NARRATIVE FRAGMENTATION IN CANE Rafael Machado Guarischi1

Introduction Cane, written by the African-American author Jean Toomer, is deeply marked by its fragmentation. Considering this, I have the objective of analysing the main elements of fragmentation in Cane by Jean Toomer. It is important to make it clear that I will focus mainly on narrative fragmentation, rather than on the fragmentation of the subjects. The paper is divided in three parts. In the first one, I will work with the theoretical basis. Firstly, I will show that although Cane was produced in 1923, it can indeed be analysed in the context of Postmodernism, according to some theoretical ideas of renamed authors from Postmodernism. Secondly, in this same part, I intend to deal with the question of narrative fragmentation, associating it to the concept of blurring of genres. In the second part, I intend to provide an overview of Cane, its author, and its historical context, since it is a rather unknown work. Although I do not intend to take long in this part, I believe that it is very important to the understanding of the paper as a whole since the historical context of Cane and the very fragmented life of Toomer definitely had a deep influence on the production of the work. Finally, in the third part, I will focus on some elements of fragmentation in this literary text, analyzing specific excerpts and relating them to the theory presented before. I intend to make the correct articulations so that the theoretical ideas are adequately applied to the analyses of the passages.

1 Theoretical Basis What is Postmodernism? How can we classify a literary work as Postmodern? Is it enough to consider only the chronological aspect for such a classification? Can Cane, written in 1923, be considered a Postmodern work? I do not have the pretension of getting to accurate answers for those questions, but in this first part I intend to provide a reflection about them.
1

Mestrando - UERJ

Considering the term Postmodernism, there is not a definition which could be regarded as the official one. There are in fact many critics who produced and are still producing theoretical material about this issue, but most of them have different views and disagree in many points. This way, this term can be considered a kind of controversial one. For instance, according to Irena Makaryk, Postmodernism is a period label generally given to cultural forms since the 1960s that display certain characteristics such as reflexivity, irony and a mixing of popular and high art forms (MAKARYK, 1994: 612, my emphasis). Her definition contains an important notion: the one of a period label. By stating this, she relativizes the idea of Postmodern as a fixed chronological period, with clear divisions and very specific and rigid characteristics. Linda Hutcheon seems to corroborate with this idea when she argues that postmodernism cannot simply be used as a synonym for the contemporary (HUTCHEON, 1993: 244). There is also much disagreement in relation to the distinction between Modernism and Postmodernism. As a matter of fact, there are some critics that even question if such a distinction would really be possible or relevant. This becomes very clear when Ihab Hassan wonders if can we really perceive a phenomenon, in Western societies generally and in their literatures particularly, that needs to be distinguished from modernism, needs to be named? If so, will the provisional rubric postmodernism serve? (HASSAN, 1987: 273). Jean-Franois Lyotard seems to go towards the same direction when he states that "A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant" (LYOTARD, 1993:44). The ideas of these four authors are certainly important to establish a very relevant point: the term Postmodernism cannot be considered just to analyse the literary works produced after the 1950s or 1960s, as the chronological criterion would lead some critics to think. Rather, this term can be and is in fact being used to analyse works produced in other periods. To mention an example within Brazilian Literature, recently there is a considerable group of critics working with the Postmodern characteristics in Machado de Assis literary production (traditionally associated with Realism), for instance Italo Moriconi (UERJ), Marcelo Sandmann (UFPR) and Adriana da Costa Telles (UNESP). Based on the ideas above, I am highly inclined to think that it is indeed possible to analyse Cane in the context of Postmodernism. Although it was written in 1923, during North-American Modernism, it has some very clear postmodern characteristics, especially fragmentation.
2

