Charles T. Davis lecture, "The Heavenly and the Earthly Voice of the Harlem Renaissance," at the University of Iowa,
Speaker 1: The following is the sixth in a series of nine lectures by Charles T. Davis, delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture, held on the campus of the University of Iowa. The Institute, held August 9th through the 21st, focused on the Culture of Black America, commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. In this recording, Charles T. Davis, Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, speaks on The Heavenly and the Earthly Voice of the Harlem Renaissance.
Charles T. Davi...: I hope you were properly impressed by my title, The Heavenly and the Earthly Voice of the Harlem Renaissance. It seems to me it's singularly appropriate on Monday morning after a gay weekend. I have obviously nothing but the benefit of your souls in mind, and this of course is why this thing is structured in this way.
Charles T. Davi...: Black people as a group have been given credit for occupying both ends of the spectrum that reflects the relationship between man and God. Many people think that Blacks are peculiarly receptive to divine influence, and there is much evidence to support this claim. The Negro spiritual with its haunting beauty records the intense yearning for union with God, and a love for the spiritual home to come, rather than the earthly dwelling place that oppresses and causes pain at the moment.
Charles T. Davi...: At the same time, critics rather than friends of the American Negro, have been quick to point out that Blacks seem to be especially resistant to religious instruction. They drink, fornicate freely and openly, fight, cut, steal from their betters, not necessarily in that order. But "behaving like a nigger" is still so common an expression that it requires no explanation. It applies to a Black man full not of the Holy Spirit but of Sneaky Pete and Old Nick. You know what Sneaky Pete is? The New York recipe was half muscatel and half port. It's an abominable drink, but that's ... Well.
Charles T. Davi...: The record of the continued persistence of the natural in man, despite of the work of preachers and exhorters, is to be found in the blues. These are the laments sung often by the victims of such natural men and women, poor souls who though sinners themselves become pathetic in being sinned against more.
Charles T. Davi...: The Harlem Renaissance, in seeking to recover and to use all parts of the Negro folk tradition, affirmed both ends of the religious spectrum, without regard for moral or religious principles. We have heard much about the attention to the spirituals. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, and Alan Locke wrote eloquently about the beauty of this body of song, claiming it as a unique contribution to American culture. Johnson's poem, O Black and Unknown Bonds, was a moving tribute to the folk imagination that had produced the spirituals. Here was an art that had sprung miraculously from slavery and ignorance, from darkness and anonymity.
Charles T. Davi...: We have heard less of an art form that closely linked to the spiritual, the folk sermon. It resembles the spiritual in coming from the same kind of general experience. That is, it is the product of a Black man's effort to assimilate and to adapt Christian ideas, an effort dating certainly from the time of the second Great Awakening in 1800, if not before.
Charles T. Davi...: But the folk sermon is perhaps purer, that is to say from the spiritual, if we measure purity by commitment to a divine purpose. The spiritual, after all, was sung commonly by a congregation or a group repeating with varying intensity or understanding the words that were remembered. Very seldom do we have a sense of the act of creation occurring in conjunction with the singing. Despite the most spontaneous and sincere of performances, we must confess to ourselves that the ultimate credit must go to those Black and unknown bards about whom we know so little.
Charles T. Davi...: Not so with the folk sermon. In this art form, the preacher quite literally begins with the assumption that he is the voice of God. Is this perhaps not adequate as a verb here? 'Becomes' is better, because the preacher gradually works himself toward an ultimate identification. That moment occurs when the Black spokesman chants in a strong and rhythmical cadence the words that God has given. While no doubt leaning backward from the pulpit with eyes closed and sweat streaming from his forehead, and the Black performer, if asked later to explain what he has uttered, may be at lost to reconstruct the chain of phrases that has come pouring from his holy mouth.
Charles T. Davi...: We have just described the first characteristic of the art form, rhythm. Characteristically a sermon will begin with the intonation of the syntax of ordinary speech. As the sermon proceeds, the delivery of the preacher will become gradually more intense, with periodic crescendos and de-crescendos. At length, prose will give way to verse, and to a sequence of regular phrases punctuated frequently by grunts or gasps or 'ah's' or 'oh's.' At the highest point of the excitement, the matter of the sermon is actually chanted. Commonly at the conclusion, the preacher will return to his more prosaic style and move to the statement of the message of the day.
