They dream of the West Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast,
constructing images of flaming sunsets, palm trees, colorful
marketplaces, and listening carefully for the distant beat
of the obea drum. Through this dream runs the sparkling Nile
and the triangles of Pharoah’s tomb cut high into the sky
while elephants and jaguars move through tall grasses. This
is the Africa of Langston Hughes, and, in that tradition,
it is also the Africa of Maya Angelou.
And Faulkner told us long ago in Light in August: “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes
longer than recollects, longer than knowing wonders." In these
words, we see the diacritical difference, the polarity, between
memory and knowing. The project of both Hughes and Angelou
is to collapse this polarity, converging memories of slavery
with the knowledge of African ancestry thus empowering the
African American by reaching back to slavery but transcending
that memory by reaching back again, even further, to the knowledge
of descent from a great land. Once knowing exists (the conscious
mind), it can eventually move into memory (the unconscious
mind). Again and again in their poetry, Hughes and Angelou
construct romantic images of the land of their heritage; Angelou
continues this thematic safari begun by Hughes during the
Harlem Renaissance even after asking the question in “Reverses,"
“How often must we/ butt to head/ Mind to ass/ flank to nuts/
co-- to elbow/ hip to toe/ soul to shoulder/ confront ourselves/
in our past"? We surmise her answer is “forever" as she continues
to construct a positive identity, a positive past for African Americans.
For Hughes and Angelou, the wounds of slavery and civil rights
violations were and are fresh. In “October 16," Hughes writes,
“Perhaps/ You will remember/ John Brown./ John Brown/ Who
took his gun,/ Took twenty-one companions/ White and Black,/
Went to shoot your way to freedom/ Where two rivers meet/
And the hills of the/ North/ And the hills of the/ South/
Look slow at one another - / And died/ For your sake./ Now
that you are/ Many years free,/ And the echo of the Civil
War/ Has passed away,/ And Brown himself/ Has long been tried
by law,/ Hanged by the neck,/ And buried in the ground - /
Since Harpers Ferry/ Is alive with ghosts today,/ Immortal
raiders/ Come again to town - / Perhaps/ you will recall John
Brown."
Thirty-six years later, Angelou wrote “My Guilt," “My guilt
is ‘slavery’s chains,’ too long/ the clang of iron falls down
the years./This brother’s sold. This sister’s gone/ is bitter
wax, lining my ears./ My guilt made music with the tears./
My crime is ‘heroes, dead and gone’/ dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,/
dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King./ They fought too hard,
they loved too well./ My crime is I’m alive to tell./ My sin
is ‘hanging from a tree’/ I do not scream, it makes me proud./
I take to dying like a man./ I do it to impress the crowd./
My sin lies in not screaming loud."
The affinities between these two works are obvious. Hughes
chooses a historical moment. Using repetition for emphasis,
he asks twice “perhaps you will remember John Brown." Again
he uses repetition in the middle of the second stanza, “and
the hills of the North and the hills of the South." Metonymically,
the comparable geography represents the people of both the
North and South and the “common ground" they have. This reading
is rendered even more legitimate in the next line as the hills
are personified and “look slow at one another." In the second
stanza, he reminds the reader that Brown “went to shoot your
way to freedom." Guilt is introduced. Brown died for “you."
Do “you" even remember him? Again, at the end of this stanza,
he reminds the reader that Brown “died for your sake." In
the third stanza, Hughes states that although “the echo of
the Civil War has passed away," war crimes are still being
committed. Brown “has long been tried at law [note the ironic
use of this word ‘law’] hanged by the neck and buried," because
of this, Harpers Ferry (and the Civil War for that matter)
“is alive with ghosts today," alive with haunting memories.
Angelou also writes of historical moments. More general,
she envisions a slave auction in the first stanza and a hanging
in the last. In the second stanza, she lists dead heroes of
civil rights, “dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,/ dead Malcolm,
Marcus, Martin King." She too uses repetition for emphasis.
