Introduction
Since ancient times, the word artist has acquired different connotations. It has been quite an inquiry to define it, and even with the most meticulous meanings, the word still has kept its mysterious singularity to define the whole purpose of a man. Being an artist is more than just a philosophy, and the concept belongs to a vast range of abilities of self expression. It has been said, that one of the most common abilities is that of being able to reinterpret experiences, societal pressures, adversities during childhood, successes and failures, and translate them into a creative form attractive to others (Nguyen, 2011). This specific ability is directly associated with the uniqueness the artist will start to develop during his career, and also constitute an important part in their formation as a person as they will be able to open and expose themselves into the fierce criticism or affable acceptance of the rest of the world.
Two distinctive artists that have been characterized by their geniality and endowment of expressing their beliefs against the rules of morality and concealment of the puritan society are Langston Hughes and Tennessee Williams. Hughes, born in February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, was among the most principal and controversial writers in segregated America. As a child, he struggle with the separation of his parents, marked by constant moving and crisscrossing between the two. However, as the great artist he is, he took the difficult circumstances he lived and the cruelty he experienced during his life and transformed it into the source for his ingenuity. In addition, the historical context in which the artist grew up was filled with economic tribulations, segregation against black, war, and ...
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... Williams suffered of abuses from his fathers, who became increasingly aggressive as he and his sister grew older. In addition, his sister who was his best friend was lobotomized by his parents due to her constant mental breakdowns. This happening affected Williams profoundly because the person he loved so much would never be the same again. Afterwards, the artist became addicted to alcohol and barbiturates, and suffered continues breakdowns. At one point in his life, he thought he had breast cancer and had a surgery. However, the surgery proved that it wasn't breast cancer but a lump due to his heavy drinking. To complete his misery, the love of his life Frank Merlo died of cancer at an early age, leaving him an emptiness he would never be able to fill again. There was no doubt that his life was falling apart, but his writing never stopped to be grandiose.
It’s no secret that inequality and racial discriminations were high back in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Langston Hughes was able to use his work to counterattack this way of thinking in America. He not only led a movement, but also set an example for others to follow. In the poems I stated above, you can tell the Harlem Renaissance influences on his
“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” –Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry is one of the world’s greatest wonders. It is a way to tell a story, raise awareness of a social or political issue, an expression of emotions, an outlet, and last but not least it is an art. Famous poet Langston Hughes uses his poetry as a musical art form to raise awareness of social injustices towards African-Americans during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Although many poets share similarities with one another, Hughes creatively crafted his poetry in a way that was only unique to him during the 1920’s. He implemented different techniques and styles in his poetry that not only helped him excel during the 1920’s, but has also kept him relative in modern times. Famous poems of his such as a “Dream Deferred,” and “I, Too, Sing America” are still being studied and discussed today. Due to the cultural and historical events occurring during the 1920’s Langston Hughes was able to implement unique writing characteristics such as such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues that is demonstrative of his writing style. Langston Hughes use of distinct characteristics such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues helped highlight the plights of African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance Era.
When reading the literature of Langston Hughes, I cant help but feeling energetically charged and inspired. Equality, freedom, empowerment, renaissance, justice and perseverance, are just a taste of the subject matter Hughes offers. He amplifies his voice and beliefs through his works which are firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling. Hughes committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans. His early love for the “wonderful world of books” was sparked by loneliness and parental neglect. He would soon lose himself in the works of Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence, Carl Sandburg and other literary greats which would lead to enhancing his ever so growing style and grace of oeuvre. Such talent, character, and willpower could only come from one’s life experiences. Hughes had allot to owe to influences such as his grandmother and great uncle John Mercer Langston - a famous African American abolitionist. These influential individuals helped mold Hughes, and their affect shines brightly through his literary works of art.
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer and businessman, and Carrie Mercer (Langston) Hughes, a teacher. The couple separated shortly thereafter. James Hughes was, by his son’s account, a cold man who hated blacks (and hated himself for being one), feeling that most of them deserved their ill fortune because of what he considered their ignorance and laziness. Langston’s youthful visits to him there, although sometimes for extended periods, were strained and painful. He attended Columbia University in 1921-22, and when he died he, left everything to three elderly women who had cared for him in his last illness, and Langston was not even mentioned in his will.
R: Comprone, Raphael. 2005. Poetry, Desire, And Fantasy in the Harlem Renaissance. University Press of America 2005
Langston Hughes was not afraid to express his blackness through his writing. A reader can see in Hughes’ essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,Hughes expresses his dismay on how if a poet does not want to identify as a negro poet, then
Throughout African American history different individuals have made a significant impact that would forever change things. In the 1900s Harlem became the governing body for the birth of jazz and blues. This also open door for a new era called the Harlem Renaissance. During this time a poet name Langston Hughes was introduced. Langston Hughes created poetry that stood out to people. It had that jazzy vibe mixed with articulate language of choice. He could seize the minds of people with the soulfulness of his writing, and depict the struggles of what was going on with blacks. Some individuals see Langston Hughes as the inspired poet of the Harlem Renaissance time. Mr. Hughes used his body of work to compare and contrast things to create the groundwork for the Harlem Renaissance period.
