Dark Water by Du Bois - Microcosm of Tragedy and Comedy

These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War.

To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways.

For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in the hope that I may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people.

Dark Water

Penned one hundred years ago, these reflections from W.E.B. Du Bois ring equally true in the present, perhaps striking a chord in the process of resounding. Included as a Postscript in the first of his three autobiographies titled Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, Du Bois documents his observations of the human condition, probing the roots of suffering in society.

Among the text's many focal points is race. Du Bois was acutely aware of his mixed race ancestry during a period of tense race relations in the United States. Descended from African, Dutch, English, and French relatives, he was nonetheless black in the eyes of his contemporaries and bore the brunt of racism from a young age.

We here investigate a select few key excerpts from Darkwater in honor of the literary legacy of Du Bois, who was both a prolific writer and civil rights activist, among filling various other roles. While undoubtedly leaving a lasting impact in the realm of literature, his reflections were also generally well-received at the time as well, illuminating issues of racial discrimination in America.

Tantalizing Contradiction

And so the contemplative path of Du Bois begins. We start by offering Du Bois the floor, standing alongside him in his discussion of the tantalizing contradiction of the human condition.

Here, then, is beauty and ugliness, a wide vision of world-sacrifice, a fierce gleam of world-hate. Which is life and what is death and how shall we face so tantalizing a contradiction? Any explanation must necessarily be subtle and involved. No pert and easy word of encouragement, no merely dark despair, can lay hold of the roots of these things. And first and before all, we cannot forget that this world is beautiful. Grant all its ugliness and sin—the petty, horrible snarl of its putrid threads, which few have seen more near or more often than I—notwithstanding all this, the beauty of this world is not to be denied.

Casting my eyes about I dare not let them rest on the beauty of Love and Friend, for even if my tongue were cunning enough to sing this, the revelation of reality here is too sacred and the fancy too untrue. Of one world-beauty alone may we at once be brutally frank and that is the glory of physical nature; this, though the last of beauties, is divine!

And so, too, there are depths of human degradation which it is not fair for us to probe. With all their horrible prevalence, we cannot call them natural. But may we not compare the least of the world's beauty with the least of its ugliness—not murder, starvation, and rapine, with love and friendship and creation—but the glory of sea and sky and city, with the little hatefulnesses and thoughtfulnesses of race prejudice, that out of such juxtaposition we may, perhaps, deduce some rule of beauty and life—or death?
Excerpted from the section "Of Beauty and Death," we as readers of Du Bois may begin to envision the reality he faced, which in many ways mirrors our own.


Through these passages, we encounter the paradox, the tantalizing contradiction, with which Du Bois found himself constantly confronted. His life was plagued by the racism of his era, from which he and others suffered tremendously. The "horrible snarl of its putrid threads" bound him in their stinking web, and yet Du Bois never became a cynic.

In fact, it might be said that Du Bois was an optimist at heart. Despite the struggles he faced, growing up fatherless and losing his mother at 16 years old, he earned his way into Harvard, where he eventually completed a Ph.D. in history, the university's first black doctorate.

Perhaps his success may be attributed to his attitude toward life. Focusing on the positive at every turn, Du Bois at the same time shone light on society's ills, the dark corners full of cobwebs and corpses, never ignoring them. He speaks of human degradation, horrific and unnatural, without ever losing faith in life itself.


Du Bois further expands on this vision in vivid detail, also included in the visionary section "Of Birth and Death," painting an entire landscape filled with both literal significance and symbolic extrapolation, all in service of depicting the microcosm of tragedy and comedy that characterized his experience.

God molded his world largely and mightily off this marvelous coast and meant that in the tired days of life men should come and worship here and renew their spirit. This I have done and turning I go to work again. As we go, ever the mountains of Mount Desert rise and greet us on our going—somber, rock-ribbed and silent, looking unmoved on the moving world, yet conscious of their everlasting strength.

