Indiana State University

Cane as Blues
Author(s): Benjamin F. McKeever
Source: Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jul., 1970), pp. 61-63
Published by: St. Louis University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041353 .
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 CANE AS BLUES

A pregnant excerpt from Jean Toomer's tacit certainty which is Life--life in

classic contains this image: all its comedy and tragedy, human and
pathos, soul and blues.
Oracular For comedy is said to be life viewed
Redolent of fermenting syrup at a distance, while tragedy is life sees
Purple of the dusk close at hand; life is supposed to be
Deep-rooted cane comedy to the man who thinks, and tragedy
to the man who feels. Cane is a vision
To be oracular is to be prophetic, of Life. But Toomer's black exposure
for an oracle is not simply a, messenger gives him a different perspective. For
but a. harbinger. The oracle vouchsafes Toomer's Cane is the blues.
a, prediction which is not merely a fore-
a way of dealing Ellison explains in Shadow & Act
cast but a talisman,
with the fate foreseen. Cane is oracular, that "the blues is an impulse to keep
the painful details and episodes of a
documenting as it does a Southern milieu,
brutal experience alive in one's aching
naming a certain ma.laise; but proffering
consciousness, to finger its jagged
only the alembic of Experience coupled
with the vision of the artist. grain and transcend it, not by the con-
solation of philosophy but by squeezing
Cane is "redolent," indeed, resplen- from it a near-tragic, near-comic
dent with the imagery of Georgia., and
with the burden of human history that lyricism" (p. 90).
What Ellison says about the blues is
this spiritual/physical region lives. an appropriate of Cane, "an
description
Georgia. is the "blood-burning moon"
chronicle of personal
"the Dixie Pike autobiographical
rising to illuminate Cane
catastrophe expressed lyrically."
(which) has grown from a. goat path in is not the autobiography of a man, but
Africa." Georgia. is also: rather the chronicle of the fate of an
idea, "an idea whose time has come."
. . . A feast of moon and men
and barking hounds, Cane is autobiographical because it
An orgy for some genius of the represents the apotheosis of one man's
South attempt to bear witness to the reality
With blood-hot eyes and cane- and the power of an idea. The idea, that
lipped scented mouth, the Negro is not an apprentice to equalit
Surprised in making folk-songs but a journeyman in suffering. The idea
from soul sounds . . that the choice is always and everywhere
between freedom and death.
And Georgia, is the blues, ". . An ever- Cane is the oracle of this idea,
lasting song, a singing tree,/Caroling offered in blues. It contains the blues
softly souls of slavery,. . . of Karintha, a madonna bereft of a, child
The blues is not a state of chronic who engages then imprisons "this interest
melancholia but a. mood ebony for a, con- of the male, who wishes to ripen a
dition which can only be described as growing thing too soon"; the blues of
chaos. This mood, this attitude of mind, Avey, the "orphan-woman" whose "emotions
signifies man's attempt in the words of had overflowed into paths that dissipated
Ralph Ellison, "to endow his life's inci- them"; the blues of Becky, the outcast
dents with communicable significance." white woman who had two Negro sons, and
Toomer appears to be replete with died in a "solitude crowded with loneli-
questions and bereft of answers about ness"; and the blues of Carma, a beloved
the history and destiny of Black humanity. infidel whose primal strength and passion
However, the reader is surfeited with drove her husband to murder and then to
symbols which upon examination yield a the chaingang.

