This section contains 5,214 words (approx. 18 pages at 300 words per page) |
![]() |
SOURCE: "Countee Cullen and the Harlem Renaissance" and "The Racial Poet," in Countee Cullen, Twayne Publishers, 1984, pp. 1-12, 13-24.
In the following excerpt, Shucard argues that Cullen naturally created race dominated poetry despite his intellectual intent to place artistry above all other concerns.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body….
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging, he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He...
This section contains 5,214 words (approx. 18 pages at 300 words per page) |
![]() |