In order to proceed to the analysis, first it is important to be aware of the most important characteristics of this movement, as far as Literature is concerned2. In The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon develops this theme. Basically, the author constructs her theorization by giving emphasis to the some notions like intertextuality, parody, appropriation, subvertion of the traditional conventions, rereading of the past, historical reconstruction, among others. I do not intend to go deep within these notions because they do not fit exactly in the scope of my theoretical argumentation. Rather, I will work more with the notion of blurring of genres3,which can be associated to the question of narrative fragmentation, as I intend to show in the following paragraphs. First of all, it is important to leave it clear that, just like Postmodernism, the term blurring of genres is applied by different areas of knowledge. Specifically concerning Literature, it could be described as a sort of mixture of different literary genres (and sometimes other artistic forms) in a way that there is not a very clear and visible limit among them, this way forming a whole piece of Literature with those different genres entangled. Very interestingly, Franziska Gygax affirms that the blurring of genres not only challenges generic expectations but also undermines notions of rules, classifications, or objective boundaries. (GYGAX, 1998: 6). By stating this, the author reinforces how surprising and even shocking the use of this literary device may prove to be. According to her, most of the times it goes against the expectations of the ordinary reader, who is generally not used to seeing very different literary genres or artistic forms so intrinsically connected within a single piece of work. Due to this situation, possibly some readers and even some critics would argue that the use of the blurring of genres would eventually break the unity of a literary work. However, definitely that is not what really happens. As Roland Barthes argues, even if fragments with no center are to structure the text, there is still a story (BARTHES, apud HUTCHEON, 2002: 41). With this statement, the author makes it very clear that even when a narrative is totally fragmented, it does not necessarily mean that there will not be a unity within the story. I will come back to those questions in the third part of this paper, when I will analyse some specific excerpts in which those matters of fragmentation are present. The excerpts will
It is necessary to remember that Postmodernism is not a movement that concerns only literature, but also Art as a whole, and even some other related areas, such as Philosophy and Sociology. 3 Here, it seems a good idea to recall the meaning of the verb to blur as to make indistinct and hazy in outline or appearance. (LONGMAN DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, 1995: 130)
2

serve as examples for me to work with the relations among the blurring of genres, narrative fragmentation and the story in Cane.

2 Cane, its Author and its Historical Context As it has already been said before, to facilitate the understanding of this paper, in this part I will provide an overview of Cane, Jean Toomer (its author) and The Harlem Renaissance (its historical context). This part will be a rather short one, but very important to set the background of the production of the work.

2.1 The Harlem Renaissance In very brief words, The Harlem Renaissance was a period between 1920 and 1930 in The United States in which there was a striking ascension of the Black artistic production. It is very important to emphasize that this movement involved not only a Literature, but also Art as a whole. As Caroll and Noble put it, Young poets, novelists, playwrights, composers flowered in an environment of black pride (CAROLL and NOBLE, 1984: 326). At that time, many black artists achieved recognition and fame in The United States. In music, for instance, that was the time when rhythms like soul music and jazz came to the spotlight and some singers, such as Louis Armstrong, had the opportunity to show their work their works to the country. Also, at that time the city of New Orleans became famous since it is considered the homeland of jazz. Concerning Literature, that was the first moment in which a group of AfricanAmerican writers started to appear more visibly in the context of North-American Literature. As Maufort states,
Based upon a more critical degree of self-awareness and more systematic exploration of the varied identities and social levels of blacks in both urban and rural settings, the literary expression of this new image, embodied in the concept of soul () gathered force in all genres as many young black writers joined the chorus of voices inspired by the Harlem renascence. (Maufort, 1996: 505)

These new group of black authors includes names like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and, of course, Jean Toomer.

2.2 Jean Toomer Born in Washington D.C. on December 26, 1894, the most important feature of the author is surely his mixed racial descent and, consequently, his fragmentation. Differently
4

from almost all the authors of The Harlem Renaissance, Toomer did not have only an African origin. His education, deeply marked by frequent changes, represented an important element within this context. Toomer spent his early education years switching from all-black to allwhite schools. This situation made him face several problems and internal questions concerning his identity and racial origin. He even used to deny his African origin, preferring to be identified only as an American, rather than an African-American. During his higher education years, Toomer very frequently moved from city to city, from degree to degree and from University to University (many of them in the South of the country). To mention some, he studied Agriculture, History, Sociology, Literature and several others, but never completed any. Besides that, the segregation he experienced while he was studying in the South (mostly in Georgia) led him to have a better identification with the African-American people. All these different kinds of knowledge he acquired and the reading and lectures he undertook helped him to shape his writings, especially Cane. Still concerning that,
It was during these years [1914-1917], however, that he [Jean Toomer] was preparing to be a writer, by attending off-campus lectures on naturalism, atheism, psychology, evolution and socialism and by reading numerous philosophical and literary works, such as those by William Shakespeare, George Santayana, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Sherwood Anderson, Leo Tolstoy, and all the major American poets, especially the imagists. In 1920 he met Waldo Frank, who introduced him to several literary circles and later wrote an extremely laudatory introduction to the first edition of Cane. (AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES, 1999: Vol. 14, p. 3330)

So, as we can see, Cane is deeply influenced by the great diversity of its authors life and could be even seen as a reflection of Toomers fragmentation.

