Harlem Renaissance Literature and Art

Harlem Renaissance- Literature and Art

The Harlem or Negro Renaissance marked the 20s and 30s as a period where the spirituality and potential of the African-American community was expressed in the most explosive way possible. Black art had been relatively unknown to the American public until then, at least to the urban communities. Centered in the Southern states and with a freedom of expression generally trampled with, black art expression was simply censored or manifested itself in its raw forms. The migration to the Northern metropolis after the First World War was similar and implied the development, in all its forms, of Black culture. This included literature (poetry and prose), music (jazz played in the notorious Cotton Club and elsewhere), visual arts (painting) and acting in musicals.

Langston Hughes, one of the most representative creators of the Harlem Renaissance, best resumed this period as being a period when "Negro was in vogue." This brief statement meant not only that the Harlem Renaissance was a period of awakening for the African-American community, but also the fact that the white population enjoyed Black forms of creation. The rebel period after the First World War, with the Jazz Age and the prohibition, involved openness from the American towards the exotic and what they saw as unusual. In this sense, the African-American culture was, for them, something different, as many of the White communities in Northern states had but minor contacts with it in history. They were interested in its forms of manifestation and the numerous patronages of black artists during this time created ripe premises for Black culture to develop and evolve.

We may assert that the Harlem Renaissance had two general directions. One of them, centered on the cultural heritage, implied a definition of the African-American community as a profoundly philosophical and psychological entity. On the other hand, spirituality certainly had a protest component in it as well. Magazines such as The Crisis, where W.E.B DuBois, one of the preeminent figures of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote and The Messenger politically sustained the black intellectual and had an impact in the fight for African-American rights. Other magazines, like Opportunity, turned to patronage and organized contexts where young black writers could make their debut and publish their work.

Perhaps the manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance can be considered The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke, which appeared in 1925. The book featured literary works by several rising black intellectuals that were to make a name in the following decade. The book contained fiction by Jean Toomer or Zela Neale Hurston, poetry by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, as well as a play by Willis Richardson.

I have named this collection a manifesto and it was so from more than one point-of-view. First of all, it was the first collection of works by African-Americans in history. However, even more important, it was a way of gaining the world's attention towards what Black culture is all about and promoting it to the public. It may be considered a manifesto because it presented something new, new ideas, new ways of presenting them. Finally, the book also contained a series of essays, defining for what the Harlem Renaissance culture was all about. These were the theoretical foundation of the movement, explaining the premises: "a new interest in sociology (particularly concerning the Migration), an increased interest in the Negro past, and, most especially, intense affirmation and discovery of the validity of Afro-American folk culture."

The movement continued the subsequent year with the Fire magazine, the first magazine containing the works produced by the African-American community. The idea came from Langston Hughes, who had written previously that year an essay entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" and where he wrote that "we younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame." Among the first collaborators to the magazine were Zora Neale Houston and Bruce Nugent, but the magazine itself was short lived. However, it pointed out the need of the "young negroes" not only to find an identity, but also to express it and coordinate it. The movement was already on the way by now, despite its decrease in strength during the Great Depression.

Among the greatest literary works of the Harlem Renaissance is the novel Cane, written by Jean Toomer. Focused on native Georgia, the novel is a return to the ancestral tradition and spirit. Indeed, the hero, Kabnis, considered to be Toomer's alter ego considers his place in society and among races. The author uses verses from African-American gospel songs to depict a certain landscape and a certain atmosphere. Throughout his book, fiction is completed by poetry, by sketches and verse. With a strong race message and anti-oppression goal (as Tommer himself said, "never again in life do I want a repetition of those conditions"), Cane represented the perfect projection of what the Harlem Renaissance was all about: a return to ancestral spirituality and a message against oppression.

Zora Neale Hurston was another excellent prose writer of period. AS I have mentioned previously, she had collaborated with the Fire magazine in the 20s, but it was the 30s and the 40s that would bring her most success. Works like Mules and men or Their Eyes were watching God brought her a Guggenheim Fellowship.