A Mythology of the Black South in Jean Toomer
moncler outlet He crafted the work with a mythos in piumini moncler saldi mind because, as a lifelong seeker, he wanted to fill gaps in his perception of his own identity, and the identity of African Americans in general. The structure itself lends to this mythic quality, the shuffled vignettes and visceral poems conveying a dreamlike quality to the work. moncler outlet
moncler outlet online uomo The mythological atmosphere of Cane is peopled by tragic heroes, heroines, and a man who talks to God, which gives the reader a sense of the true story of the South from the African American perspective. In Cane, Toomer created a new genre in pursuit of an adequate representation of the Southern African American experience by combining numerous forms and an array of narratives in a mosaic of words, a kind of written sculpture. The pieces of this mosaic include poetry, drama, short fiction, and piumini moncler outlet elements of Greek tragedy, each of which blends into the others at times. This essay will show how Toomer crafted this new genre, why he created it, and the purpose it served, both for him and for all African Americans. irony intended) available, and none with such poetic language and evocative drama. Each story and poem in the collection follows the life of a southern black person, giving readers a swath of ‘experiences’ that goes far towards creating a story of the time that, though fictional, feels true. This book of stories is one of the first attempts moncler uomo to outlet moncler creatively document the brilliance, chaos and tragedy of African American life in the South through a spectrum of vignettes, symbols, imagery, and a mixed genre structure that mirrored the fragmentation of the piumini moncler scontatissimi environment. moncler outlet online uomo
moncler bambino outlet This documentation synthesized the African American experience into the greater mythology of America. Thus Cane was a powerful factor in the creation of the nascent moncler bambino saldi African American racial identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. But the confused masterpiece didn’t start out as a thing for many, but as Toomer’s alone, and it was the quest for his own identity that drove Toomer to write it. in a way that resonates with readers’ own interpretations of the time, place, and people. Perhaps this success was his ultimate goal in writing Cane. Toomer was a seeker moncler bambino outlet throughout his life, and Cane was part of that process. to Nathan Toomer and Nina Pinchback. state. Of mixed racial descent, Toomer and his family could pass for either black or white, an ambiguity that saw Toomer in both all white and all black segregated schools during his childhood. This ambiguity of racial identity and affluent, intellectually rich upbringing would later lead Toomer to investigate the southern African American part of his heritage in his quest for personal identity. moncler bambino outlet
moncler saldi uomo But first, this quest for knowledge took him to college. And not just one college or course of study, but six different institutions of higher learning between 1914 and 1917, for almost as many different subjects. He went to the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the City College of New York studying agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history, but he never completed a degree. This indecisiveness could be perceived as a symptom of his fragmented identity, or as a facet of his ongoing search for knowledge. Regardless, Toomer drifted between disciplines and identities for much of his early life. This trend, one will see, carried over into his creative life. moncler saldi uomo
piumini moncler scontatissimi After college Toomer took a job as a principal in Sparta, Georgia, where he experienced harsh racism and segregation firsthand. He also studied Eastern philosophy at the time. He wrote some short stories, and then in 1923 he published Cane. His moncler outlet incubation of the truths of the lives of moncler saldi African Americans in the South, perceived from his well educated and eloquent vantage point and stated with the righteous conviction of his race’s common humanity, was received with great critical acclaim. There he joined the Society of Friends, stopped writing in 1950, and died in 1967. piumini moncler scontatissimi
moncler donna Jean Toomer’s life was one of double identities, multiple yearnings, unfinished endeavors and unpublished writings, yet the single work, Cane, has changed the way the African American experience in the South is understood. Through attempting to divine the nature of his own heritage and create an “eternal south” (Ramsey 74) of mythic black existence, Toomer gained literary immortality and maybe even the piece of his own identity he was seeking. moncler donna
