Jean Toomer's Cane as a Swan Song
Abstract
In his autobiographical writings and letters Toomer characterized Cane as “a swan song ... the song of an end.“1 And recalling his visit to Georgia in 1921 he observed: “With Negroes also the trend was towards the small town and then towards the city- and industry and commerce and machines. The folk-spirit was walking in to die on the modern desert“ 142 . In a letter Toomer was even more prophetic: Don’t let us fool ourselves, brother: the Negro of the folk-song has all but passed away: the Negro of the emotional church is fading. A hundred years from now these Negroes, if they exist at all will live in art ... Likewise the Indian America needs these elements. They are passing. Let us grab and hold them while there is still time 151 .
References
- Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son. NY: Bantam, 1968.
- Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. NY: Fawcett, 1961.
- Durham, Frank, ed., The Merrill Studies in Cane. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1971.
- Eldridge, Richard, “The Unifying Images in Part One of Jean Toomer’s Cane,“ CLA-Journal 22.3 1979: 187-214
- Griffin, Farah Jasmine, “Who Set you Flowin’?“ The African American Migration Narrative NY: Oxford UP, 1995.
- Hutchinson, George, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1995.
- Jones, Robert B., ed., Jean Toomer. Selected Essays and Literary Criticism. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1996.
- Kent, George, “Patterns of the Harlem Renaissance,“ The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, ed. Arna Bontemps NY: Dodd, Mead, 1972 27-50.
- McKay, Nellie Y., Jean Toomer, Artist. A Study of His Literary Life and Work, 1894-1936.
- Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.