisdom and strength, which created this survival. I, Rampersad writes, “With its allusions to deep dusky rivers, the setting sun, sleep and the soul, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is suffused with the image of death and, simultaneously, the idea of deathlessness.”. INTRODUCTION Poll taxes and literacy tests were mandated; laws requiring segregation were passed. Part of him denies the relevance of Africa at all. For a time he worked as a cabin boy on a merchant ship, visited Africa, and wrote poems for a number of American magazines. This very detailed biography discusses literary and social influences on Hughes’ writing. Of course, poets have been using the first person for centuries, but Whitman and Hughes both use the lyric “I” in ways unlike other poets. Indeed, the “I’ve known rivers” refrain, and the chant-like list in the third stanza recall a psalm or a Christian litany or a gospel song. 1. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a short, evocative poem written by Langston Hughes when he was only seventeen. Critics often attribute the personal anguish Rampersad mentions to Hughes’s anxieties about his father. He did not believe in directly challenging the unjust southern system. However, the “I” represents neither a persona nor the author. Around this time Hughes became active in the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of creativity among a group of African American artists and writers. Analyze the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes. Though Hughes, like Cullen, studied British poetry, its influence is little in evidence in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” or much of his other poetry. / I looked on the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.” In contrast, Cullen is torn by a familiar— and racist—dichotomy between (white/Western) civilization and (black/African) nature. A number of reviewers, including black intellectuals, questioned whether Hughes’s colloquial language and racial themes constituted propaganda or “real art,” oversimplification or clear vision. The Negro encompasses the African in Africa or on any other continent, and especially the African-American, Hughes’ first audience. The poem uses repetition of phrases and structures in a manner similar to a song. Hughes also wrote poetry and short fiction for the Belfry Owl, the high school literary magazine, and edited the school yearbook. This put black artists in an awkward position, for they needed to prove themselves as artists capable of mastering the “sophisticated” European styles associated with civilization, but they at once wanted to draw on and bring value to their own cultural influences and traditions. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. In fact, Hughes was, “In the end, after a life of cruel hardship, the heavenly rewards come at death, at sunset. The poem was published in Crisis Magazine (the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1921, a year later. In 1943 Hughes received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Lincoln University, and in 1946 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Yet these rivers mirror man because the water that flows in their channels is similar to the blood that flows in man’s veins. In the end, after a life of cruel hardship, the heavenly rewards come at death, at sunset. Critics do not claim that “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is particularly propagandistic, though it heralds a moralizing tendency in Hughes’s poetry. These critics note, however, that the “I” in the poem represents less an individual persona or Hughes himself than a mythic, collective persona. Some critics remark that these repetitions echo the tone and rhythm of black spirituals. At a Glance… At this point, also, we understand the speaker is not only speaking for himself, but for all Negroes. Without question, whites and blacks are the target audience. Here the speaker “built [his] hut” and was “lulled … to sleep,” suggesting the idealized beauty and peace the Negro enjoyed in this earliest of Edens. But in the early-and mid-1920s, when these poems were written, the status of black artists drawing on Africa for inspiration was still quite tentative. The image of the New Negro was at odds, however, with the re-valuation of indigenous African and African-American art forms that also characterized the Harlem Renaissance. The black mother and her progeny, who never abandoned their spirituality but refined it into music, poetry, and dance, are now seen for their true value, revealed in the light as golden.”. Introduction Critical Analysis of The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes Langston Hughes is one of the most influential African-American poets of the 20th century. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” begins with the speaker’s claim: “I’ve known rivers.” Rivers suggest to us places of travel, exploration, discovery, and even settling down beside one. So, in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” when Hughes writes, “I bathed in the Euphrates,” or “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,” he is not speaking autobiographically, he is speaking metaphorically. The poem first appeared in the magazine Crisis in June of 1921 and was subsequently published in Hughes’s first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926. Hughes connects the African-American soul with rivers. Those that weren’t found themselves physically threatened. The repetition of “rivers” and “human” lends these lines a wise, resonant tone, like that found in Biblical passages. The poem utilizes four of the world’s largest and most historically prominent rivers as a metaphor to present a view, almost a timeline in miniature, of the African-American experience throughout history. More importantly, Hughes states in A Pictorial History of Black Americans, that “[b]lack Pharaohs ruled Egypt for centuries and black Queen Nefertete [was] one of the most beautiful women of all time.” Although Hughes might have wished to emphasize the Nile’s glamour, the fact is, the whole of ancient Egyptian religion lauded death over life and focused on the pharaohs and their comfortable survival in the next world. Research the importance of the Harlem Renaissance in giving voice to the soul of the African-American community. The first words of lines five through eight create a picture of the speaker’s ancestors: bathing, building, looking, hearing. However, the poem also discusses a spiritual level where the soul of the speaker has been and continues to be enriched by the spirit of the river, even before the creation of humanity. The poem is written in first person speaker 'I' where the 'I' stand for all the African-American people and their collective voices for the freedom. Using a collective, mythic “I,” long lines, and repeated phrases, Hughes invokes the poetry of Walt Whitman, another bard who “sang” America. All across the former Confederacy, blacks who were suspected of crimes against whites—or even ‘offenses’ no greater than failing to step aside for a white man’s car or protesting a lynching—were tortured, hanged and burned to death by the thousands.” The NAACP collected statistics which indicated that during the years between 1889 and 1918 over 2572 blacks were lynching victims. “Part of him denies the relevance of Africa at all. In his poem, “I, Too,” Hughes both implicitly and explicitly responds to the great poet of freedom and democracy, Walt Whitman. ." Meaning. The Negro Speaks of Riversby Langston HughesI’ve known rivers:I’ve known riversancient as the worldand older than theflow of human bloodin human veins.My soul has growndeep like the rivers.I bathed in the Euphrateswhen dawns were young.=. Even today, world history textbooks refer to the area using the symbolic phrase, the cradle of civilization, because of the number of ancient kingdoms which flourished there: Ur, Sumer, Babylon. The next river mentioned is the Congo, the second longest river in Africa, which runs through the center of the continent. Line 5 lets the reader know that the “I” is no mortal human speaker, but the mythic, timeless voice of a race. And, it is unlikely that he literally sent his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world, though he might have done a good deal of yelling. The poem’s cosmic dimension adds an additional theme making the poem more than a tribute to the heritage of the past.
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