The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Countee Cullen
Like Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen is also "something of a
mysterious figure" (Early 194). The place of his birth is
unknown, and not much is known of his childhood, except that he
was adopted by Frederick Cullen, a Methodist minister, and his
wife sometime before 1918. Cullen was enormously popular in
literary circles, and the Negro intelligentsia hailed him as a
"major crossover literary figure" since "Here was a black
man with considerable academic training who could, in effect,
write 'white' verse - ballads, sonnets, quatrains, and the like,
much in the manner of Keats and the British Romantics, (albeit,
on more than one occasion, tinged with racial concerns) with
genuine skill and compelling power" (Early 195).
Thus, Cullen was viewed as a man who could be "assimilated"
while still maintaining his "racial self-consciousness" (Early
195). It may be, however, that Cullen didn't manifest a struggle
with his identity as an African American in the world of white
intellectualism because he had a more pressing identity
conflict: that of his unorthodox sexual desires (homosexuality)
against the Christian insistence of heterosexuality.
Cullen embraced a particular form of public "blackness" in his
position as poet, but that very public position, which he
eagerly wished to maintain, conflicted with a very different
form of "blackness" embodied in his private desires for black
men. The tension between these different modes of being produced
the creative tension out of which much of Cullen's poetry was
born. (Powers 664)
Cullen employed many themes in his five volumes of poetry:
Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of
the Brown Girl (1927), The Black Christ and Other
Poems (1929), and The Medea and Some Poems (1935).
However, the majority of Cullen's poetry, in the style of
"traditional lyric poets" of English romanticism, deal with love
and thwarted love and sexual desire and sexual repression
(Canaday 107).
This conflict between "public responsibility and private desire"
is explored in Cullen's "Heritage" and "The Black Christ." Both
protagonists in these poems experience an internal struggle to
express their sexual longings while being constrained to repress
desire by society's mandated moral propriety. In "Heritage," the
protagonist resolves to "Quench my pride and cool my blood /
Lest I perish in the flood" (Powers 667). The tragic
consequences of fulfillment of sexual desire are exhibited in
the poem "The Black Christ." Through Jim, we can see a struggle
between sexual desire and social propriety: While
the narrator in "Heritage" struggles against the expression of
desire, finally killing it to preserve his body, Jim expresses
his desire openly and defiantly. Sexual expression becomes a
means of challenge, of throwing down his "gage." He is lynched
in short order. (Powers 673)
Like the novels of Fauset and Larsen, Cullen's poetry explores
such romantic themes as desire and loss, transgressing racial,
social, and sexual boundaries, and creating a sense of self.
Langston Hughes will also explore many of these themes, but his
poetic style was not based on classical English forms. Rather he
uses black vernacular and the rhythm of jazz and blues to
construct the melody of his poetry.
Bibliography
Canaday, Nicholas Jr. "Major Themes in the Poetry of Countee
Cullen." The Harlem Renaissance Remembered. Ed. Arna
Bontemps. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972. 103-125.
Early, Gerald. "Countee Cullen." The Oxford Companion to
African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews,
Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997. 194-96.