The Congo and Other Poems Part 1

The Congo and Other Poems.

by Vachel Lindsay.

Introduction. By Harriet Monroe

When 'Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago in the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay, was, quite appropriately, one of its first discoveries. It may be not quite without significance that the issue of January, 1913, which led off with 'General William Booth Enters into Heaven', immediately followed the number in which the great poet of Bengal, Rabindra Nath Tagore, was first presented to the American public, and that these two antipodal poets soon appeared in person among the earliest visitors to the editor.

For the coming together of East and West may prove to be the great event of the approaching era, and if the poetry of the now famous Bengali laureate garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of his ancient race, so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois troubadour brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric message of this newer world.

It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty to the people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy with their aims and ideals which he has achieved through vagabondish wanderings in the Middle West. And we may permit time to decide how far he expresses their emotion. But it may be opportune to emphasize his plea for poetry as a song art, an art appealing to the ear rather than the eye. The first section of this volume is especially an effort to restore poetry to its proper place--the audience-chamber, and take it out of the library, the closet. In the library it has become, so far as the people are concerned, almost a lost art, and perhaps it can be restored to the people only through a renewal of its appeal to the ear.

I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note which accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed in 'Poetry'. He said:

"Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, 'What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by 'the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume on 'The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition of the lyric: 'With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term. It included the crooning of the nurse to the child... the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor... the formal ode sung by the poet.

In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes, music was the handmaid of verse.... The poet himself composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured because Iophon had a.s.sisted him in the musical setting of some of his dramas.' Here is pictured a type of Greek work which survives in American vaudeville, where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung, the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending upon the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer.

"I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader. He must be Iophon. And he can easily be Iophon if he brings to bear upon the piece what might be called the Higher Vaudeville imagination....

"Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that after two or three readings each line will suggest its own separate touch of melody to the reader who has become accustomed to the cadences.

Let him read what he likes read, and sing what he likes sung."

It was during this same visit in Chicago, at 'Poetry's' banquet on the evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay by addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow craftsman", and by saying of 'General Booth':

"This poem is stripped bare of ornament; it has an earnest simplicity, a strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, 'There is no excellent beauty without strangeness.'"

This recognition from the distinguished Irish poet tempts me to hint at the cosmopolitan aspects of such racily local art as Mr. Lindsay's. The subject is too large for a merely introductory word, but the reader may be invited to reflect upon it. If Mr. Lindsay's poetry should cross the ocean, it would not be the first time that our most indigenous art has reacted upon the art of older nations. Besides Poe--who, though indigenous in ways too subtle for brief a.n.a.lysis, yet pa.s.sed all frontiers in his swift, sad flight--the two American artists of widest influence, Whitman and Whistler, have been intensely American in temperament and in the special spiritual quality of their art.

If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message in Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet to discard the limitations of conventional form: if both were more free, more individual, than their contemporaries, this was the expression of their Americanism, which may perhaps be defined as a spiritual independence and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers. Foreign artists are usually the first to recognize this new tang; one detects the influence of the great dead poet and dead painter in all modern art which looks forward instead of back; and their countrymen, our own contemporary poets and painters, often express indirectly, through French influences, a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly.

A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang is confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist", when in his article on 'Futurism and the Theatre', in 'The Mask', he urges the revolutionary value of "American eccentrics", citing the fundamental primitive quality in their vaudeville art. This may be another statement of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation between the poet and his audience, for a return to the healthier open-air conditions, and immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks and of primitive nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found, if the world only knew it, in the wonderful song-dances of the Hopis and others of our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure, in the quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville. They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and audience, which may make possible once more the a.s.sertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art.

It is a movement strong enough to persist in spite of extravagances and absurdities; strong enough, it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and revitalize the world.

It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that movement that it is, I think, important.

Harriet Monroe.

First Section ~~ Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.

The Congo

A Study of the Negro Race

I. Their Basic Savagery

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, # A deep rolling ba.s.s. # Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in derision.

# More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. # THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

Then along that riverbank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in files; Then I heard the boom of the blood-l.u.s.t song # A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. # And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"

# With a philosophic pause. # A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon.

Death is an Elephant, # Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. # Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible.

BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill the white men, HOO, HOO, HOO.

# Like the wind in the chimney. # Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost Burning in h.e.l.l for his hand-maimed host.

Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in h.e.l.l.

Listen to the creepy proclamation, Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay, Blown past the marsh where the b.u.t.terflies play:-- "Be careful what you do, # All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy.

Light accents very light. Last line whispered. # Or Mumbo-Jumbo, G.o.d of the Congo, And all of the other G.o.ds of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."

II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits

# Rather shrill and high. # Wild c.r.a.p-shooters with a whoop and a call Danced the juba in their gambling-hall And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, And guyed the policemen and laughed them down With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

# Read exactly as in first section. # THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

# Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.

Keep as light-footed as possible. # A negro fairyland swung into view, A minstrel river Where dreams come true.

The ebony palace soared on high Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.

The inlaid porches and cas.e.m.e.nts shone With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.

And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore At the baboon butler in the agate door, And the well-known tunes of the parrot band That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.

# With pomposity. # A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came Through the agate doorway in suits of flame, Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.

And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call And danced the juba from wall to wall.

# With a great deliberation and ghostliness. # But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song:-- "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."...

# With overwhelming a.s.surance, good cheer, and pomp. # Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer s.h.i.+ne, And tall silk hats that were red as wine.

# With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. # And they pranced with their b.u.t.terfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the ja.s.samine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black feet.

And the couples railed at the chant and the frown Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.

(O rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile.)

The cake-walk royalty then began To walk for a cake that was tall as a man To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"

# With a touch of negro dialect, and as rapidly as possible toward the end. # While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, And sang with the scalawags prancing there:-- "Walk with care, walk with care, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, G.o.d of the Congo, And all of the other G.o.ds of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.

Beware, beware, walk with care, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM."

# Slow philosophic calm. # Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile.

III. The Hope of their Religion

# Heavy ba.s.s. With a literal imitation of camp-meeting racket, and trance. # A good old negro in the slums of the town Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.

Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.

Beat on the Bible till he wore it out Starting the jubilee revival shout.

And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs, And they all repented, a thousand strong From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room With "glory, glory, glory,"

And "Boom, boom, BOOM."

# Exactly as in the first section.