The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay
Claude McKay (1890-1948) was born in Jamaica to "relatively
prosperous peasants" (Hathaway 489). In his youth he "studied
classical and British literary figures and philosophers as well
as science and theology" (Hathaway 489). McKay's earliest poetry
was written in traditional English forms, but later he was
encouraged by his mentor Walter Jekyll to write "dialect poetry
rooted in the island's folk culture" (Hathaway 489). His first
two volumes of poetry, {i}Songs of Jamaica{/i} (1912) and
{i}Constab Ballads{/i} (1912), are primarily written in dialect.
McKay immigrated to the United States in the fall of 1912, and
after studying agriculture at Tuskegee Institute and Kansas
State College, he moved to New York City in 1914 (Hathaway 490).
In New York, McKay became "increasingly involved with political
and literary radicals" (Hathaway 490). His third volume of
poetry, Spring in New Hampshire (1920), reflects his
changing political stance; his previous use of dialect is gone,
and the poems are divided between commentary of race relations
in America and nostalgic images of life in Jamaica (Hathaway
490). Dissatisfied with American leftist efforts to combat
racism, McKay escaped to the Soviet Union in 1922 and spent six
months traveling throughout the country, attending Communist
symposiums and lecturing on art and politics (Hathaway 490).
While in Russia, McKay "republished a series of articles he had
written for the Soviet press" under the title Negroes in
America (1923), which delivers a "Marxist interpretation of
the history of African Americans" (Hathaway 490).
In 1928, when McKay was recuperating from illness in France, he
published his first novel, Home to Harlem, which is his
most widely read work. Even though the novel describes the lower
class culture of Harlem, rather than middle class values,
Home to Harlem is inherently propagandistic. The central
theme of the novel is the internal conflict undergone by an
educated, intelligent African American (Stoff 133). Ray, through
his friendship with Jack, the 'natural, instinctive man',
realizes he has "been robbed by his 'white' education of the
ability to act freely and impulsively" (Stoff 133). According
to Stoff's interpretation of McKay's work, "only the instinctive
primitive can survive happily in white civilization, its
dehumanizing tendencies are irrelevant to his innately free
existence" (Stoff 134). While McKay's politics and philosophy
are at odds with most of the Renaissance elders, he still uses
his art for propaganda purposes, in this case to condemn the
African American intellectuals who have traded their own culture
for the middle class values of white America. In his last novel
Banana Bottom (1933), McKay offers a Jamaican heroine
whom is adopted by white missionaries (Stoff 142). Unlike Ray,
Bita Plant, "who rejects the civilized value system but not her
intellect, can move easily from one world to another without
impairing either instinct or intellect" (Stoff 142).
Like the characters in his novels, McKay himself was "forever
seeking fulfillment of his desires to escape color-consciousness
and recapture lost innocence" (Stoff 146). McKay, in his later
life, stated that "As a child, I was never interested in
different kinds of races or tribes. People were just people to
me" (Stoff 128). It was in America that he became aware of his
race consciousness through bigotry and discrimination. McKay,
for the rest of his life, strove to transcend racial boundaries,
but ultimately failed. Many other Renaissance writers, such as
Jessie Fauset, would also explore racial boundaries.
Bibliography
Hathaway, Heather. "Claude McKay." The Oxford Companion to
African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews,
Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997. 489-90.
Stoff, Michael B. "Claude McKay and the Cult of Primitivism."
The Harlem Renaissance Remembered. Ed. Arna Bontemps. New
York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972. 126-146.