New Directions

Volume 7 | Issue 4 Article 9

7-1-1980

Book Review: Harlem, Haiti and Havana: AComparative Critical Study of Langston Hughes,Jacques Roumain, and Nicolas GuillenEllen Conroy Kennedy

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Recommended CitationKennedy, Ellen Conroy (1980) "Book Review: Harlem, Haiti and Havana: A Comparative Critical Study of Langston Hughes, JacquesRoumain, and Nicolas Guillen," New Directions: Vol. 7: Iss. 4, Article 9.Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol7/iss4/9

Books

28 Harlem, Haiti and Havana: AComparative Critical Study ofLangston Hughes, JacquesRoumain, and Nicolas GuillenBy Martha CobbThree Continents Press. \\lzshingtoll, D. C.178 pp. $15 (57 paperback!

Reviewed byEllen COillOY Kennedy

A browse through Martha Cobb'swelcome study is likely to send you backto Lanston Hughes' I Wonder As IWander, with its delighful anecdote abouthis first and second meetings with thearistocratic Haitian writer, JacquesRoumain. In 1931,Hughes and a friendhad spent most of the summer in Haitistretching their meager funds by living'close to the "people without shoes."

Feeling too indigent to ocialize with thewealthy, urbane Haitians to whom he hadletters of introduction from Walter WhiteArthur Spingarn and James Weldon 'Johnson, Hughes ignored all but one. Onhis last day in Port-au-Prince, he called ona fellow poet, Jacques Roumain, for anhour of animated conversation.

Boarding a Dutch freighter on which heand his friend were sailing for Cuba thesame afternoon, sweltering in the summerheat, Hughes stripped off coat, tie, goodshirt and pants, changing into an old andnone-too-clean pair of pants.Sock-and-shirtless, he sat down for apicnic meal on the deck As cargo wasswung aboard and into the open hatch

a ••• to my amazement, descendingthose iron stairs to wend their waythrough stevedores and cargo I sawapproaching a long line of elegantlydressed gentlemen, some in tail coatsand gloves, followed by ... darkporters and barefoot boys bearingparcels and baskets .... I recognizedamong them Jacques Roumain. ...He had assembled a group of Haitianwriters and government officials topay me honor at the last momentand to present me with bon voyagegifts .... I was caught greasy-handed,

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half-naked -and soxless =by anofficial delegation of leadingHaitians. »

Unabashed, Roumain introduced Hughesto his companions as "the greatest Negropoet who had ever come to honor Haitiansoil."

Unless one is a specialist, and even then,the most satisfying way to read literarycriticism such as Professor Cobb's worthyventure into pioneer turf, is as aguidebook. Gather the subject texts, likethe inimitable Hughes', and keep themclose at hand-for reference and forrecreation. For Hughes, of course, oneshould look not only into I Wonder As IWander, an autobiography, but also into apaperback edition of his Selected Poemsmade up of his own choices from seven 'earlier collections.

As for the Cuban poet, Nicholas Guillen,one should peruse either The Great Zooand Other Poems (Monthly Review Press)or Man-Making Words: Selected Poems ofNicolas Guillen (University ofMassachusetts Press), both presentedbi-lingually in the original Spanish andwith translations and notes by RobertMarquez.

In the case of Roumain, while there isstill no bi-lingual edition of his poetry, onefinds a few poems in anthologies.(Hughes' haunting 1930s translations of"Guinea" and "When the Tom-TomBeats," first published in The Crisis, areamong several Roumain texts in myanthology, The Negritude Poets. Viking,1975).Recently back in print also is thefine Langston Hughes-Mercer Cooktranslation of Roumain's poignant novelof Haitian rural life, Masters of the Dew,(Collier-Macmillan, 1971).More beautifulmaterial for a film script than Roumain'snovel, by the way, could hardly be asked.

And what wonderful material for atri-lingual poetry reading Martha Cobb'sbook could inspire! Perhaps one, with theauthor herself as moderator, joined by twoor three of the best French, Spanish andEnglish poetry-readers on the Howard

University campus, where Cobb chairsthe Department of Romance Languages.