Poetry was a big part of the Harlem Renaissance, especially black poetry. Poetry helped people get their emotions out and provided an outlet for many new and old African-Americans, and for Africans just arriving in the United States in Harlem. The Renaissance was filled with great poets including the great Langston Hughes. Hughes is the author of his own book The Weary Blues and the writer of the poems Not without Laughter and The Way of the White Folks. He believed in the beauty of the Africans, as stated on Shmoop “Hughes knew that black was beautiful.” He won the Harlem gold medal for literature for his literary work and helped shape the artists of the Harlem Renaissances contributions to the movement. Hughes was also the founder of three theaters meant as outlets for black actors and dramatists. The names of these theaters are the New Negro Theater, Langston Hughes Preforming Arts, and Black Arts (“Langston Hughes Founded Theaters”). Langston Hughes was a very popular and
During the 1920's and 30’s, America went through a period of astonishing artistic creativity, the majority of which was concentrated in one neighborhood of New York City, Harlem. The creators of this period of growth in the arts were African-American writers and other artists. Langston Hughes is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the period know as the Harlem Renaissance. With the use of blues and jazz Hughes managed to express a range of different themes all revolving around the Negro. He played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance, helping to create and express black culture. He also wrote of political views and ideas, racial inequality and his opinion on religion. I believe that Langston Hughes’ poetry helps to capture the era know as the Harlem Renaissance.
The contradiction of being both black and American was a great one for Hughes. Although this disparity was troublesome, his situation as such granted him an almost begged status; due to his place as a “black American” poet, his work was all the more accessible. Hughes’ black experience was sensationalized. Using his “black experience” as a façade, however, Hughes was able to obscure his own torments and insecurities regarding his ambiguous sexuality, his parents and their relationship, and his status as a public figure.
James Mercer Langston Hughes, commonly known as Langston Hughes, was an influential African American writer during the 1920s, a time marked by pervasive racial discrimination. He is best known for his contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. Despite a difficult childhood, Hughes overcame his struggles and became a renowned poet of the Renaissance, a legacy that will continue to inspire future generations. Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, divorced when he was very young.
Langston Hughes was probably the most well-known literary force during the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the first known black artists to stress a need for his contemporaries to embrace the black jazz culture of the 1920s, as well as the cultural roots in Africa and not-so-distant memory of enslavement in the United States. In formal aspects, Hughes was innovative in that other writers of the Harlem Renaissance stuck with existing literary conventions, while Hughes wrote several poems and stories inspired by the improvised, oral traditions of black culture (Baym, 2221). Proud of his cultural identity, but saddened and angry about racial injustice, the content of much of Hughes’ work is filled with conflict between simply doing as one is told as a black member of society and standing up for injustice and being proud of one’s identity. This relates to a common theme in many of Hughes’ poems that dignity is something that has to be fought for by those who are held back by segregation, poverty, and racial bigotry. The poems “Visitors to the Black Belt”, “Note on Commercial Theatre”, “Democracy”, and “Theme for English B” by Hughes all illustrate the theme of staying true to one’s cultural identity and refusing to compromise it despite the constant daily struggle it meant to be black in an Anglo centric society.
Hughes explains the awareness of the black uprising and racial breakdown stories of submission essential to African Americans about the time of slavery. Weakening the traditional idea of what negroes were forced to think their lives were like for the past three hundred years. Hughes’s Harlem Renaissance poetry not only condemns white oppression, but it also disproves the condition of being lower class which was pointed toward black people being left out of human history. After the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes left his trends of poetry to move on to a Marxist art prioritizing social and political narratives that reflected on the interest of his people. Hughes’s shift from folklore poetry to revolutionary poetry in the 1930’s, is explained in his poem “White Man” where racial conflicts between blacks and whites is replaced with class struggle of most economic exploration and capitalism
Langston Hughes is one of the most famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Mississippi in 1902 and later moved to Ohio where he attended Central High School. When Hughes graduated high school he went to Mexico to visit his father and while crossing the Mississippi River he was inspired to write “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was his first published poem when he was eighteen years old. When Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 the Harlem Renaissance was in “full swing”. In 1925 at the age of twenty-three Hughes received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues”, Hughes was famous for incorporating blues and jazz rhymes into his poetry, which is what he did in his poem “The Weary Blues”. Hughes was at a banquet where he received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues” and was asked by a man named Carl Van Vechten if he had enough poems to make a book. Hughes said yes and Van Vechten promised that he would find Hughes ...
Art is life in motion. Art is everywhere in life and influences peoples’ daily lives. Art is an expression of a person's interior thought, a revelation of the imaginative process. An individual can deem art in many diverse ways, such as it helping people to convey their sentiments and bringing about self-assurance. Art can take several forms, which can be through video games, music, text, painting, and other works of fine art. Therefore, for one to become a great artist, one needs a sense of empathy and the vivid knowledge to compose excelling and great art. Empathy is necessary for a sensible, imaginative, and expressive process to produce art and knowledge helps to improve the artistic and imaginative process.