2.3 Cane Cane was written in 1923, within the context of Modernism and The Harlem Renaissance. Due to its completely fragmented structure, it is rather difficult to classify it as belonging to a specific literary genre. Thus, it can be better qualified as a collection of different artistic and literary expressions (mainly poems, descriptions, short narratives, drama and even pictures) that examine the African-American condition both in the South of the United States and in Washington, D.C. around the time of its publication. In spite of the date of its publication, Cane is considered by most critics as a Postmodernist work rather than a Modernist one, due to its clear Postmodern characteristics. That is also a reason why I am analyzing it in the light of Postmodern theories.
5

Some critics would classify it as novel, however it cannot exactly be classified this way since its three parts do not follow a continuing plot and do not form a unified and joined narrative. On the other hand, the high poetic diction would lead some other critics to look upon it as a poem (or even a novel-poem), but it is not the case as well. Because of that, I actually do not refer to Cane as a novel or as a narrative, but simply as a work. Despite the difficulty to give an accurate classification to the book, all critics agree that Cane is one of the masterpieces of The Harlem Renaissance and one of the most influential books of the time. As Robert Bone affirms, By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance [another name for The Harlem Renaissance], Cane ranks with Richard Wrights Native Son and Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man as a measure of the Negro novelists highest achievement. (1958: 149).

3 Analyses In this part I will provide an analysis of the three parts of Cane, according to the theorization which I have presented. I will work with an overview of each one of the three parts of the book and focus on specific excerpts. Again I would like to reinforce that the analyses that I will make here will not be very deep and specific but they will surely serve as a starting point for future studies. Firstly, let us consider the following excerpt:

weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in water. Some one made a song: Smoke is on the hills. Rise up. Smoke is on the hills, O rise And take my soul to Jesus Karintha is a woman. Men do not know that the soul of her was a growing thing ripened to soon. They will bring their money; they will die not having found it out Karintha at twenty, carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Karintha Her skin is like the dusk on the eastern horizon, O cant you see it, O cant you see it, Her skin is like the dusk on the eastern horizon When the sun goes down. Goes down (TOOMER, 1993:2)

This passage, taken from the first chapter of the first part, shows very clear the fragmentation that is present all over the work. It starts with a small piece in prose4, then there is a song5, another small piece in prose and finally a short poem. As we can see, even within this very short excerpt (less than half a page), there is a clear fragmentation characterized by the presence of different literary genres, with a structure like prose/song/prose/poem. Considering the first chapter as whole, I could classify its structure as

poem/prose/poem/prose/song/prose/poem. Thus, in this excerpt there is a very clear presence of the blurring of genres, since there are three different literary genres that are intercalated and entangled. However, it is also possible to see that the entanglement of those different literary genres does not break the flowing of the story and does not stop the understanding of the reader as well. Just like in the very first chapter, this situation will happen all over the first part of the book. Analysing the structure of the other chapters, it is possible to find, from chapter two to sixteen, respectively, the following structures: poem, poem, prose, poem, song, poem/prose/song, song, poem, prose, poem, song, prose, poem, poem, and

prose/poem/prose/poem/prose/poem. It is also possible to see this fragmented structure in the second part of the book. Very similar to the first part when it comes to structure, the twelve chapters that constitute this part can be classified the following way, respectively: poem/prose/poem, prose/poem/prose/poem, prose, poem, poem, drama, poem, prose, drama, poem, song and prose. Needless to say, in the second part the blurring of genres is also present all over it. To mention an example within the second part, let us examine very briefly the following excerpt:
Seventh Street Money burns the pocket Bottlegggers in silken shirts, Ballooned, zooming, Cadillacs, Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. Seventh street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafter air, jazz songs and love () A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day. Who set you flowing?
From now on, I will make use of the term prose in a more general way without taking into account whether it is narrative, description or any other kind of prose. 5 I consider it very relevant to make this differentiation between song and poem because this difference is very important as far as the African oral tradition is concerned.
4

Money burns the pocket Bottlegggers in silken shirts, Ballooned, zooming, Cadillacs, Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. (TOOMER, 1993:39)

