Poetic Awakening of Richard Wright

¶ … poetic awakening of Richard Wright

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right road lost." -- Dante, "The Inferno," translated by Robert Pinsky

And one morning while in the woods I stumbled" -- Richard Wright, "Between the World and Me"

He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know." 4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.' "7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet -- a vast army. 11 Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.'

Ezekiel, 37: 4-11

In Richard Wright's poem "Between the World and Me" the speaker of the poem is in a dark wood wandering, like Dante at the beginning of the "Inferno." The hell the speaker descends into, however, is that of the hell of witnessing a lynching. Unlike Dante, the poet has no guide in this hell; he can only see the bones and left-over articles of clothing of the dead lynched man. But Wright derives poetic inspiration from this vision. Through the powerful use of intertextuality, Wright examines how the spirit of African-Americans who cannot speak, like the lynched man, have entered into his poetry, into his body and soul. By the end of the poem Wright becomes a prophet for his people, a prophet during a time of terrible sadness and despair, like the Old Testament figure of Ezekiel.

Wright uses numerous allusions form classical and Biblical literature in his work. In the book of the prophet Ezekiel asks God if bones can speak, and in this poem, the corpse consumes Wright and enters into him in the form of dust and ashes. Even the natural world becomes part of the dead man's message to the world: "charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky." Wright realizes that he could be lynched too someday, and this realization causes him to reenact in his mind the death of the lynched man and project it onto his own physical body. Suddenly he sees how "the wood poured forth the hungry yelping of hounds; the / darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived: / the dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves / into my bones. / the grey ashes formed flesh firm and black, entering into / my flesh." He can smell the gin of the men who lynched the dead man, and hear the accusations of the prostitute who falsely accused the man. As a poet, Wright becomes like a surrogate for the man, or a medium who channels the man's spirit: "And then they [the lynchers] had me, stripped me, battering my teeth / into my throat till I swallowed my own blood."

This is a poetic awakening for Wright, even though it is painful. By entering the "Inferno" of the woods, Wright finds his calling. He finds it through the guidance of apprehending the dead man, the dead man who becomes his guide through the underworld that is life for a black man in America during the era when Wright lived and for many years afterwards. Wright calls it a 'baptism' by gasoline, and by the end of the poem, Wright has fully 'become' the dead man: "Now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in / yellow surprise at the sun...."

According to Orlando Patterson's book Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, to be a slave is to be in a state of social death. A slave has no identity, no name or role other than being owned by his master. Although Wright chronicles a period long after slavery, lynching confirms African-American's place as existing in limbo, in a kind of social death. No one will avenge the crime. Additionally, the man is never formally tried for rape, instead the community has free reign to do what it wants to this man, regardless of his rights as a human being. Wright realizes this in a cruel shock, so he resolves, almost against his will like a prophet having a forced calling from God, that he must speak for the man. He sees that no liberation from racism has occurred in American society, and while once upon a time a "master's death was the occasion for the release of the slave," this is no longer the case -- a slave is forever bound because of the way that blackness and slavery is viewed as permanently intertwined in society (Patterson 227).