moncler outlet online shop Nevertheless, the depiction of life in the South Toomer did achieve is drenched in his own romanticism, idealization, and poetic, lurid language, transforming the humdrum, often tragic lives of his fictional characters into powerfully evocative vignettes. He remade the South really a shattered, post war, post slavery region full of tension, poverty, and abuse moncler outlet online uomo into a “romantic/gothic” (Lamothe 54) epic based on his own fragmented perception. and documenting his understanding as much for himself as for any other motive. This can be seen through the passionate subjectivity that underlies the entire work. moncler outlet online shop
outlet moncler This work, as an expression of a historical reality through symbolic structure and varied, poetic content, represents what could be called poetic historicism, rendered as much as an object of art as a creative social history. The result has proven powerful enough to endure informing numerous works which came after it. Thus one man’s mission to understand his own heritage became part of his entire race’s same quest. outlet moncler
piumini moncler uomo The definition of the Jungian archetype of the seeker is one who, like Percival, looks for truth, love, beauty, and understanding. This is the quest that defined Toomer’s life, and the product of his quest, “Cane”, has defined his memory to posterity. to the reader all by itself. at the time a confusion of mixed identity, dead and rising symbols, and new found, hard lived “freedom” that feels like anything but. piumini moncler uomo
This “collage aesthetic” (Farebrother 506) is purposeful in that Toomer perceived the elements of black southern life and translated them through the filter of his own fragmented personality. Toomer trying to understand the South and Toomer trying to understand himself were the same goal. as well as the driving force behind the need for Toomer to define himself and his people. Toomer was trying to find himself and his race, and what he ended up finding was as mixed as he himself was. This fact is exhibited in the mixed genre nature of Cane.
moncler uomo Now let us examine the works within Cane. First comes “Karintha”, a story of men making a woman “ripen too soon.” (Cane 1) It describes the easy, meaningless life of the girl, brought to her by her beauty. From a young age until she reaches adulthood, men forgive her anything and eventually “bring her money” (2) as a way to curry her favor. Only two pages in length, the story begins the collection with a meditation on a normal subject with intensely abstract, symbolic language: “Pine needles are smooth and sweet. They are elastic to the feet of rabbitsa sawmill was nearby.” (2) This seemingly random collection of sensations and facts contextualizing the woman Karintha’s stunted spiritual growth initiates the dreamlike quality of the entire book, and could be said to give it one of its themes that of individuals and a whole race “stunted’ by the wrong kind of attention. moncler uomo
piumini moncler outlet The second piece in Cane is a short poem titled ‘Reapers’. Eight lines of lyrical language describe black reapers sharpening their scythes and moncler outlet online shop whilst reaping, killing a field rat that happened to be in the field. The dead rat and the “blade, blood stained”(3) are the first of many dark images that lend Cane its Gothic undertones. ‘Reapers’ is also the first of a series of poems that, interspersed amongst the stories, act as a kind of chorus, reiterating a certain somberness and majesty to the setting through their subject matter and their rhythm. with the poetic historicism of the moncler outlet trebaseleghe ancient Greeks, by adding the choral element of Greek tragedy. and his own identity, by co opting elements of other traditions and adding features to Cane which turn it into a part of a continuing human narrative, part of a literary tradition. piumini moncler outlet
‘November Cotton Flower’, the next piece and a poem as well, adds a rustic tinge to the overall mood, while also giving the book its first sense of hope. For in the poem, a landscape is described of dead plants and dried rivers and dead birds in the bottoms of wells. Into this landscape blooms a cotton flower, and its blooming “assumed significance” (4). Thus far, Toomer has given us a single story and two poems, creating already a remarkably dimensional picture of the South, full of spent innocence, stunted growth, the rhythmic motions of agriculture, death, and reborn hope.
