Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

l~oohs I~ofed (Continued from page 52)
78
perhaps adaptiveness of present forms . Black consciousness, in any
case, can be a conscious or an unconscious effort in blackwriting (if
one is black it's very difficult to write otherwise) . Although, we
must understand, there will be a pervasive presence of every and anything
that is indigenous to the Afro-American people . Blackart is a
functional art ; it's what the Africans call a collective art . Our art is
committed to humanism . It commits the artist. "They commit him in
a future which then becomes present for him, an integral part of himself
." The blackwriter/artisan works out a concrete situation which
means that "he commits not only himself but his race, his geography .
his history as well. He uses the materials that are at hand and the
everyday things which make up the texture of his life, rejecting the
anecdotal, for this does not commit because it is without significance."
Blackart, as is African art, is perishable. This, too, is why it is functional
. Like, a poem is written not to be read and put aside but to
actually become a part of the giver and receiver ; to perform some
function, to move the emotions, to become a part of the dance or to
simply make one act . Whereas, the work itself is perishable the style
and spirit of the creation is maintained and is used to produce new
works . Here we can clearly see that art for art's sake is something
out of a Shakespearian dream ; it does not exist . All blackart is social
(art for people's sake) .
An example of good blackwriting now in existence is an anthology
called Black Fire, edited by LeRoi Jones (Ameer Baraha) and Larry
Neal (Morrow, 670 pp ., $8 .95) . Black Fire includes between its
jackets a convincing collection of Afro-American literature . Its 70 contributors,
plus its editors, move to define and to present a forceful
concentration of blackwriting with essays, poems, short stories, and
plays . This is not to say that every author represented in Black Fire
has contributed a work of art in accordance with my standards. But
it is to say that every selection of work in Black Fire is significant .
Significant, in that I feel that the test of a good writer/poet is not necessarily
in what he says, or how he says it, but in what his work does
to us . I mean, does the writer widen us, does he clear our vision, does
he add to a deepening of our knowledge, does he amplify our total
being?
The Saturday Review said of Black Fire : "the ambitions of Black
Fire make it newsworthy and instructive, but the disparity between its
ambitions and its achievement is painful and embarrassing ." Painful
and embarrassing to whom? Certainly not to those who contributed
to it, certainly not to the blackpeople who read it (not many at $8 .95),
certainly not to me . But yes, "painful and embarrassing" to some
white boy who teaches English at Williams College in Massachusetts
and has, in all likelihood, only seen six "negroes" in his life-time ; who
feels that just because Saturday Review sends him the books to review
it's his responsibility to be "painful" and "embarrassed" about it (quietas-it's-kept,
it was supposed to be painful for him) . And vet . this
"painful and embarrassing" reviewer from Williams College goes on
Mareh 1969 NEGRO DIGEST