THE COURIER.
MR. HOWELLS DISCOVERS A POET
IN PAUI. DUNBAR-A NEGRO.
At last an intellectual bridge has
been cast across the chasm dividing the
black from the white race! At last, for
the liret time in the liintory of this
country or, eo far bb we are aware, in
the history of any other country a man
of pure African blood has arisen to
speak for his people in the person of Mr.
Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
For several years poems bearing this
name have been appearing in the lead
ing magazines, but they bore on the sur
face no racial mark, aud the fact that
some of them were in the negro dialect
counted for nothing, since many white
writers have attempted that, although
with less success. It was not, there
fore, until a slender, quiet, shabby little
volume of veree, dateless, placeless and
without a publisher, drifted out of the
west and accidentally reached Mr
Howells who is nlwajs quick to see
and never reluctant to praise what is
really good that the young Africo
American poet was introduced to the
larger audience which the importance
of his work deserved.
Only then did it become generally
known that the author waa black, that
liis parents were slaves who learned to
read atter they were free, and that ho
himeelf had stood shoulder to shoulder
with the heaviest laden of his rao. He
was educated in the public schools of
his birthplace, Dayton, O., and was un
til recently an elevator boy.
As these facts came out, the signifi
cance of Mr. Dunbar's poetry stood re
vealed, and it was recognized not only
for its intrinsic worth, for "its lyric
beauty and metrical quality, which are
quite enough to lift it into prominence,
but as the first authoritative utterance
of the inner iife of a race which had
hitherto been dumb. The little book
thus voicing what had never before been
spoken was privately printed and called
"Majors and Minors," the Majors being
in English and the Minors in dialect,
sometimes the dialect of the middle
south negroes and sometimes the middle
south whites, and in the case of the
negro dialect reproduced with a perfec
tion that no white writer has attained.
These pcmB, covering a wide range
of thought and feeling, have been gath
ered with a number of new poems into a
much larger volume Boon to be pub
lishec by Dodd, Mead fc Co. Mr. How
ells has written an introduction to the
new work, aud in it says:
"What struck me in reading Mr. Dun
bar's poetry was what had already
struck his friends in Ohio and Indiana,
in Kentucky and Illinois. They had
felt as I felt, that however gifted his
race bad proven itself in music, in ora
tory, in several other arts, here was the
first instance of an American negro who
had evinced innate literature. In my
criticism of his book I had alleged
Dumas in France, and had forgotten to
allege the far greater Pushkin in Rus
sia, but these were both mulattoes, who
might have supposed to derive their
qualities from white blood vastly more
artitic than ours, and who were the
creatures of an environment more fav
orable to their literary development. So
far as I could remember, Paul Dunbar
was the only man of pure African blood
And American civilization to feel the
negro life aesthetically and express it
lyrically. It seemed to me that this had
come to its most modern consciousness .
in him, and that his brilliant and unique
achievement was to have studied the
American negro objectively, and to have
represented him as he found him to be,
with humor, with sympathy, and yet
with what the reader must instinctively
feel to be entire truthfulness.'
"I said that a race which had
come to this effect in any member
of it had obtained civilzation in him,
and I permitted myself the imaginative
prophecy that the hostilities and the
prejudices which had 60 long constrained
iiis race were destine' to vameh in the
arte; that these were to be the final
proof that God had made of one blood
all nations of men. I thought his
merits positive and not comparative; and
I held that if his black poems had been
written by a white man I should not
have found them less admirable. I ac
cepted them as an evidence of the es
sential unity of the human race, which
docs not think or feel black in one and
white in another, but humanly in all.
And, if the poems appeal eo power
fully and seem bo profoundly significant
to one who has never, perhaps, been
personally in touch with types, the
idaels, the emotions, the traditions, the
surroundings and the environments of
the negro race, the work must in the
very nature of things find equal if not
fuller appreciation among Soutbern
readers. To the Southern mind the
Majors will surely come as the first lift
ing of an impenetrable curtain which
has always hung between the black and
the white race. In the Southern heart
the Minors must certainly stir deep and
mingled memories of the old order which
neither white nor black would have
back again; memories in which laughter
contends with tears, as the lines of the
first Africian poet waver between humor
and pathos. It is a curious fact that
until the acceptance of this book Dun
bar had never earned any money by his
literary work. He had lived entirely oc
his pay as an elevator boy. The few
books he wrote and which gave him a
reputation were published at the ex
pense of himself and friends, and
brought him no immediate profit. His
rise has been a hard struggle with dis
couraging conditions. When the accep
tance of his new book of poems was an
nounced it wa& accompanied by a sum
of $400. This amount was in the form
of four crisp $100 bills, of the new de
sign. The poet had never been the pos
sessor of so much money in his life, and
its unexpected receipt sent him into a
state of eestacy. His success, however,
has not made any change for the worse
in the simple and unaffected youth, who
until recently guidea the destinies of an
elevator.
See the new Photochromes at Cran
cer & Curtice Co.'s, 207 South 11th
street, the newest thine in pictures.
T!" JlB0
SHIt II HI MMI lilt
p!ctOV
Actual time traveling.
31 hours to Salt Lake.
Gl hours to San Francisco.
68 hours to Portland.
77 hours to Los Angeles.
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