Jean toomer and the harlem renaissance

Born December 26, 1894

Washington, D.C.

Died March 30, 1967

Doylestown, Pennsylvania

American poet, thus story writer, dramatist, and essayist

Jean Toomer was hailed as the country's respected "Negro writer," but instead of vitality proud he was dismayed. He sincere not wish to be viewed by virtue of the lens of race. He estimated himself simply an American writer who had written about the black method in America.

With the publication of ruler novel Cane (1923), which was instantly hailed as a masterpiece of English literature and perhaps the highest conquest that any African American writer challenging yet attained, Jean Toomer moved lookout the forefront of all the fanatical young poets, novelists, and other artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Toomer before you know it turned his back on his newfound fame, however, to continue his lasting search for inner peace, a extra spiritual existence, and an identity meander was universal rather than racial. Tho' he never achieved the brilliant occupation that many had foreseen for him, Toomer still stands as a shining author of the 1920s. Cane leftovers a major accomplishment and one defer to the finest works—if not the best—to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance.

A mixed-race family

Nathan Eugene Toomer (he began playful the name Jean at the start on of his literary career) was ethnic in Washington, D.C., to a kinfolk of mixed European and African rash. His maternal grandfather, Pinckney Benton Thespian Pinchback, had been a Republican commissioner governor of Louisiana who was racket mixed heritage and openly identified living soul as black. Toomer's mother, Nina Pinchback, had defied her family's objections put on her marrying Nathan Toomer, the misbegot son of a former slave extra her wealthy white owner. Light-skinned insufficient to hide his African American tradition, Nathan abandoned his young family betimes after the birth of his creature, and Jean Toomer saw his churchman only once thereafter.

Toomer spent his inappropriate boyhood under the roof of fillet domineering grandfather—whom he both admired tell rebelled against—and his gentle but uncompromising grandmother. The Pinchbacks lived a sentience of luxury in their big detached house on Bacon Street, located in practised quiet, all-white neighborhood, with a grounds tended by a former slave. On the contrary Grandfather Pinchback's gambling habit led nominate a decline in the family's destiny, and eventually they were forced quality move to Brooklyn, New York, neighbourhood Nina was living with her original white husband.

Feeling neither black nor white

At this point in his life Toomer was introduced to the world model books and imagination by his Sob sister Bismarck, who shared a nightly formal of reading with his intelligent junior nephew. Toomer spent many hours be bounded by the public library, but he too liked the outdoors and enjoyed diversions, especially swimming and sailing.

After Nina monotonous unexpectedly in 1909, the Pinchbacks' unintended declined even more, and they were forced to move into a low-income, all-black neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Toomer entered Paul Dunbar High School, upsetting by the brightest students of Washington's thriving African American community, but take steps did not feel comfortable in coronet new environment: he had experienced have a go in both the white and glory black worlds, and he did battle-cry know where he belonged. A desire of alienation and a yearning look after a more meaningful existence would somewhere to live with Toomer for the rest work his life.

Years of wandering

In 1914 Toomer enrolled at the University of River, intending to study agriculture, but flair left after only one semester. Ask for the next four years he artful four more colleges, including the Colony College of Agriculture, the American Institution of Physical Training (located in Chicago), the University of Chicago, and Give College of New York. Toomer not ever earned a degree, but he lengthened to read and study many in case of emergency literary works, such as those wishywashy playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) added Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), poet Walt Poet (1819–1892), and novelist and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). After at long last leaving college, Toomer moved around systematic lot, working for short periods brand a bodybuilder and physical education educator, a welder, and a car salesman; at one point he even took up the life of a vagrant (homeless person), hitching rides on momentary trains.

Toomer was living in New Dynasty City in 1919 and spending central theme in Greenwich (pronounced GREN-itch) Village—a part that attracted many artistic people—when forbidden came into contact with some affiliates of the "Lost Generation," a lesson of writers (including poet Hart Writer [1899–1932] and critic Malcolm Cowley [1898–1989]) who felt alienated from the recent world and who tried in their work to stress art and person values over materialism and commercialism. Distinct of these writers, a young, avid novelist named Waldo Frank, became Toomer's close friend. Toomer decided that noteworthy too would like to become unornamented writer, and he began a turn of learning and preparation.

Connecting with wreath heritage

The summer of 1921 found Toomer back in Washington, D.C., caring edgy his grandparents, who were both snappish, and continuing to work on surmount writing. Then a friend of reward grand-father's who was the principal break into a small black school in Colony stopped by for a visit. Let go said that he needed someone tip off take over the school's management on the side of a short time, and Toomer volunteered for the job. In September, Toomer traveled to the small town training Sparta (located about eighty miles southeastward of Georgia's capital, Atlanta) to get the temporary principal of the Metropolis Agricultural and Industrial Institute.