moncler saldi The fourth piece is ‘Becky’, a story describing the life of a “white woman who had two Negro sons.” (5). She is marginalized by white society and forced to live between the railroad tracks and the road, “pushed up where a blue sheen God with listless eyes could look at it” (5), where moncler bambino saldi her sons grow up mean and identity less. Being neither white nor black, they are shunned by both sides, and throughout the story a strange moncler saldi uomo chorus repeats, “the pines whispered to Jesus.” (5) Becky’s sons kill two men and leave town. Eventually, Becky’s house, shaken by the passage of the train, collapses on her. moncler saldi
moncler saldi outlet The repeating chorus gives the entire story a feeling of inevitability, a feeling that https://www.moncleroutlet-i.org the trees themselves beg god to forgive humanity, which is destined to mistreat itself, and the moral it conveys is clear: miscegenation in the South was akin to social exile. As a part of Toomer’s creative expression of the South, this story is a striking critique of the injustice of the social norms prevalent in the time he wrote it. and himself. moncler saldi outlet
moncler outlet trebaseleghe Next we have ‘Face’, a poetic meditation on the stoic face and work hardened muscles of a hard working black woman, moncler donna described as having “cluster grapes of sorrow” in her muscles and “brows (like) recurved canoes quivered by the ripples blown by pain.” (8) The poem, briefly, conveys a sense of a long life of labor and hardship, and nothing else. It is a poem of sadness and suffering, pithily poignant. moncler outlet trebaseleghe
Contrasting it is the next poem, ‘Cotton Song’, which reads like more of a song than a poem and conveys an optimistic attitude toward working, claiming “Can’t blame god if we don’t roll,” (9). This piece and ‘Face’ maintain balance between lightness and darkness in “Cane” but add dimensionality, with Toomer imagining a worn out woman and an enthusiastic young man as additional figures in his mythic South. A landscape of hardscrabble farmers and singing cotton balers, rhythm and innocence lost has begun to take shape in the reader’s mind, the kind of landscape where miracles and tragedies can occur.
piumini moncler The next piece, ‘Carma’, describes a woman driven hard by life, driven to masculinity by the hardness of her reality. The story also adds much to the setting with intense stream of consciousness writing: piumini moncler
moncler outlet serravalle “The sun is hammered to a band of gold. Pine needles, like Mazda, are brilliantly aglow. No rain has come to take the rustle from the fallen sweet gum leaves. Over in the forest, across the swamp, a sawmill blows its closing whistle. Smoke curls piumini moncler up. Marvelous web spun by the spider sawdust pile. Her voice is loud. Echoes, like rain, sweep the valley. Dusk takes the polish from the rails.” (10) moncler outlet serravalle
moncler bambino saldi As one piumini moncler uomo can see, Toomer elucidated an incredibly effective setting which permeates moncler outlet serravalle the rest of the book, in the above paragraph. The mythic qualities of the scene are hard to miss; smoke curling up, workers heading home, a song drifting out over the valley a beautiful song sung by a woman who seems poor of property but rich in spirit. The scene is surreally peaceful. Again, this mythical, poetically beautiful setting contrasts starkly with the plot of the story, in which Carma ends up driving her husband crazy, who moncler saldi outlet then knives a man and ends up in the “gang” (11). Another two page story full of sadness and grief, ‘Carma’ adds its weight to the mythos of Toomer’s South, another piece of accumulated hardship for the identity he is building for himself and his race. moncler bambino saldi
Next come two poems, ‘Song of the Son’ and ‘Georgia Dusk’, which speak to a last chance at salvation of the black soul through the “soil” and to the ancient African heritage of the blacks in the South, respectively. These give the reader a social context for the people of Toomer’s stories. With the emergence of hope for identity after slavery, Toomer shows black salvation as “though late, it is not too late yet.”(12) This reflects the changing position of blacks in the South, depicting the hope that was prevalent after slavery was abolished.
piumini moncler saldi Along with this evolving social position came the quest for black identity, which Toomer symbolizes in ‘Georgia Dusk’ as “Race memories of king and caravan, High priests, an ostrich, and a juju man,”(13) piumini moncler saldi.