1) 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. As in Whitman's philosophy, only the
knowledge of death can bring the primal spark of poetry and life. Here Langston
Hughes became "the outsetting bard," in Whitman's phrase, the poet who sings of
life because at last he has known death. Balanced between the knowledge of love
and of death, the poetic will gathers force. From the depths of grief the poet
sweeps back to life by clinging to his greatest faith, which is in his people
and his sense of kinship with them. His frail, intimidated self, as well as the
image of his father, are liquidated. A man-child is born, soft-spoken, almost
casual, yet noble and proud, and black as Africa. The muddy river is his race,
the primal source out of which he is born anew; on that "muddy bosom" of the
race as black mother, or grandmother, he rests secure forever. The angle of the
sun on the muddy water is like the angle of a poet's vision, which turns mud
into gold. The diction of the poem is simple and unaffected either by dialect or
rhetorical excess; its eloquence is like that of the best of the black
spirituals.
From Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1. Oxford
University Press, 1988. Copyright © by Arnold Rampersad. Written by Arnold Rapmersad
2) "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is perhaps the most profound of these poems of
heritage and strength. Composed when Hughes was a mere 17 years old, and
dedicated to W. E. B. DuBois, it is a sonorous evocation of transcendent
essences so ancient as to appear timeless, predating human existence, longer
than human memory. The rivers are part of God's body, and participate in his
immortality. They are the earthly analogues of eternity: deep, continuous,
mysterious. They are named in the order of their association with black history.
The black man has drunk of their life-giving essences, and thereby borrowed
their immortality. He and the rivers have become one. The magical transformation
of the Mississippi from mud to gold by the sun's radiance is mirrored in the
transformation of slaves into free men by Lincoln's Proclamation (and, in
Hughes's poems, the transformation of shabby cabarets into gorgeous palaces,
dancing girls into queens and priestesses by the spell of black music). As the
rivers deepen with time, so does the black man's soul; as their waters
ceaselessly flow, so will the black soul endure. The black man has seen the rise
and fall of civilizations from the earliest times, seen the beauty and
death-changes of the world over the thousands of years, and will survive even
this America. The poem's meaning is related to Zora Neale Hurston's judgment of
the mythic High John de Conquer, whom she held as a symbol of the triumphant
spirit of black America: that John was of the "Be" class. "Be here when
the ruthless man comes, and be here when he is gone." In a time and place where
black life is held cheap and the days of black men appear to be numbered, the
poem is a majestic reminder of the strength and fullness of history, of the
source of that life which transcends even ceaseless labor and burning
crosses.
From Langston Hughes: An Introduction to The Poetry. Copyright © 1976
by Columbia University Press. Written by Onwuchekwa Jemie
3) Hughes had come to Whitman by way of such Midwestern rebels as Carl Sandburg
prior to the twenties. His was the democratic "transnational," socialist,
"comradely" Whitman pushed by Horace Traubel and the Masses circle (as
opposed to the Whitman of "cosmic consciousness" Toomer responded to).
Nonetheless, he early sensed the affinity between the inclusive "I" of Whitman
and the "I" of the spirituals, whose fusion shaped one of his first published
poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" . . . .
Readers rarely notice that if the soul of the Negro in this poem goes back to
the Euphrates, it goes back to a pre-"racial" dawn and a geography far from
Africa that is identified with neither blackness nor whiteness--a geography at
the time of Hughes's writing considered the cradle of all the world's
civilizations and possibly the location of the Garden of Eden. Thus, even in
this poem about the depth of the Negro's soul Hughes avoids racial essentialism
while nonetheless stressing the existential, racialized conditions of black and
modern identity.
From The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Copyright © 1995 by the
President and Board of Fellows of Harvard College. Written by George Hutchinson
soul, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is suffused with the image of death and,
simultaneously, the idea of deathlessness. As in Whitman's philosophy, only the
knowledge of death can bring the primal spark of poetry and life. Here Langston
Hughes became "the outsetting bard," in Whitman's phrase, the poet who sings of
life because at last he has known death. Balanced between the knowledge of love
and of death, the poetic will gathers force. From the depths of grief the poet
sweeps back to life by clinging to his greatest faith, which is in his people
and his sense of kinship with them. His frail, intimidated self, as well as the
image of his father, are liquidated. A man-child is born, soft-spoken, almost
casual, yet noble and proud, and black as Africa. The muddy river is his race,
the primal source out of which he is born anew; on that "muddy bosom" of the
race as black mother, or grandmother, he rests secure forever. The angle of the
sun on the muddy water is like the angle of a poet's vision, which turns mud
into gold. The diction of the poem is simple and unaffected either by dialect or
rhetorical excess; its eloquence is like that of the best of the black
spirituals.
From Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1. Oxford
University Press, 1988. Copyright © by Arnold Rampersad. Written by Arnold Rapmersad
2) "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is perhaps the most profound of these poems of
heritage and strength. Composed when Hughes was a mere 17 years old, and
dedicated to W. E. B. DuBois, it is a sonorous evocation of transcendent
essences so ancient as to appear timeless, predating human existence, longer
than human memory. The rivers are part of God's body, and participate in his
immortality. They are the earthly analogues of eternity: deep, continuous,
mysterious. They are named in the order of their association with black history.
The black man has drunk of their life-giving essences, and thereby borrowed
their immortality. He and the rivers have become one. The magical transformation
of the Mississippi from mud to gold by the sun's radiance is mirrored in the
transformation of slaves into free men by Lincoln's Proclamation (and, in
Hughes's poems, the transformation of shabby cabarets into gorgeous palaces,
dancing girls into queens and priestesses by the spell of black music). As the
rivers deepen with time, so does the black man's soul; as their waters
ceaselessly flow, so will the black soul endure. The black man has seen the rise
and fall of civilizations from the earliest times, seen the beauty and
death-changes of the world over the thousands of years, and will survive even
this America. The poem's meaning is related to Zora Neale Hurston's judgment of
the mythic High John de Conquer, whom she held as a symbol of the triumphant
spirit of black America: that John was of the "Be" class. "Be here when
the ruthless man comes, and be here when he is gone." In a time and place where
black life is held cheap and the days of black men appear to be numbered, the
poem is a majestic reminder of the strength and fullness of history, of the
source of that life which transcends even ceaseless labor and burning
crosses.
From Langston Hughes: An Introduction to The Poetry. Copyright © 1976
by Columbia University Press. Written by Onwuchekwa Jemie
3) Hughes had come to Whitman by way of such Midwestern rebels as Carl Sandburg
prior to the twenties. His was the democratic "transnational," socialist,
"comradely" Whitman pushed by Horace Traubel and the Masses circle (as
opposed to the Whitman of "cosmic consciousness" Toomer responded to).
Nonetheless, he early sensed the affinity between the inclusive "I" of Whitman
and the "I" of the spirituals, whose fusion shaped one of his first published
poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" . . . .
Readers rarely notice that if the soul of the Negro in this poem goes back to
the Euphrates, it goes back to a pre-"racial" dawn and a geography far from
Africa that is identified with neither blackness nor whiteness--a geography at
the time of Hughes's writing considered the cradle of all the world's
civilizations and possibly the location of the Garden of Eden. Thus, even in
this poem about the depth of the Negro's soul Hughes avoids racial essentialism
while nonetheless stressing the existential, racialized conditions of black and
modern identity.
From The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Copyright © 1995 by the
President and Board of Fellows of Harvard College. Written by George Hutchinson