Making It New: 1900–1945 485an Indian or a dark-skinned European, Toomer spent his childhood in his birthplace
of Washington, DC, attended various colleges without proceeding to a degree; then,
in 1921, he took a job as superintendent of a black rural school in Georgia. This, his
first trip to the South, was seminal. It was, he said just a few years later, “the starting
point of almost anything of worth I have done.” “My growing need for artistic
expression pulled me deeper into the Negro group” in Georgia, he explained. “I heard
folk-songs come from the lips of Negro peasants. I saw the rich dark beauty that
I had heard many false accents about, and of which till then, I was somewhat
skeptical.” In short, Toomer was captivated by the Southern landscape and the
impact of African-Americans on Southern culture. And, returning to Washington,
DC, he began to write what was to become the third section of his masterpiece, Cane
(1923). Within a year of his return, he had completed the experimental work that is
at once a record of his discovery of his Southern inheritance, an act of homage to a
folk culture he believed was doomed to extinction, and an exploration of the forces
that he saw as responsible for extinguishing that culture and for the spiritual
fragmentation of modern times. With the help of Frank, who wrote the foreword,
the book found a publisher. It sold poorly at the time, although it was warmly
praised by critics and other writers such as Hurston and Langston Hughes. It is now
recognized as one of the pivotal African-American works of the period.
Confluence is as much a characteristic of Cane as it is of its creator. A highly
innovative hybrid of prose and poetry, the book is divided into three sections. The
first section is set in the South, in Georgia, and it concentrates on women, especially
women whose thoughts, desires, and behavior set them at odds with the expectations
of society. There is Karinthia who “ripened too soon,” experiencing her sexual
awakening at the age of 12. There is Becky, a woman destroyed by the bigotry of both
black and white people. There is Carma, destroyed by male expectations, Fern a
woman transfixed and worshipped by men who do not understand her. And there is
Louise, who is loved by two men, one black and one white; when the two men fight
over her, and the white man is stabbed, the black man is burned to death by a lynch
mob. Punctuating their stories are poems written in a similarly rapt, incantatory
style, marked by repetition and recurrent images of dusk, pines, cane, and fire. The
overall effect is haunting: this is a South that comes across to the reader as a
dreamscape and a very real place of racial prejudice and violence, a romantic
nightworld and a vibrant folk culture. Not the least of the achievements here is the
way, like Larsen, Toomer weaves together intricate misunderstandings of race, sex,
and gender: the misrecognition of women as well as the mistreatment of black
people, male and female. A similarly rich tapestry of different but interconnected
themes characterizes the second section. Here, the scene drifts to the North, to
Washington, DC. It begins with a lyric account of black settlement in the city,
marked by more syncopated rhythms and harsher imagery of hard surfaces and
nervous movement. It continues with a surreal portrait of Rhobert, a man sinking
under the weight of his own poverty (“His house is a dead thing that weighs him
down”). Following this, a series of intercalated poems and prose passages explore the
dreams and disintegrative impact of city life. Here, as in the first section, are menGGray_c04.indd 485ray_c 04 .indd 485 8 8/1/2011 7:54:03 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 03 AM