For example, the first and last lines of each stanza begin
the same way: my guilt - my crime - my sin. For Angelou, the guilt
is more explicit than in Hughes’ work. Tautologically, her
very title is “my guilt." She then defines this guilt in her
poem, “My crime is I’m alive to tell." “My sin lies in not
screaming loud." Like Hughes, who is reminding Americans,
and specifically African Americans, of their “debt," so too
Angelou expresses this note of obligation. They say, “We are
alive or we did not scream loud enough which means we did
not fight as hard for freedom as others." This culpability
is persistent, and guilt linked with the memory of not only
slavery but also of the atrocities that have followed that
injustice is an overwhelmingly painful onus to carry in the
memory. Thus both poets battle memory with knowledge.
In the “African Dance," Hughes writes, “The low beating of
the tom-toms,/ The slow beating of the tom-toms,/ Low…slow/
Slow…low - / Stirs your blood./ Dance!/ A night-veiled girl/
Whirls softly into a/ Circle of light./ Whirls softly…slowly,/
Like a wisp of smoke around the fire - / And the tom-toms beat,/
And the tom-toms beat,/ And the low beating of the tom-toms/
Stirs your blood."
A vivid description of an African dance, this poem imitates
in its meter the rhythm of the beating drum that drives the
dancer. Using a variation of the anapest dimeter (punctuating
the end of the line with a spondee), Hughes literally pounds
out a drum beat in the first two lines, “The low beating of
the tom-toms, the slow beating of the tom-toms," varying the
rhythm just like a musician, “low…slow/ slow..low/ stirs your
blood/ dance!"
The connotative value of the second stanza is crucial, “A
night-veiled girl whirls softly into a circle of light. Whirls
softly…slowly, like a wisp of smoke around the fire." These
words bring to mind beauty and glamour, celebrating African
culture and Africa. The soft alliteration of “s" and “w" further
underscores the soft, sensuous nature of this vision. There
is no savage here, no coffered slave, but a girl veiled by
the night spinning and whirling in the light of a fire. The
finesse of the dancer is affirmed with the simile “like a
wisp of smoke." As a wisp of smoke whirls around the campfire
so does the girl dance. The double intent that augments the
poem is that this same scene could be played out in any jazz
club in Harlem. Perhaps the instruments would change, add a trumpet and the
upright bass and a piano; replace the fire with a snoldering
ashtray. Still we have the wisps of smoke and the whirling
dancer. Returning the scene to Africa, we see Hughes adds
knowledge to African-American history thus altering memory
through the temporal leap beyond slavery to a proud past.
In “For Us, Who Dare Not Dare," Angelou too writes of Africa.
Whereas Hughes uses the trope of the beating drum, Angelou
uses personification. Both poets, however, employ objects
that are native to Africa and elude white control: the beating
drum of an African musician and the talking images of an African
landscape. Angelou muses, “Be me a Pharaoh/ Build me high
pyramids of stone and question/ See me the Nile/ at twilight/
and jaguars moving to/ the slow cool draught./ Swim me Congo/
Hear me the tails of alligators/ flapping waves that reach/
a yester shore./ Swing me vines, beyond the Bao-Bab tree,/
and talk me chief. Sing me birds/ flesh color lightening through
bright green leaves./ Taste me fruit/ its juice free falling
from/ a mother tree./ Know me/ Africa."
The pharaoh commands, “Be me": the pyramid requests, “Build
me"; the Nile and the Congo say, “See me and swim me"; the
tails of alligators demand, “Heart me"; the vine urges, “Swing
me"; the birds, “Sing me"; the fruit, “Taste me"; and Africa
enjoins the reader to, “Know me." Using the verbs be, build,
see swim, hear, swing, sing, taste and know, Angelou, through
the trope of the speaking continent, submerges the reader
in action. The reader physically experiences Africa. But Angelou
does not stop there, she submerges the reader sensually as
well. The Nile sparkles in twilight as jaguars move stealthily
in the night breeze. Vines dangle from Bao-Bab trees while
birds dart between branches in a flash of color. Alligator
tails strike the water causing little waves to reach “a yester
shore." Angelou looks at the past and creates a kind of Eden. We can
almost hear a tribal drum’s rhythm in her use of repetition,
“be me, build me, see me."
