Countee Cullen's poem Four Epitaphs (VB 157) is a set of four made up epitaphs to people that seem totally unrelated to each other. There is one to his grandmother, one to John Keats, one to Laurence Dunbar, and one to "a lady I know." The epitaph to the grandmother discusses how the grandmother hold a seed, imagining how her offspring with live as her in the coming generations. The John Keats epitaph is mocking Keats' flowery and old-English type writing, while also commenting on Keats' gravestone message, which says, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," meaning that he will not be remembered. Cullen twists those words and says that Keats will definitely be remembered because of the fact that Death himself was burned by fire of Keats. The epitaph for Paul Laurence Dunbar is a direct allusion to Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask," another poem we read in class. This epitaph is acknowledging the struggle that Dunbar depicts in his poem and commending his honor in continuing to stand tall with the mask on. The final epitaph is very different from the others. It is a criticism of the notion that colored angels will have to serve white angels in heaven.
It is interesting that Cullen chose to put these four people together. The reader is assumed to be familiar with Keats and Dunbar, and they are familiar with their own version of the grandmother and lady. There are two women and two men, two black and two white, two famous and two unknown. They all are viewed differently by Cullen. Humble, ,concealed, and racist broadly cover all of the people in society, from Cullen's perspective. Even though the lad y is unspecific, we all someone (at least) who is convinced that racism is based is in religious and/or scientific truth. This collection of epitaphs generalizes all of society with four people. It was no mistake that cullen chose people this different.
Would Ray Durem call Countee Cullen a "pale poet," based on his description in the poem, "To the Pale Poets"? Durem defines a pale poet as someone who doesn't touch the more serious and painful matters of reality because they are afraid to scare people and get blood on the paper they are writing on. Cullen respects the grandmother and uses flowery language to discuss Keats. With the third epitaph, the paleness tarts to fade. No important matters or harsh realities are discussed in the third epitaph, but it does honor and acknowledge an important poem that is most definitely not pale. The fourth epitaph is pointing out an unfortunate reality about the ingrained racist beliefs in society. I think that Durem would call Cullen a pale poet because even though he is talking about reality and real issues in the last two epitaphs, there are no gruesome images or things that would be difficult to read.
Cullen certainly isn't a "protest poet" in the narrow sense of the term--these poems aren't designed to generate outrage or social criticism, and as "epitaphs," we shouldn't expect them to. But there is a connection to Ellison here, and his claim that Hemingway was at least as significant an influence on him as Richard Wright. Does it make a writer "insufficiently black" to acknowledge digging Keats as much as Cullen? The "flowery language" he uses for Keats in this short poem is actually an allusion to Keats' own desired epitaph for his own grave (he died very young, I think 23?)--"Here lies one whose name is writ in water." Cullen is testifying to the fact that Keats' "name" (and poetry) has not only survived but been a formative influence on a poet whom Keats likely couldn't have imagined, living in early 19th century England. In terms of Durem's "pale poets" standard, it's true that Keats is the kind of poet who could write a ripping poem on a leaf dangling from a branch--he's certainly the kind of romantic poet Durem probably has in mind. But does it make Cullen "pale" to acknowledge his influence as a lyricist? His fourth epitaph, as you say, treats a smug, privileged, racist lady as "already dead," as if her calcified and antiquated aristocratic views can't be changed, even though she's the only "living" person in this group. This maybe isn't "protest poetry," but it isn't avoiding the subject of race altogether.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to decide whether the poem is supposed to be a protest poem or not, and it seems like there's a lot going on beneath the surface that isn't immediately obvious. One of the things I thought was interesting about this poem was how he imitated the styles of each of the poets, and it seemed like just a nice tribute to these people he admired, and then he added in the part about the white woman at the end seemingly randomly. I'm honestly still a little confused about why Cullen wrote the poem the way he did, but I think it can still be a protest poem even without intense or gruesome imagery. The last epitaph about the woman was almost subtle, but when I was reading this poem I still found it really powerful and meaningful in combination with the rest of the poem.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't go as far as to say that this poem is "pale". I think the sole purpose here is to simply describe facets of our society, depicting how diverse it truly is. From what I can understand, there doesn't seem to be a real argumentative purpose behind the poem, at no point is there any real criticism made, let alone an alternate solutions being suggestive. That being said, I don't think there really is a protest to be made here, eliminating the possibility in my mind that Cullen was sugar coating an argument of some kind.
ReplyDeleteCullen was known for being against the use of propaganda in his own works--similarly to Ellison, he believed that literature with the sole purpose of political persuasion dilutes the potential art of the piece. I disagree with this, but it shouldn't be necessary for African American writers to focus only on racial injustices. If Cullen WERE a 'pale poet' (which I think is false, as race is a prominent aspect to most of his poems), why should there necessarily be anything wrong with that?
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