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 Cane describes the blues of Fern, a they are to meet. Kabnis, a pro-
veritable black Medusa--one look into mise of a soil-soaked beauty; up-
whose eyes turned men into slaves who rooted, thinning out. Suspended
could never fill the loveless void that a few feet above the soil whose
was her life; and also the blues of touch would resurrect him. Arm's
Esther, the virgin aged-in-youth whose length removed from him whose
infatuation for a picaresque/quixotic will to help. . . . There is
King Barlo rests upon her like an incubus a swift intuitive interchange of
until his return when she realizes that consciousness. Kabnis has a
he can only offer her cheap desire and sudden need to rush into the arms
ersatz satisfaction. of this man. His eyes call,
Perhaps the most telltale blues is "Brother." And then a savage,
that of Kabnis, the protagonist in the cynical twistabout within him
novella written like a play that climaxes mocks his impulse and streng-
Cane. "Kabnis" rehearses the fate of a thens him to repulse Lewis.
"dream deferred," an inanimate idea held (pp. 191-192)
by a weakling idealist, trapped in Ham- Kabnis cannot embrace Lewis and, thereby,
letesque stasis.
accept himself. He knows intimately,
"Kabnis" is the portrait of the artist what the Black Experience
inescapably
as a northern Negro teaching school in has been; but this knowledge had merely
Georgia. Here is the black artist as driven him to cynicism and dissipation.
educator who can only intellectualize his Lewis declares later, "Life has al-
blues. For example, Kabnis describes his
ready told him [Kabnis7 more than he is
alienation in the South in terms of "lone- It has given him in
capable of knowing.
liness, dumbness, awful, intangible excess of what he can receive. I have
oppression" (p. 162); and he feels him- been offered. Stuff in his stomach
self to be "an atom of dust in agony on
curdled, and he vomited me" (p. 200).
a hillside." the link between Kabnis
Nevertheless,
The blues refrain, "sometimes I and Lewis is represented in the person
feel like a motherless child," is reiter- of Father John, "gray-bearded, gray-
ated by his calling himself "Earth's
haired, prophetic, immobile"; Father John
child,' "Bastardy . . me"; and by his is a blind, deaf black man in the twi-
designating God as "a profligate red-
light of life. Lewis originally calls
nosed man about town" (p. 161). Kabnis John "father," but he is the spiritual
exclaims, "A bastard son has got a and metaphorical father of Kabnis as
right to curse his maker. God." Never- well. In the dirt basement of an arti-
theless, on the debris of his despair, san's workshop which is his corner of
Kabnis must build phoenix-like his the world, Father John appears as a
character. "Black Vulcan, a mute John the Baptist
"Through Ramsay (a prototype of the of a new religion--or a tongue-tied
Southern white) the whole white South shadow of an old" (p. 211).
weighs down upon him" (p. 201). And and denies
However, Kabnis rejects
Kabnis is "burdened with an impotent that "he aint my
the old man insisting
pain" (p. 205). past. My ancestors were Southern blue-
Lewis, a prototype of the artist as bloods--" Then he admits, "Aint much
leader, organizer, activist, who is a
difference between black and blue," which
colleague of Kabnis, is "a tall wiry is a virtual equation of blackness with
copper-colored man, thirty perhaps. His the blues.
mouth and eyes suggest purpose guided by the climatic indict-
Lewis supplies
an adequate intelligence. He is what a. ment of Kabnis by saying to him:
stronger Kabnis might have been, and in
an odd faint way resembles him" (p 189). . . . Cant hold them, can
During a conversation, Lewis turns you? Master; slave. Soil; and
his eyes to Kabnis: the overarching heavens. Dusk;
dawn. They fight and bastardize
In the instant of their you. The sun tint of your cheeks,
shifting, a vision of the life flame of the great season's

62
 multi-colored leaves, tarnished, consciousness of having been more sinned
burned. shredded: easily against than sinner.
Split,
burned. No use. . . . (p. 218) Kabnis is born into the midst of an
oppressed and persecuted people. He
Thus Lewis delivers surrealistically a is one of them--a part of them and apart
cryptic commentary on the South's "peculiar from them. He knows the unique ex-
institution." perience of being the rejected and des-
Kabnis confesses in his own defense: pised of men: sometimes one feels like
a "motherless child" and other times
. . . I've been shapin words like a "manchild in the promised land"
after a design that branded here. on the eve of the death of God, when
Know whats here? M soul. Ever only one's enemies have received the
heard o that? Th hell y have. uncovenanted revelation of God's demise.
Been shapin words t fit m soul. Thus it is difficult to "sing the
Never told y that before, did I? Lord's song in a. strange land." But he
Thought I couldnt talk. I'11 must decide to be or not to be a man.
tell y. I've been shapin words; Consequently, Kabnis recognizes that "a
ah, but sometimes theyre beautiful soul like mine cant pin itself onto a
an golden an have a taste that wagon wheel an satisfy itself in spinnin
makes them fine t roll over with round" (p. 234).
y tongue. For he knows and he feels that a
man's life is not supposed to be a
Cant keep a good man down. chronicle of personal catastrophe but
Those words I was tellin y about, rather a celebration: perhaps a poem, a
they wont fit int th mold thats song, a dance, a bacchanalia, a satur-
branded on m soul. Rhyme, y see? nalia, a romantic interlude before the
Poet, too. Bad rhyme. Bad poet. final elegy. However, the difference
Somethin else youve learned tnight. between the possibility of black life and
Lewis dont know it all, an I'm the reality of black life is the blues.
atellin y. Ugh. Th form thats Yet the blues idiom itself celebrates
burned int my soul is some twisted Life; it celebrates the will to endure
awful thing that crept in from a and the necessity of survive, to "keep
dream, a godam nightmare, an wont on keepin on."
stay still unless I feed it An Kabnis does not realize the possi-
it lives on words. Not beautiful bility of saving himself and the oppor-
words. God Almighty no. Miss- tunity of redeeming his ideal until the
hapen, split-gut, tortured, twisted Sphinx-like Father John vouchsafes that
words. . . White folks feed it "the white folks sinned when they made
cause their looks are words. the Bible lie," which is to say that
Niggers, black niggers feed it "things are not what they seem,"
cause theyre evil an their looks Perhaps black folks are not the
are words. Yallar niggers feed prodigal descendants of Cain; maybe they
it. This whole damn bloated represent the personae of the "eternal
purple country feeds it cause its Adam in the new world garden," the only
goin down t hell in a holy avalanche true sons of God. For black folks are
of words. I want to feed th soul-- the only people, at this time, in this
I know what that is; th preachers place, who have paid their dues in blues.
dont--but I've got to feed it. . .
(pp. 223-224)
Benjamin F. McKeever
He explains, "Mind me, th only sin is Pittsburgh,
whats done against th soul. Th whole Pennsylvania
world is a conspiracy t sin, especially
in America, an against me. I'm th victim
of their sin. I'm what sin is" (p. 236).
Here we have poignantly presented the
datum of the Black Experience: the

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