Charles T. Davi...: Now what I am describing is by no means a dead art, but one that lives still in storefront churches in the city, and the tents of camp meetings and revivals in Cedar Rapids perhaps, or perhaps even in Iowa City. I don't know. You'll have to tell me. At stations to be found usually at the far ends of your station dials. At those extreme frequencies where President Eisenhower is still a creature of the Jewish Communist conspiracy plotting to take over America.
Charles T. Davi...: It possible then to describe the art form with some precision by using contemporary models, and this is exactly what my former colleague ... I say former now because I moved from Pennsylvania to Iowa. My former colleague, Bruce Rosenberg has done in the art of the American folk preacher, employing the methods of case study and classification that are the tools of the well-trained folklorist.
Charles T. Davi...: Let us note that briefly of the significant characteristics. Outstanding certainly is the amount of repetition in diction and syntax. We find parallel clusters in which the same phrase may occur, or the same or similar grammatical constructions. Then there are the repeated formula phrases, which may record breaks in the development of the preacher's thought, or may represent direct appeals to the audience. Such a phrase might be "Ain't God all right?" Or, "Do you know what I'm talking about?"
Charles T. Davi...: It is the formula phrase that suggests an important additional characteristic of the arm form. That is the fact that the role of the audience is not passive. Correctly and efficiently exhorted, the audience responds with formula phrases of its own, including such things as "Preach it, brother," or, "Yes, Lord," or no doubt in these days, "Right on," though the occasions for use may be secular rather than religious. This may lead us to suppose that certain forms of contemporary political rhetoric follow established religious models, rather more than suppose if you've listened very carefully to Martin Luther King, and to others.
Charles T. Davi...: The reaction of the audience ideally takes the emotional pattern of the preacher's sermon, when the exhortist chant becomes most regular and most insistent, the members of the congregation reach the climax of their excitement, and as the folk preacher man feels after what that God has spoken through him, they feel afterwards that God has spoken directly to them. We approach, in short, a moment of mystical communion.
Charles T. Davi...: Two more characteristics. We should remember that there's no reason to expect the presence of a coherent narrative in a sermon. Narrative elements there are often, but they have less value for themselves than they do in other oral art forms, the epic, say. A story is useful only as an example or an illustration. The language of the imagery are derived heavily from the Bible, but only in part. A very important condition is the infusion of matter from ordinary life. We discover striking effects that come from the rude conjunction of the conventionally religious and the homely.
Charles T. Davi...: I want you to listen now to sections of a sermon, and by the way, this is the only opportunity I ever really have to preach, you understand, so you must bear with me. I want you to listen now to sections of a sermon recited by the Reverend [Rupert Lacey], July 2nd, 1967 in Bakersfield, California. I want you to note the prosaic beginning, the wholy controlling metaphor, the striking image of the ground weed garden, and the simple story which Lacey tells here well within the experience of every member of the congregation. Now the title of Lacey's sermon is God's Plowboy. I will read the first 27 lines or so of this now, and then go on to pick up other parts of the sermon.
Charles T. Davi...: For our sakes, no doubt, this was written, that he, that ploweth should plow in hope. For our sakes, no doubt, this was written that he that ploweth should plow in hope. First Corinthians ninth and tenth, the text is written taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthian church. The plowman mentioned here is God's minister of the gospel. It seems fitting to call him God's plowboy or plowman. The man who plow's has many duties other than walking in the furrow behind the plow. God's plowboy, likewise, has many responsibilities besides standing in the pulpit.
Charles T. Davi...: In this mis-message, we consider the minister under three topics. First as a burden bearer, second as a feeder of the flock, mention third as a plowboy or plowman or hope. While re-emphasizing this a little bit, no man break up a weed garden here. In the devil we call a death, you do all that work, prepare to do all these things, listen to it, he does it in hope, he's got faith and hope, and he's going to reap the benefits of it.
Charles T. Davi...: The hardest thing ever I done one year, I didn't tell on one about this in Mississippi. I was young and my bossman was young. Promised to give me a cow and a calf to milk. I was sharecropping for him. I want to emphasize that. It doesn't take me long to preach because I can talk, and now this is the proof. I was still there a few years ago and laughing about it. When time comes to give me a cow and the calf, he give me the cow with no calf. I said, "You say you going to give me a cow and a calf." He said, "Well, she's milking." I said, "You said you'd give me a cow and a calf, and this ain't going to work." We kept arguing over that cow and the calf.