Martha Cobb deserves applause for herchoice of these three writers, and for herintriguing comparative approach. Thoughshe begins with an introductory sectionsummarizing the history of Black writingin this hemisphere, two-thirds of theconcise study is devoted to an analysis oftexts by each of the trio. They were, ofcourse, contemporaries, all born in thefirst decade of the century Thebiographical material, while of interest, issummary, necessarily drawn fromsecondary sources, and in a study of thissort, properly incidental.

Cobb's focus is literary and esthetic. Shecompares and contrasts the writers andtheir texts, sometimes in tellingjuxtaposition, sometimes with classicalexplication, in the time-honored Frenchacademic manner. She puts Guillen'sverbal rendition of Afro-Cuban musicalforms side by side, for example, with sowell-known an evocation of urban Blackfolk music as Hughes' "The Weary Blues."One readily sees the parallel between twopoets who drew their material from theordinary life and speech about them.

Hughes, Roumain and Guillen - whobecame friends because of theiradmiration for one another's poetry-wrote in three different languages(English, French and Spanish), in variousgenres, but often on similar themes(particularly social themes), andsometimes in similar styles. Africaninterjections, surviving in Afro-Cubanspeech, are prominent in Guillen's earlywork, while Roumain and Hughes tend touse "Africa as a symbolic referent [for] thesentiments and aspirations of Blackpeople," Cobb notes.

For each of the three friends, too, as Cobbobserves, the need to write "wasintimately related to social ideas andideals." Like a number of Black Americanpoets in the 1960s and 70s, JacquesRoumain came to see poetry both as"social statement and as force-for change."

In a 1940 speech, the aristocrat-turned-communist declared: "Art must be aweapon on the front line in the service ofthe people." We will be hearing more ofthis fascinating figure - a manencompassing many contradictions,between wealth and poverty, the finestFrench culture and that of the simplestpeasant, the pursuits of poetry andscholarship as well as of social justice-tragically dead in 1944 at the early age of37.

Roumain's political conversion, in 1932,may well have inspired his mostimportant work, Masters of the Dew,which stands alone, a gem. Ebony Wood,the little sheaf of poems with itstitle-metaphor for the slave trade, is yetuntranslated in its entirety. Ironically,however, its considerable impact inexcerpts is much diminished, thisreviewer feels, when read as a whole,because of passages which depend tooexclusively on litanies of proleterianrhetoric.

Cobb also shows what Faith Berry's GoodMorning Revolution (1973)demonstratedabout Langston Hughes, that the writingsof all three were deeply influenced byradical political ideas during the 1930sand 40s. All three were sympathetic toRepublican Spain during the Civil War,visiting the coutry as war correspondents.And all three wrote poems about this1937 war experience. Hughes alone wasnever a party member, skeptical perhapsafter his Russian experience that anysingle political doctrine could remedy thesocial ills he so well perceived anddepicted. Hughes was also the only one ofthe three to gradually drop ideologicalreferences from his work.

It is interesting to recall Hughes'well-known manifesto of 1926, the onethat begins: /lWeyounger Negro artistswho create now intend to express ourindividual dark-skinned selves withoutfear or shame. If the white folks seempleased, we are glad. If they are not, itdoesn't matter." Among the generationsof Black intellecturals it later influencedwere, of course, the French-speaking LeonDamas, Aime Cesaire and Leopold SedarSenghor. But Martha Cobb's research hasturned up another, less familiar, literarycredo of Hughes. /IIdo not write chieflybecause I'm interested in form - inmaking a sonnet or a rondeau - /I said thepoet in an undated newspaper interview:/IIam not interested in doing tricks withrhymes. I am interested in reproducingthe human soul. ... /I

What is exciting, and occasionally

thrilling, about these three writers is theextent to which, out of the ordinary life ofthe ordinary people of their times inHarlem, in Haiti and in Havana, theywere able to accomplish just that. 0

Ellen Conroy Kennedy is writer, editor andtranslator. Her credits include translation of worksby French. Caribbean and African writers, amongthem, Albert Camus, Leon Damas and Cbeik]:Anta Diop.