To use film analysis parlance, both Hughes and Angelou have
“framed out" anything beyond the romantic, alluring Africa.
Not only does their imagery contain connotative value it contains
political resonance. For these two poets, the construction
of an identity that supplements the memory of slavery and
civil injustice with the knowledge of roots in an enchanted
fairyland assuages some of the pain and guilt and humiliation.
By converging memory and knowledge, the African-American begins
the transformation from slave to noble hero or heroine in
history.
In One Way Ticket,
Hughes includes “Negro Servant." In his yearning for escapism
from “the faces that are white," the narrator uses apostrophe
to call on the inanimate symbols of Africa. Whereas Angelou’s
Africa spoke to the reader, Hughes’ narrator speaks to Africa,
“O, tribal dance!/ O, drums!/ O veldt at night!" He yearns
for the beat of the drums that impel the song and the tribal
dance around a fire in the veldt, open grassland in South
Africa. Since this is impossible, the narrator settles instead
for a replication of the scene in a jazz club in Harlem. Tired
after work, he takes a bus, the subway, or (on payday nights)
a taxi to hear the “drums of life in Harlem after dark!" Again
the narrator escapes from “faces that are white!" We wonder
what happened after the white faces began invading Harlem
for their entertainment. Perhaps that eliminated Harlem as
a place for escape reverting escape back to Africa again.
Not every image of Africa is perfect. The very existence
of African Americans affirms the “rape" of Africa. In Maya
Angelou’s personification in “Africa," a doubling unfolds.
Once Africa, after molestation, “is striding," so are her
children - Africans, African Americans. If this is indeed accomplished,
then the convergence of memory and knowledge is complete.
The first stanza enacts
the personification. Africa is “sugar cane sweet" (a southern
metaphor) with deserts for hair, golden feet, mountains for
breasts and two Niles for her tears. The second stanza recounts
the rape of the land by colonial powers. Brigands, or bandits,
come through frost and icicles bringing missionaries and guns
while taking the “young daughters" and “strong sons." The
restoration begins in the third stanza when Africa rises after
having remembered her pain and losses. Through synedochal
slippage, Africa is also the African (American). When Africa
rises after she “knows" her history, so does the African American
who knows his or her history. Taking the first and last lines
of the last stanza, “Now she is rising…although she had lain,"
we watch Africa rise and, with her, the entire African-American
nation.
Optimistically, Hughes writes “Dusk," In this poem, the “dusk"
and the “wall" symbolically represent that which obstructs
vision and movement; obstructions block learning, knowledge.
Only when the walls fall and the dusk turns to dawn, in the
third stanza, can the “chains be gone!" Only when the white
obstruction of knowledge falls away can the African-American
construct his or her own history, knowledge, and then memory.
In the “Final Curve," Hughes tells us, “When you turn into
the corner/ And you run into yourself/ Then you know that
you have turned/ All the corners that are left."
Wandering in the dusk of the African sunset, Hughes and Angelou
create poems. At the same time, they create a new African-American
identity, a proud sense of self. It is no accident that Hughes’
autobiography, The Big Sea,
begins with Hughes on a ship on his way to Africa. Standing
on the deck of the S. S. Malone, he throws his books over
the rails and with them the knowledge of the dominant white
American culture, the knowledge of a white university, Columbia.
He will seek his own knowledge, his own history and write
it for African Americans, and Maya Angelou follows in this
tradition. Toni Morrison, when asked why she began to write,
replied that she wrote because she had never seen her story,
her life, her history represented in American novels. For
these authors, know must not stop wondering, know must not
stop (re)collecting, know must not stop learning. Know must
work until it becomes memory because memory believes.
March 2003
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