Charles T. Davi...: The cow was milking, but I wanted the cow and the calf, so that broke the treaty, sharecropping for him. The fact of it, I didn't want to stay there. That wouldn't have been the hardest crop that ever I made in my life if I had stayed there and made it, but I didn't like it. Was sorry. If you don't like the thing, the thought of it, you shouldn't have joined up. No man do these things, roll lot, join bricks, tow logs, unless he does it in hope. It's the hope of reaping something, more than he's putting out.
Charles T. Davi...: Well, that's the introduction to this sermon of God's plowboy. Now, somewhat later, the sermon attains a peak of excitement and the speaker requires a measure of authority much beyond that displayed at the beginning of the performance. I'm reading now from about line 147 on in this particular sermon.
Charles T. Davi...: God's plowboy must feed ... We're going onto the feeding. I say God's plowboy must feed his master sheep. The Lord said to Peter, "Feed my lambs," and then he said unto him, "Feed my sheep." The Lord didn't have no flock, didn't have no heard. He was talking about God from Zion, he was talking about the lambs, of newborn babes in Christ Jesus such as have not yet fully developed.
Charles T. Davi...: He said to Peter twice, "Feed my sheep," said to him the last time, "Feed my lamb, ain't God all right. Feed my lamb, take heed therefore unto yourself and to all the flock, which the Holy Ghost has made the overseer to feed the church of God." Let's think about it. God from Zion. God left the church in the hands of the preacher. He feed the church just a little bit. The more excited statement obviously of Lacey in this particular performance.
Charles T. Davi...: Then finally, we have for this sermon the more prosaic conclusion beginning here about line 342. After a while, it'll all be over. I said after a while it'll all be over. We're going home to get my crown. I love that song. I love to sing that song. When I've done the best I can I wear the crown, pause to think about it. Mrs. Lacey used to sing the song to me when I was in the pulpit preaching. Sometimes she set me down singing that song when I've done the best I can. Give me the crown, and he sings.
Charles T. Davi...: Now that's a sketch of what goes on in one of these folk sermons. I could perhaps read more of the sermon, but it seems to be that that would perhaps take too much time since the main subject today is really not the folk sermon so much as it is in that cultivated refinement that Johnson makes of it in God's Trombones.
Charles T. Davi...: If you turn now to God's Trombones, originally published in 1927, we can see I think some of the evidences of the structure that I've already talked about. We can, of course, read all trombones, all seven of them here today this morning, but we can of course can comment generally on them. Recalling the form of the folk sermon, we should observe certain similarities, and this is just as important, certain differences.
Charles T. Davi...: While the tone of the preacher in the trombone is generally the same, his voice we note immediately acquires the authority reserved for the folk preacher in the middle of the sermon. What has been eliminated in one of God's Trombones is the prosaic frame, the commencement and the conclusion. Although the pattern of growing intensity remains, the speaker in one of God's, one of Johnson's trombones does not have so far to go. The moment of great excitement is recorded in the same old way, in more regular metrics and with an insistent overwhelming repetition and phrasing, and I wish you to see now what happens in the crucifixion. At the very moment that Jesus is nailed to the cross, this particular poem has begun in this manner, and now I'll read this just for purposes of contrast.
Charles T. Davi...: "Jesus, my gentle Jesus, walking in the dark of the garden, the garden of Gethsemane, saying to the three disciples, "Sorrow is in my soul, even unto death. Carry you here a little while and watch with me." Notice that we have an essentially free line, an essentially irregular line at the very beginning of this particular trombone, the crucifixion. By the time we move in the narrative, to the point where the crucifixion is described. Notice what happens here and remember what Lacey did at the high point in his sermon.
Charles T. Davi...: On Calvary, on Calvary, they crucified my Jesus. They nailed him to the cruel tree, and the hammer, the hammer, the hammer rang through Jerusalem streets. The hammer, the hammer, the hammer, rang through Jerusalem streets. Jesus, my lamb like Jesus, shivering as the nails go through his hands, Jesus my lamb like Jesus, shivering as the nails go through his feet. Jesus, my darling Jesus, groaning as the Roman spear plunged in his side. Jesus, my darling, Jesus, groaning as the blood came spurting through his wound. Oh look how they've done my Jesus. This, you see, is the cultivated refinement of an artistic device which is to be found obviously earlier and illustrated by me earlier in the folk sermon. We see it obviously here in the crucifixion.