This passage is particularly interesting because it has the structure poem/prose/poem, but the same poem is repeated in the beginning and in the end of the chapter. This way, this form of construction marks the poem as a kind of introduction and conclusion of the chapter. Switching now the third part, it is possible to say that it also presents some elements of narrative fragmentation as well as blurring of genres, but not as many as and as frequently as the other two parts of the book. As a matter of fact, it is a play called Kabnis, and it is intercalated in some moments by a couple of very short songs, which help the reader to in a way transport himself/herself to the world lived by the characters. Along with the presence of those different literary genres, there is another element that is introduced in the opening of the second part: a graphic element. It consists of a kind of halfellipsis drawn near the left top of the page. This picture at that position can be understood as a symbol of passage or transition between the first and the second part. Very interestingly, this graphic element in a way evolves and appears again in the opening of the third part. The difference is that, instead of one, at that moment there are two half-ellipsis kind of complementing one another, also drawn close to the left top of the page, marking the transition from the second to the third part. Curiously, at the bottom of this same page Toomer makes an acknowledgement to Waldo Frank.6 This graphic element can surely be understood as another element of narrative fragmentation and certainly has to do with the blurring of genres present in the book. This element also serves to make Cane an even richer book and in a way more complex, but also more challenging. However, since there are so many elements of fragmentation, one would wonder whether Cane is really one work or rather a group of separate and aleatory writings mended together. The answer for this question becomes easy once we remember that although there is not really a structural unity, the ideas and themes follow a sequence. As Darwin Turner argues:

Go back to the quotation in part 2.2.

Certainly too Cane has thematic unity, as might be expected in a series of writings constituting one artists vision during a single year. Poems link, separate, echo and introduce the stories with themes of natures harmony, work, tributes to Black folksong, love, dreams of escape, false gods and true gods, mans hunger, white woman described through the imagery of the lynching performed in her name, and mans inability and need to harmonize soul, body and mind (TURNER, 1993:12)

To reinforce this situation, it is a good idea to take a look back in the excerpts from the book that were analysed in this part. It is important to emphasize that, despite being composed of different structural elements, the ideas follow a perfectly understandable and smooth sequence, in a way that they are not just inserted in the book at random. And this can be seen not only in those two excerpts, but also all over the book.

4 Conclusion So, considering everything that was mentioned and developed above, it is possible to affirm that Cane is certainly one of the most important books of The Harlem Renaissance. Although Jean Toomer had several problems and questions concerning his own identity as a black (or not) person, he managed to write a brilliant book, in which he wonderfully described and analysed the main issues concerning the lives of the African-American people at that time. Thinking this way, it is even possible to say that Cane is not simply a book, but also a learning lesson of the real-life struggles that the people from that age had to endure. I hope that in a near future more studies are made concerning Toomers literary production and more researchers decide to look upon this author, since he is certainly one of the most striking writers of The Harlem Renaissance and his production is extremely important to understand this period. The most impressive of all is, although Cane was written more than eighty years ago (almost a hundred years), the book relates very well to the problems and questions of race that still remain in America today. Thus, even though it was published in 1923, in the context of The Harlem Renaissance, one could read it as if it was even a contemporary book. Maybe that is why Alice Walker once said that she could not possibly exist without it [Cane]. (1984) Perhaps not only she, but also the African-Americans as whole would not be able to exist as a people without a book that represents so accurately their main problems, feelings and anguishes, which are still the same for so much time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. American National Biography. Vol. 14. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 2) BONE, R. The Negro Novel in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. 3) CAROLL, P. N. and NOBLE, D.W. The Free and the Unfree A New History of the United States. Middlesex: Penguin, 1984. 4) GYGAX, F. Gender and Genre in Gertrude Stein. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. 5) HASSAN, I. Toward a Concept of Postmodernism. In: HASSAN, I. The Postmodern Turn. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1987. 6) HUTCHEON, L. Beginning to Theorize Postmodernism. In: NATOLI, J. and HUTCHEON L. (eds) A Postmodern Reader. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. 7) _____________. The Politics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge-USA, 2002. LYOTARD, J.F. Note on the Meaning of Post-. In DOCHERTY, T. (ed) Postmodernism: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. 8) LONGMAN Longman, 1995. 9) MAKARYK, I.R. (ed) Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Aproaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. 10) MAUFORT, M. (ed) Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. 11) SCHNEIDER, D. Cane, by Jean Toomer. In: The International Writers Magazine. Available on the Internet at http://www.hackwriters.com/Cane.htm. Accessed on 06/30/2008 at 10:32 p.m. 12) TOOMER, J. Cane. New York, WW Norton, 1993. 13) TURNER, D. Introduction. In: TOOMER, J. Cane. New York, WW Norton, 1993. 14) WALKER, A. Novelist Alice Walker Telling the Black Womans Story. January 8th, 1984. Available on the Internet at http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/walkerstory.html. Accessed on 07/07/2008 at 4:08 p.m. DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH. 3rd ed. Harlow:

10