A Long Way From Home.pdf - Site de Thomas - Free

introduction • xxv
art” and instead embraced the idea that “whenever literature and art are
good and great they leap over narrow group barriers and periods to
make a universal appeal.” When it came to the idea of proletarians writing
literature, he acknowledged that “it was much easier to talk about real
proletarians writing masterpieces than to find such masterpieces”(chapter
12). In other words, while he appreciated the community of proletarian
authors with which he identified himself, their literature still needed
to compete for the universal title of masterpiece.
In reality, however, McKay could not detach politics from aesthetics.
Contradicting his notion of universal masterpiece, he acknowledged
that audience and historical factors determined the aesthetic excellence
of literature, that aesthetics did not and could not exist in an apolitical
vacuum. 12 Indeed, the global acclaim for “If We Must Die” resulted in
large part from the way the poem tapped racial, class, and political anxieties
in the post–World War I era. He regarded it as one of the best
examples of the centrality of art to political action. 13
“If We Must Die,” a Shakespearean sonnet,“exploded” out of McKay
in 1919. 14 Reading the many black newspapers that recounted the
incessant racial strife and lynchings of blacks enraged McKay to no
end. Political agitation was evident on both national and international
fronts. During this year the summer was “red” in two senses, according
to Barbara Foley, “signifying at once the political repression of leftists
and the bloody suppression of black rebellion.” In March 1919,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin founded the Third Communist Internationale
(Comintern), rode Communism’s wave of popularity after the 1917
Russian Revolution, and declared the need for an intense, concerted
effort to globalize Communist thought. Later in the summer and
autumn of that year, hundreds of blacks died in at least thirty race riots.
Violence between blacks and whites ravaged many sections of the
United States, including Elaine, Arkansas; Chicago; and Washington,
D.C. The historical coincidence of these events underscored their ideological
coincidence. McKay wrote “If We Must Die” in this volatile
atmosphere, not simply in the romantic, peaceful cultural context
scholars have long used to characterize the Harlem Renaissance. 15
Therefore, to say, as countless scholars have, that “If We Must Die”
augured the Harlem Renaissance begs the question: Which “Harlem
Renaissance”? It is true that the publication of the poem coincided
with the end of World War I and the influx of black people and culture