Charles T. Davi...: As we might expect, the narrative element in one of the Johnson's trombones has increased in importance. This fact does not mean that the message has disappeared, but does frequently at the end of these poems we find the message stated. For example, here at the end of the crucifixion, this I tremble, yes, I tremble. It causes me to tremble, tremble. When I think how Jesus died, died on the steeps of Calvary. How Jesus died for sinners, sinners like you and me.
Charles T. Davi...: You should note, of course, the echo here of the great spiritual. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? The references to the tremble, tremble, which is repeated to remember in spiritual. That seems to be a nice and an appropriate touch, and by the way, an accurate one since the folk sermon and the spiritual do in fact come from the same common source.
Charles T. Davi...: I want you to note how Johnson effectively introduces holy figures in common illustrations here. You remember how Lacey talked about that cow and that calf and illustrating the point he wished to make in the folk sermon. We don't have anything quite so elaborate as that in Johnson's trombones, but we have touches that resemble that, and perhaps none is better than the introduction of the creation which some of you, of course, recall, and which you remember we have.
Charles T. Davi...: God stepped out on space and he looked around and said, "I am lonely. I'll make me a world." As far as the eye of God could see darkness covered everything Blacker than a hundred midnights down in a Cyprus swamp. It's that Cyprus swamp especially that I want you to remember there. Or, this touch, for example, that we have here, the beginning of the prodigal son. Young man, young man, your arms too short to box with God. But Jesus speak in a parable and he said, "A certain man had two sons."
Charles T. Davi...: Jesus didn't give this man a name, but his name is God Almighty, and Jesus didn't call these sons by name, and but every young man everywhere is one of these two sons. The holy touch unmistakeably present there of the sort obviously you detected in Lacey's sermon, or to indicate this again, the kind you think that you find in Go Down Death, in which Johnson says here in this funeral sermon, "The day before yesterday morning, God was looking down from his great high heaven, looking down on all his children and his eye fell on sister Carolyn tossing on a bed of pain. God's big heart was touched with pity with the everlasting pity and God sat back on his throne and he commanded that tall bright angel standing at his right hand, call me death and that tall bright angel cried in a voice that broke like a clap of thunder, call death, death death, and the echo sounded down the streets of heaven until it reached a way back to that shadowy place where death waits with his pale white horses."
Charles T. Davi...: A little more sophisticated imagery involved in that you see, but it is obviously domesticated in part by the references, this touch of God looking out of that high window and seeing sister Carolyn there writhing there on the bed of pain and other domestic touches of that kind. To go back for a moment to the Prodigal Son, which this is one you remember about boxing with God. We have here something too which is familiar, a device that I called attention to in talking about the folk sermon. This poem begins with the simple repetition, "Young man, young man."
Charles T. Davi...: Time again and again in this poem we come back to that phrase. What we have in fact is a formula phrase, like Lacey's "Ain't God right," or "God from Zion." Here it is, "Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God," or, "Young man, young man smooth and easy is the road that leads to hell and destruction. Downgrade all the way. The further you travel, the faster you go." Or, "Young man, young man, you never lonesome in Babylon. You can always join a crowd in Babylon. Young man, young man, you can never be alone in Babylon, alone with your Jesus in Babylon." It's the formula phrase again that we've seen elsewhere, that illusion in this instance to young man.
Charles T. Davi...: There's another echo here of Lacey's sermon, an echo in matter as well as in manner. This is the stanza, "And the young man journeyed on his way and he said to himself as he traveled alone, this sure is an easy road, nothing like the rough furrows behind my father's plow." He said oh sermon, God's plowboy, which could be alluded to there.
Charles T. Davi...: What is most impressive, finally, is the fact that Johnson has captured in the trombones the essential spirit of the primitive religious imagination, as it interprets God's holy word and applies it to the affairs of man, despite many differences, we feel the immediacy of the events, talk on familiar terms of God, and walk with sure steps in a domesticated cosmos. Johnson has altered and refined the matter of a rich folk tradition and the result is another artistic innovation, one that ranks with Toomer's lyric novel, or McKay's Vagabond Odyssey. I'm not sure that Sister Conroy will approve of that term, but this is the one I'm using this morning.
Charles T. Davi...: Now somewhere in Moby Dick, Ishmael who tells us ... You remember the story, with considerable assistance from a man named Herman Melville. Somewhere Ishmael observed that the principles of evil and good were about evenly balanced in the world, and that announcement was a startling one to many readers. Too used to applying to affairs of the cosmos an equation that offered a plus answer rather than a minus one.