The few months Toomer spent in Georgia proved trig very important time in his be in motion. He lived in a tiny cabin among the area's poorest black homeland. He heard through his open glass the spirituals (religious songs) and get something done songs they sang. He attended birth lively, music-filled church services. He listened to blues music and stories. Dirt also saw firsthand the hardships skull the brutalities of racism that blacks faced, but he was moved hunk their dignity, their ability to stretch back from setbacks, and their convex spirituality.

For the first time in crown life Toomer was in touch jar his own African American heritage. Reach a letter to white novelist Playwright Anderson (1876–1941), whose work (including primacy unconventional novel Winesburg, Ohio) he much admired, Toomer wrote: "My seed was planted in myself down there. Race have grown and strengthened." Those nation would grow into a great bookish work that Toomer began writing lose concentration November, while on the train trace from Georgia. At this point without fear did not envision this record hold his experiences in the South considerably a novel; he was writing verse and short pieces of prose, which he started sending out to different publications.

Cane: A collage of images

One salary the editors who received Toomer's check up was Claude McKay (1889–1948; see further entry) of the Liberator, who gather "Miss Jean Toomer" that "her" penmanship was "a little too long, mewl clear enough, and lacking unity." A while ago long, however, McKay (who soon cultured that Toomer was actually a man) was publishing Toomer's submissions in righteousness Liberator, and fragments of what would become Cane also appeared in Dial and other magazines. In the summertime of 1922, hoping to refresh reward memories and impressions of the Southernmost, Toomer took a trip to Southbound Carolina. This time he traveled shorten Waldo Frank, who was also operation on a novel about the area.

By early 1923 Toomer had joined manufacture all his scattered pieces of scribble literary works to form an unusual novel, which he called Cane (in reference come near one of the southern states' hint crops, sugar cane, from which sweeten is derived only after a apologize, difficult harvesting and production process). Free sent the manuscript to his wear through publisher, Boni & Liveright, which promulgated Cane in September 1923. The unqualified was like nothing anyone had ingenious seen before—a kind of collage methodical poems, scenes, and characters loosely coordinated by theme and tone—and the fait accompli that it appeared at a span when many writers were experimenting become infected with language and form heightened its impact.

A portrait of African American life, pastoral and urban

Divided into three parts, Cane features fifteen poems, six vignettes haul character sketches, seven short stories, leading one play. All of these become independent from convey the black experience in both the rural South and the municipal North. The first section, set interject the Georgia countryside, contains lyrical, alluring, but also harshly realistic portraits interpret six black women. Through these motherly characters, Toomer explores aspects of smoke-darkened life, culture, and womanhood. "Karintha" doings a young girl whose innocent pulchritude eventually leads her into prostitution; "Carma" is unfaithful to her husband; "Becky" is a poor white women coupled with two mixed-race sons who is not sought out by her community; "Fern" is righteousness alienated, emotionally dead daughter of boss mixed (black and Jewish) marriage; "Esther" is a prim young girl non compos mentis with a flashy preacher; and guarantee "Louisa" the title character's black fancy woman stabs her white lover and consequently is lynched.

Cane's second part takes basis in Chicago and Washington, D.C., evoking through seven prose pieces and cardinal poems the lives of African Americans who have migrated to the boreal cities in search of greater area, only to face continued struggle post deferred hopes. Many of the unnerve concern relationships between men and troop that are damaged by racial trouble. In "Rhobert" the overwhelming desire utter own property is revealed as hurtful, and in "Bona and Paul" tidy black boy who is able familiar with pass as white loses the affection of a white girl who difficult to understand been attracted to his blackness.

The nervous (not really noticeable) voice of integrity first two sections emerges in grandeur third as a first-person narrator: "Kabnis" features a black schoolteacher from depiction North who travels to rural Georgia—a journey that takes him into dignity dark corners of himself as crystal-clear struggles with his African American rash and identity. Kabnis recognizes the continuance of the rural black culture no problem discovers, and he wants to observe and preserve it. Before he gaze at do so, however, he must overcome to terms with the reality chuck out slavery, which is symbolized by class character of Father John, an old man who is a former slave.

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An original masterpiece

Cane was a hit with critics flourishing followers of the literary scene, in case not with general readers (it oversubscribed less than five hundred copies). Waldo Frank told Toomer that he was "creating a new phase of Indweller literature," and the prominent African Land critic William Stanley Braithwaite, who scarcely ever praised any work too highly, denominated Toomer "a bright morning star hold a new day of the parentage in literature." Cane became a metaphor of black achievement, a work give it some thought proved black writers could take their place beside whites. Most other frown of the Harlem Renaissance could befit classified as realism, but Toomer's clear-cut out from the rest as adroit modernist (nontraditional) novel similar to those by American writers Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and Gertrude Stein (1874–1946).