1b BE or Not 1b BOPMemoirs-Dizzy GillespieWith Al FraserDoubleday & Co., New York552 pp., $14.95

Reviewed by Gregory S. Kearse

Dizzy Gillespie is innovative. He lovesand lives music. He can play. Bebop.Bebop. Like the crazy blue notes createdby "Bird's" brain/lips/ax. Like a summerwith a thousand Julys, Dizzy goes to yourhead. His legendary up-bent horn. Bebop.Bebop. Play, man.

To conclude that Dizzy Gillespie is amusician is sort of like deciding thatJulius "Dr, J" Erving is a basketball star.Or like saying that the late Bruce Lee wasa karate expert. These men transcendedthe norm. Each moved beyond the worldof what was normal and delved into theuncharted, risky realm of the theoreticalto create something new and dynamic.

In the case of "Dr. L/Ibasketball becamethe poetic expression of the spectaculardunk shot. In the case of Bruce Lee, thebody became the cosmic connectionbetween the soul and the spirit.

With Dizzy, well ... it became what isnow called bebop. The year was 1942 andhe was paying solo trumpet in Earl"Fatha" Hines' band. He was only 25.

Oddly, one does not really get to knowDizzy Gillespie in these memoirs, notinitmately. There are simply too manyunexplored areas. For example, what wasDizzy's principle psychological/motivational reaction to a mercilessfather who would routinely whip thechildren "just in case we thought of doingsomething bad,"?

The only expanation Dizzy offers hisreaders for his father'S travesties is thathis father "wanted us all to be tough."Later Dizzy claims to have loved (andundoubtedly feared) his father and hischildhood.

Dizzy never had children of his own. And

the only explanation offered in the bookis one by his wife Lorraine (one of themore colorful of this all-star entourage),who simply states: /IIdon't regret [not]having any kids. See, that's why peopledon't understand me. I feel like if Godwanted me to have children, I woulda hadplenty of them." Interesting ontologicalrambling, even humorously ironic, yethardly the intimacy one should expect.

Even with the help of AI Fraser, a fairlywell-regarded musicologist and teacher atCheyney State College in Pennsylvania,one is none the wiser. And Fraser'soff-the-cuff conversation and pretentiouslypenetrating questions, althoughwell-intended, hardly enlighten the reader.

In Memoirs, one gets the notes but notthe subtlest nuances. One hears themusic, but it frequently comes off dulland contrived, as if Dizzy responded toscads of form questions and built his life.around the answers.

29

The redeeming quality of this work,however, is that it is strangely saved bythe many purple passages of Dizzy'sremembrances and broodings about thefantastic people he had known, admiredand worked with.

Credit must be given to Fraser, despite hispesky omnipresence, for overcoming anobviously Herculean task of editing thehundreds of hours of taped interviewswith the greatest names in jazz, fromDicky Wells to Charlie Parker to SarahVaughan to Roy Eldridge and a host oflesser luminaries. The result i anunpolished, yet often exciting oral historyof not only John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie,but an important chronicle of jazz music'smost dramatic evolutionary period. Thebook is rich with illustrations.

The great Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza,whom Dizzy met at the Savoy in ewYork in 1937, says that there were twomovements (as far as trumpet goes) inAmerican music in the last 50 years. Onewas Louis Armstrong and the other wasDizzy Gillespie. Bandleader V\bodyHerman is quoted as saying, "Diz to mewas the beginning of an era. And Pops(Louis Armstrong) was the beginning ofan era. And during that span from Pops,everyone else in-between is not terriblyimportant."

Those accolades must be placed intoperspective, at least within the context inwhich Dizzy developed.

Certainly, by the middle to late 1930sjazz, as a legitimate music form, hadsolidified. White bands began picking up

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