Charles T. Davi...: We can make a case in examining the Renaissance for a predominance of black ink on the ledger if we restrict our consideration to the mystic union or the heavenly intonations that come to us from Johnson's trombones or to the travel guide leading to the good life offered by McKay. On the other hand, the forms of pastoral as developed by McKay, Cullen, and Hughes, emphasized removal from a happy existence of those of us caught in the gray, spiritless mechanical society.
Charles T. Davi...: The blues is seldom so pretentious in its criticism, limiting its scope to more immediate, tangible causes for discontent. It stems from a folk tradition just as rich as that of the folk sermon, and maybe alas somewhat better known because of our superior familiarity with the sinning world. Langston Hughes, with his remarkable ear for the sounds and the songs of the people, is a Renaissance poet who caught in poetry the blues. He uses the blues to portray the more somber aspects of urban life.
Charles T. Davi...: The mood that he projects you, if I may remind you of some things I've said earlier, is a foil for the excitement and the ecstatic moments found in his jazz compositions, which we talked about do you remember Friday when we were dwelling in the city. It's almost as if we find in the blues poems the morning after the great bash the night before, or the morning, of course, the Monday morning after a gay weekend.
Charles T. Davi...: Hughes' variations upon the blues form seem to be endless. The basic form is familiar to us all, and let me remind you and I hope I don't have to, there is an initial statement which is followed by an almost exact repetition. Some of you may remember Bill Holiday's off-centered rendering of W.C. Handy's line, "I hate to see the evening sun go down." Then there is a third statement, which is quite different, and what we have if we were to project the song on a page for purposes of stanchion, God forbid, would be two almost identical long hexameter lines with an emphatic caesura, that is to say, break in the middle, followed by another hexameter line with the same metrical characteristics but offering a new thought. You can forget that.
Charles T. Davi...: If you have heard records of Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, or Ma Rainey, or in this more decadent day, Jimmy Russing, Billy Holiday, or Joe Williams, you would not need the description I've just supplied for you. The Weary Blues, the title poem of Hughes' first volume is a blues within a blues. In short, we have an out of frame, which gives a dramatic commentary on the scene and suggests something about source and the power of what his song, the truer blues, the inner song, is the one in which we find actually the precise form of the blues itself.
Charles T. Davi...: Listen to the Weary Blues now. The poem that gives the title actually to the whole set of poems of Hughes.' "Droning a drowsy syncopated tune rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a negro play." Notice that we begin with two appropriate lines and then a third line which is different, which is basically the form of the blues there. Although the stanchion may be a little bit different, and then again, "Down on Lenox Avenue the other night, by the pale dull pallor of an old gas light, he did a lazy sway, he did a lazy sway to the tune of those Weary Blues. With his ebony hands on each ivory key, he made that poor piano moan with melody. O Blues! Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool, he played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet Blues! Coming from a Black man’s soul. O Blues! In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—"
Charles T. Davi...: And then there is inserted a fragment of a form which is a truer blues, "Ain’t got nobody in all this world, Ain’t got nobody but myself. I’s going to to quit my frownin’ and put ma troubles on the shelf.” Then back to the description, "Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor. He played a few chords then he sang some more— I got the Weary Blues and I can’t be satisfied. Got the Weary Blues and I can’t be satisfied— I ain’t happy no more and I wish that I had died.”
Charles T. Davi...: Back to the description, "And far into the night he crooned that tune. The stars went out and so did the moon. The singer stopped playing and went to bed while the Weary Blues echoed through his head. He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead." The structure then of the inner blues and the outer blues are blues indeed with inner blues. This is the kind of play almost a kind of virtuoso construction that Hughes gives the blues motif in many of his early poems. We have a very different kind of construction in blues fantasy. Once again, if you remember the details of structure that I've given you to already, you may not be surprised at the sort of thing that happens here.
Charles T. Davi...: Here we discover a blues in Blues Fantasy. A blues melody which is surrounded by something else. That is to say, excited, happy, exclamations that seem on the surface in congress with the lament. That poem goes this way, "Hey, hey, that's what the blues singers say. Singing minor melodies, they laugh, Hey! Hey! My man's done left me, child, he's gone away. My good man's left me, Babe, he's gone away. Now the cryin' blues haunts me night and day."