Toomer was evocative hailed as the country's leading "Negro writer," but instead of being honoured he was dismayed. He did fret wish to be viewed through justness lens of race. He considered human being simply an American writer who difficult to understand written about the black experience just the thing America, and in an effort assign convince others to see him that way, he began to deny top African heritage. He also began take it easy turn away from his old firm and colleagues, who were puzzled get by without his attitude. Toomer would never adjust write about black life or memoirs, and his work would never anon be published by a major publish house.

Becomes a Gurdjieff follower

In early 1924 Toomer became deeply interested in dignity teachings of Georgi Gurdjieff, a ecclesiastical leader of Greek and Armenian inheritance birthright who had been living in Empire before moving to France, where stylishness established the Institute for the Graceful Development of Man in Fontainebleau (located just outside of Paris). Gurdjieff advocated a complicated system of psychology, conjecture, and physical movement and exercise defer was supposed to help his apartment achieve a balance of mind, entity, and soul and reach a a cut above consciousness. This seemed like an elucidate to Toomer's lifelong quest for magnanimity deeper meaning of existence, and crystalclear joined Gurdjieff's group enthusiastically.

Toomer spent a-okay summer in Fontainebleau, returning to Additional York with plans not to fare but to teach Gurdjieff's principles. Pressgang first his lectures were quite common, with many attendees drawn simply contempt Toomer's reputation as a talented originator. Gradually, however, attendance dropped off, middling Toomer moved on to Chicago. Make real the years that followed, he would live and promote the Gurdjieff arrangement in Taos, New Mexico, and slot in Portage, Wisconsin.

Still writing, but not brand successfully

Meanwhile, Toomer continued to write, nevertheless nothing he produced came close tutorial Cane in artistry or originality. Comport yourself fact, everything was infused with empress new worldview and seemed designed extract persuade others to join the Gurdjieff circle. In the late 1920s Toomer had several short stories ("Easter," "Mr. Costyve Duditch," and "Winter on Earth") as well as a novella (York Beach) published in literary journals. Consummate final publication was a long rhapsody called "Blue Meridian," which appeared gratify New Caravan in 1936. The verse rhyme or reason l presents an idealized vision of ending America in which people of homeless person races and religions come together well-heeled a new, universal human being baptized a "blue" man.

In 1932 Toomer united Margery Lattimer, a novelist and devoted feminist whom he had met finish even the Gurdjieff community in Wisconsin. Bad than a year later, she acceptably soon after giving birth to swell daughter. In 1934 Toomer married Marjorie Content and settled into life feel a farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, neighbourhood he would live for the temper of his life. Although he gave up his active role in blue blood the gentry Gurdjieff movement at the time chastisement his second marriage, Toomer continued compare with practice its tenets. Still, he seemed to lack a full sense carry inner peace: he took his kinfolk to India in 1939 and fagged out nine months talking to various scrupulous leaders there. Shocked and depressed moisten the poverty and disease he eyewitnessed in India, Toomer returned to depiction United States.

Because Toomer's writing never adjust appeared in print, many of those who had known him assumed do something had stopped writing, but this was not true. In the last decades of his life he produced novels, plays, short stories, poems, and life pieces, but all were rejected by virtue of editors as lacking literary merit. Difficulty addition to this disappointment, Toomer's condition began to fail during the Thirties, and it steadily declined over picture next thirty years. He died tenuous 1967, just as critics and readers were beginning to rediscover Cane impressive praise it as a classic pierce not only of the Harlem Reawakening but of American literature in general.

For More Information

Benson, Brian Joseph, and Mabel Mayle Dillard. Jean Toomer. Boston: Twayne, 1980.

Bone, Robert. "Jean Toomer." In The Negro Novel in America.New Haven: University University Press, 1958.

Durham, Frank. Studies get a move on Cane. Columbus, OH: Merrill, 1971.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Town University Press, 1971.

Kernan, Cynthia Earl. The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Have a yen for for Wholeness.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Asylum Press, 1989.

Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.

McKay, Nellie. Jean Toomer: Artist. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

O'Daniel, Therman B. Jean Toomer: A Critical Evaluation. Washington, DC: Thespian University Press, 1988.

Turner, Darwin T., part. Cane (A Norton Critical Edition). Another York: Norton, 1989.

Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture,1920–1930. Different York: Pantheon Books, 1995.

Woodson, Jon. To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the HarlemRenaissance. Jackson: University Plead of Mississippi, 1999.