Langston Hughes

Life

From his true name, James Mercer Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes were born in Joplin in the Missouri from a mother professor, Carrie Langston Hughes and of James Nathaniel Hughes. After his divorce, the father of Langston emigrated initially with Cuba then with Mexico City because of the racism which it underwent in the United States. After the separation of his parents, the Langston young person left the family home to go to live at one of his grandmother, Mary Langston in Lawrence in the Kansas. Mary will insist enormously at Langston on the racial pride of the black people. After the death of his grandmother, it will live with family friends, James and Mary Reed during two years. This period of the life of Langston does not appear happy because in particular of an agitated life although it will influence the poet in becoming considerably. Later, it will join his mother with Lincoln in the Illinois which was remariée meanwhile for finally settling in Cleveland in the Ohio where it will follow its secondary education. .

At its school of Cleveland, Hughes will take part in the student newspaper and will write its first news, poetries and parts of Théâtre. It is during this period that he will discover his love for the books. Among the references of the young poet the American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar or the poet of Swedish origin appears Carl Sandburg. In 1919, Hughes will join his/her father in Mexico City for one short period characterized by tensions between the two men who will lead Langston to make several suicide attempts. After having finished its secondary education in June 1920, Langston will turn over to see his/her father in order to convince this one to finance its studies with the Université Columbia. However, the points of view of the two men diverge: while Langston sees writer, James, the father, hopes to see his son following a career of engineer. In spite of that the two men are able to agree and it is decided that Langston will study in Columbia as a long time as it will continue in parallel of the studies of engineering. Its studies in Columbia will appear relatively conclusive although it will décidéra into 1922 to leave the institution having sudden inter alia the Racisme of his comrades of course. Left its university, Langston will privilege the joys of the street of Harlem to its schooling.

To live, Langston thus cumulates the odd jobs as that of team-member on the S.S Malone which will furrow during the year 1923 the coasts of Western Africa and Europe. After a Parisian short stay, Hughes will turn over to Washington where it will join his mother. Again, Langston cumulates the odd jobs before becoming the personal assistant of the professor Carter G. Woodson with Association For the Study of the Life and the History of the People Afro-American or " Association for the Study off African American Life and History". Noncontent with the constraints imposed by professor Woodson, Langston will spend his time writing. It will leave finally its employment for that of waiter in a hotel where it will make the meeting of the poet Vachel Lindsay. Impressed by the few poems that Langston wants to show him well, Vachel wishes to see them publishing, although some of the poems of Hughes were already published in various magazines and its first collection in the process of finialisation.

Its studies at the University of Lincoln in Pennsylvania which it will begin at the end of the Twenties see sanctioned in 1943 by obtaining the American equivalent of the Doctorat in literature. Large traveller, it will multiply also forwardings throughout the world although feeling deeply harlémois in his heart.

Langston Hughes died at the 65 years age, the May 22nd 1967 with New York of the continuations of a cancer of the prostate. Its ashes were dispersed near the Center Arthur Schomberg for Research on the Black Culture located at Harlem (true English name: " Arthur Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture").

The sexual orientation of Langston was discussed a long time between attractions Bisexuelle or homosexual but it is commonly allowed today among its biographers that some of its poems " trahissaient" a obvious Homosexuality in the same way as another American poet, Walt Whitman.

Career

Carrying out its beginnings of writer as a journalist for the official journal of NAACP, The Crisis , Langston make publish in 1926 its first collection of poems The Weary Blues of which one is extracted from its poems most famous: The Negro Speaks Rivers or the Negro speaks about the rivers of which here a free translation:

I knew rivers:

I knew old rivers like the world and older

than the flow of human blood in the human veins.

My heart became as deep as the rivers. .

I bathed in Euphrate when the paddles were new.

I built my hut close to Congo and it rocked my sleep.

I contemplated the Nile and above I built the pyramids.

I heard the song of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln descended

to New-Orleans, and I saw his transfigured muddy tablecloths gold

with the setting sun.

I knew rivers:

old and dark Rivers.

My heart became as deep as the rivers. .

Major actor of the cultural movement of Harlem Renaissance which will see emerging a whole series of black artists, it will write in 1926 in the American political weekly magazine The Nation the text The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain that much regards as proclamation of black artistic engagement. Free translation:

the young Nègres artists create today with an aim of expressing

our own skin black, with our manner, without fear, nor shame

If the white are satisfied, we are charm. If they are not to it

that does not have importance. We know that we are beautiful. And ugly at the same time.

Tom-Tom cries, and Tom-Tom laughs. If the coloured persons

are satisfied, we are charm. If they are not it, their dissatisfaction

import little either. We build our temples for tomorrow,

extremely like we let us know how, and we are in front of the free mountain

inside us.

Langston depicts in its works of the life of the black proletarians divided between joys, disillusions, hope, etc the tinted whole of Jazz and Blues. Thus Hughes will say later: " I sought to include/understand and describe the life of the blacks in the United States and a way moved away, that of all humain". By its work, Hughes sought to show the important one of a " conscience noire" and of a cultural nationalism which plain the men rather than oppose them. This pride with thereafter taken again by many men of letters like Rumanian Jacques, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aime Césaire.

After the publication of multiple collections of Poetry S, parts of Theater, tests or of Scenario S for the Cinema, Hughes undertakes the drafting of two autobiographies under the encouragements of his/her friends: The Big Sea which will be translated into French under the title the Great depths by the editions Pierre Seghers in 1947 and I Wonder ace I Wander , that one not translated.

In years 50-60, the popularity of Huges among the Afro-Américains authors declined at the same time as this one developed throughout the world. It was reproached to him for not having modernized its speech of the " pride noire" compared to the evolution of the condition of the blacks in the United States which improved at this period. Nevertheless there remains a model for good many writers.

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