Charles T. Davi...: The true blue motif, you see, surrounded by the exclamations, then back, "Hey, Hey! Weary, weary, trouble, pain. Sun's gonna shine somewhere again," and then the blues again, "I got a railroad ticket, pack my trunk and ride. Sing 'em, sister! Got a railroad ticket, pack my trunk and ride. And when I get on the train I'll cast my blues aside. Laughing, Hey, hey! Laugh a loud."
Charles T. Davi...: The point you see I think is clear. We have here divergent moods, and at the end of the poem they seem to be somehow reconciled and we understand the reconciliation there seems to be when we realize at the conclusion that the poet has demonstrated the ability to extract laughter from pain, to extract pleasure, if you will, from its opposite here. This has always been obviously one of the important things, important characteristics of the blues, and Hughes here has demonstrated his faculty for doing this in a poem.
Charles T. Davi...: We find a similar incongruity in Song for a Banjo Dance, and another virtuoso development one part of Hughes here. Here the blues motif seems to me serves to dramatize something about the dance. See if you can tell what it is. "Shake your brown feet, honey, shake your brown feet, child. Shake your brown feet, honey, shake ’em swift and wild. Get way back, honey, do that low down step." The sort that some of you recall on a Saturday night. "Do that low down step. Walk on over, darling, now come out with your left. Shake your brown feet, honey, shake ’em, honey child." That seems to be a reasonably accurate description really of a dance, very precisely indicated here, not sufficient adept to be able to tell you what it is.
Charles T. Davi...: Then right in the middle of this thing comes, "Sun’s going down this evening. Might never rise no more. The sun’s going down this very night, might never rise no more, so dance with swift feet, honey, the banjo’s sobbing low, dance with swift feet, honey, might never dance no more." The blues motif is there. In contrast with the excited, perhaps approaching ecstatic moments that we find in the dance. "Shake your brown feet, Liza, shake ’em, Liza, child, Shake your brown feet, Liza, the music’s soft and wild. Shake your brown feet, Liza, the banjo’s sobbing low. The sun’s going down this very night, might never rise no more."
Charles T. Davi...: Here the blues motif serves to dramatize the [inaudible] of the banjo dance, by calling attention to the uncertainty of the morrow and of the day after tomorrow. We see then three very different uses of the blues motif, artistically handled obviously by Hughes. But the blues touches in Hughes obviously many more than those that I've illustrated here now. We find them in poems that don't strictly follow the pattern of those. We find the touch of the poem like The South, from the Weary Blues, and see if you can detect the quality that it suggests here the echo of the blues.
Charles T. Davi...: "The lazy laughing south with blood on its mouth, the sunny face south, beast strong, idiot brain, The child-minded South scratching in the dead fire's ashes for a Negro's bones. Cotton and the moon, warmth, earth, warmth, the sky, the sun, the stars, The magnolia-scented South. Beautiful like a woman, seductive as a dark-eyed whore, passionate, cruel, honey-lipped, syphilitic — That is the South. And I, who am Black, would love her but she spits in my face. And I, who am Black, would give her many rare gifts but she turns her back upon me. So now I seek the North — The cold-faced North, for she, they say, is a kinder mistress, and in her house my children may escape the spell of the South."
Charles T. Davi...: There is you see in the construction say of something like this, "And I who am Black," and the repetition, "And I who am Black," and then, "So now I seek the North." The order there is the blues order, which is suggested here though obviously there are characteristics of form here that we do not find in the blues. Similar echos are to be found in Aunt Sue's Stories, another complicated poem, tune.
Charles T. Davi...: "Aunt Sue has a head full of stories. Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories, summer nights on the front porch Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom and tells him stories." On it goes, suggesting things of that kind. Now the folk sermon and the blues provide the top and the bottom of a world of the Harlem Renaissance. As we hear them we may come to the conclusion that they are not so very far apart. Both are rooted in rich, Black folk tradition. That extraordinary aura that the Renaissance dug up and exhibited in refined forms to an admiring sophisticated audience for the first time. Black art has not been the same since. Indeed it is possible for Ellison to call Invisible Man, that remarkable novel, a form of blues on Blackness. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That was Charles T. Davis, Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University with The Heavenly and the Earthly Voice of the Harlem Renaissance, a lecture delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture. This is the sixth in a series of nine lectures by Professor Davis on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. This presentation was recorded by the broadcasting service of the University of Iowa.