Real Gods Require Real Blood -a treatise on papa legba

"Papa Legba, ouvrier barriere por moi passer":
Esu in Their Eyes & Zora Neale Hurston's Diasporic Modernism
African American Review,  Spring, 2004  by Edward M. Pavlic

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a dangerous and unforgiving text. The Orisha apparently haven't read the New Testament. As Hurston understood, the energies which emerge from what amounts to the archetypes of the diasporic unconscious are vital and violent, and (buy a map of the genome if you like) resolutions are beyond the ships on the internal and external horizons. Drawing insights from high modernism, black folk traditions, and a wide range of diasporic ethnographic and experiential material, Hurston shows, through Janie, the immediate necessity of both de-personalized attention to individual interiors and vigilant inter-personal connection to others attempting to do the same. This essay aims to illuminate the structure of her design in this regard. More importantly, I hope it bolsters respect for the bottomless mysteries of the creative process in general and Hurston's great novel in particular. Perhaps, I'm even after a little healthy fear in the face of the cultural, psychological, and metaphysical terrains of the diaspora. In reckoning with these energies, "fear is the most divine emotion," Hurston writes. "It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood" (Tell 139). As I tell my students, we're after engaging concepts, but we go in fear of abstractions and role models. It's not enough to praise Zora and emulate Tea Cake. The author died with her diasporic vision completely unrecognized, and brother Woods died like a god spelled backward.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)