The course of life of the outstanding American poet, writer, historian, and publicist Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was hard and difficult. He was born in a mixed-race family carrying African American, European American, and Native American roots. Langston Hughes had to work since his childhood applying for different jobs. He was a driver, a sailor on a steamship, a cook, an attendant, a doorkeeper in a night tavern in Montmartre, and a kitchen worker in a restaurant. Hughes attended Columbia University in New York, but due to the lack of money, he could not graduate. Only in 1929, he managed to finish his B.A. degree from Lincoln University in Philadelphia. By that time he was already a known poet.
All this uneasy mosaic of the life of Langston Hughes, combined with the historical events of that time, specifically concerned with the life of the black population in America, found its reflection in his different works. This paper analyzes the life and the poetry of Langston Hughes in terms of the ways his works were affected by different historical periods and the social attitudes of that time.
Assessing the works of Langston Hughes, it could be said that his popularity reached its peak in the twenties of the last century where “between 1926-1930Hughes’s literary activities were intimately connected with the social-cultural phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement.” (Dickinson, 1967, p. 32)
The development of the Harlem Renaissance has led to the recognition of a considerable influence of the Negro culture on American culture. America for the first time saw not the humiliating stereotype of black people, which was spread for decades in the American culture, but a new image – educated, highly cultured member of rather decent society. Harlem Renaissance became the first step to such recognition.
In the literature, Harlem Renaissance has received a diverse embodiment – from Zora Neale Hurston with her book “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) to the topic of this paper, Langston Hughes, with poems such as «I, Too» in which the author designates his place in America.
I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes, but I laugh, and eat well,
And grow strong. Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table when the company comes.
Nobody’ll dare Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,” Then.
Besides, they’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-I, too, am America. (Hughes, 2009)
In addition to the decade of the twenties—one into which his innovative poetry of blues and jazz emerged—the thirties provided him with lasting insight into the class inequities of the United States. (Miller, 2004, p. 24) If the twenties could be described as dominated by romantic and amusing personal themes, the thirties were concentrated on economic problems. In the same manner if in the twenties Hughes’ works were mainly poems, in the thirties he wrote mainly prose. Describing Hughes’ style of protest in that decade, in regards to the trial of Scottsboro boys, “Hughes’s pamphlet questioned the whole system of southern law, the handling of the boys, and the morality of the girls. One poem, “Justice” is in the best tradition of the protest literature of the 1930s:
Justice is a blind goddess
To this we blacks are wise
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes. (Dickinson, 1967, p. 64)
Although Hughes already matured as an author in the twenties writing about the position of the black man in the American society, the work of that time was more distinguished with the conflict with society unlike his later work, where “Hughes’ work since 1940 has concentrated on lighter themes and life within the Negro group, not on conflict with outside groups.” (Dickinson, 1967, p. 81) Exemplary of the post-war works, “Shakespeare in Harlem” is especially characteristic, where it was filled with jazz rhythm and light mood.
This can be described as another point of influence that can be named after the music in general and the blues culture in particular. “The music known as the blues was expanded and exercised to a remarkable breadth of diversity for its humble form, as evidenced by the dissimilar styles of the fellow Mississippi blues performers House and James and by the stylistic differences between their music and that of Atlanta’s Barbecue Bob, the cabaret singer Viola Wells, and Peetie Wheatstraw, of St. Louis.”
(Tracy, 2004, p. 86) In that expansion, it could be seen that the majority of Hughes’ poems in his first book “The Weary Blues” and the subsequent – “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” The Dream Keeper”,” Shakespeare in Harlem”, “Fields of Wonder”, “One-way ticket”, and “The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times” were all written in the form of blues.
Blues, as well as spirituals, was a traditional black song form, but more compact and having a more accurate structure. Besides, blues, unlike the spirituals, were not related to church music. Blues frequently run through Hughes’s recent poetry but the subjects are lighter in mood than those in his early blues. A poem like “Early Evening Quarrel” is typical of Hughes’s post-war production.
Where is that sugar, Hammond,
Did I send you this morning to buy?
I say, where is that sugar
Did I send you this morning to buy?
Coffee without sugar
Makes a good woman cry. (Dickinson, 1967, p. 82)
In the works of the forties and the fifties, a special place is occupied by books about his major literary figure, Jessie B. Semple – the carrier of folk common sense which is wittily and critically made comments on various aspects of American life. In writing about Semple, Hughes’s inspiration as in his recent late years came from Harlem. Living that period in New York, his poems were reflected from the street life in which he stayed close to his favorite people “the urban Negroes”. “No one can match Hughes’s ability to transcribe the speech and emotions of the average Harlemite.” (Dickinson, 1967, p. 82)
Although slavery in America was officially abolished in 1863, the struggle for racial equality and the cancellation of segregation laws continued in America for another century. As it is possible to see from the numerous collections and works of Langston Hughes, the theme of inequality, oppression, and humiliation remained one of the central themes in American black poetry. Nevertheless, throughout his life, the tone of such works varied substantially. Despite the variations, such as the humor, the style, and the forms of the poems, that might have influenced the works of Hughes throughout the decades, American poetry would not have been the same without the influence of Langston Hughes whose works distinguished by synthesis of pleasure and grief, sarcasm and optimism.
References
Dickinson, D. C. (1967). A Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes, 1902-1967. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books.
Hughes, L. (2009). Web.
Miller, R. B. (2004). Langston Hughes, 1902–1967 A Brief Biography. In A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes, Tracy, S. C. (Ed.) (pp. 23-61). New York: Oxford University Press.