Negro pain -- as a means of healing. In doing so, he develops a “Blues aesthetic” which incorporates both the reality of 1920s Harlem and an honest, gripping view of the human condition. Hughes’ use of this Blues aesthetic serves several functions; it brings an active quality to the complexities of pain and it allows a reality of human understanding to come alive in his poetry. Although White society tended to view Hughes’ appreciation of the folk as primitive, “Low” art because it was so base, the poignancy and immediacy with which it touched the lives of Harlem -- as well as the degree to which it still comprises an inextricable part of the literary world -- makes apparent the egregious error of this view. The intelligence and perceptive description in Hughes’ work effectively delineates the complexities of the African-American experience, thus elevating his writing to a state of “High” art. Similarly, his “Blues” pieces allow human struggles to exist as both poetic engagements of physical existence and healing processes in and of themselves, illustrating the artistic power of this transformation. In his poem “Negro,” Hughes outlines various historical aspects of Black identity. He relates, “I’ve been a slave: Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean. I brushed the boots of Washington” (4 - 6). The simplicity and directness of these statements allows a certain poetic immediacy, making misunderstanding nearly impossible. Additionally, Hughes’ mention of Caesar and Washington contributes an informed intelligence to his writing, as does the specificity of “the Woolworth building” (9) and “the Belgians cut[ting] off [his] hands in the Congo” (15). Hughes’ narrator, as a Black representative, has also “been a worker: under [his] hands the pyramids arose” (8). This observation illustrates the pro...