About us beats the sea—the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune about our flying keel, unmindful of the voices of men. The land sinks to meadows, black pine forests, with here and there a blue and wistful mountain. Then there are islands—bold rocks above the sea, curled meadows; through and about them roll ships, weather-beaten and patched of sail, strong-hulled and smoking, light gray and shining. All the colors of the sea lie about us—gray and yellowing greens and doubtful blues, blacks not quite black, tinted silvers and golds and dreaming whites.



Long tongues of dark and golden land lick far out into the tossing waters, and the white gulls sail and scream above them. It is a mighty coast—ground out and pounded, scarred, crushed, and carven in massive, frightful lineaments. Everywhere stand the pines—the little dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and wait. Near us lie isles of flesh and blood, white cottages, tiled and meadowed. Afar lie shadow-lands, high mist-hidden hills, mountains boldly limned, yet shading to the sky, faint and unreal.

We skirt the pine-clad shores, chary of men, and know how bitterly winter kisses these lonely shores to fill yon row of beaked ice houses that creep up the hills. We are sailing due westward and the sun, yet two hours high, is blazoning a fiery glory on the sea that spreads and gleams like some broad, jeweled trail, to where the blue and distant shadow-land lifts its carven front aloft, leaving, as it gropes, shades of shadows beyond.
With each reference to aspects of the natural world - its sweeping meadows and rugged mountains - we are offered a glimpse into the microcosmic terrain of the mind. Although Du Bois doesn't say so directly, perhaps these features stand theatrically for experiences he encountered on his contemplative path.

Microcosm of Tragedy and Comedy

To conclude our reflections here, we return to a passage from the Postscript, included at the outset. "To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways." In this microcosm of tragedy and comedy we find represented the macrocosm of existence.

Racism is a undeniable felt reality. To turn one's back to the world, overlooking its weather-beaten, wind-torn, ship-wrecked elements, tossed about at sea, is to indulge in ignorance - a misguided ignoring of actuality, an ignoring of the churning sea in foolish fantasy of smooth sailing. For Du Bois, facing racism was to be in the world but not of the world, navigating the microcosm of tragedy and comedy like a ship at sail at sea.

For Du Bois, the microcosm of tragedy and comedy enacts itself in nature and in humanity's relationships, collectively forming a macrocosm encompassing all existence. Each of these relations, no matter how cloaked in shadows, was for Du Bois a valuable lesson and teacher. By confronting these shadows, we stand to overcome their grip, freeing both ourselves and our spiritual brothers and sisters from bondage, sailing toward the sun so that we may, perhaps, reach the further shore together.


To be continued...

Still I Rise - Dust Contemplations by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Maya Angelou

In light of the abhorrent recent murder of George Floyd, an inexcusably violent act in a string of senseless atrocities perpetrated against communities of color, we turn to the work of African-American poet Maya Angelou.

Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou was a performer turned writer who worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the civil rights movement. Her career spans and merges the realms of theater, literature, and activism.

Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" provides a snapshot into her personal contemplations on injustice. We thus join her in reflection in the midst of protests sweeping the globe, primarily letting her speak for herself.

Like Dust

The image of dust invoked by Maya Angelou in "Still I Rise" carries an especially nuanced power. Prior to its mention, Angelou references the cloud of misinformation, a miasma of distorted history, written at the hands of those in power, who intentionally warp reality to fit their chosen narrative. She observes that although she and other people of color are portrayed as defiled caricatures and thus essentially trodden into the dirt under the heels or knees of oppressive forces, she absolutely refuses to be snuffed out by them. Whatever dust they grind her into becomes her new means of rising above.

But still, like dust, I'll rise
Those voices that are most stifled will nonetheless continue to speak in spite of efforts to suppress them. Angelou herself was mute for several years a child after suffering rape by her mother's partner, whom her protective relatives later killed. As a young girl, she felt responsible for all that had occurred and lost the will to speak. With the encouragement of a black female teacher educated in literature, Angelou eventually recovered her voice and went on to use it skillfully for social justice in the civil rights movement, rising like dust so fine it can be lifted up into the open expanse.

Still I Rise

Much of Angelou's carefully chosen words speak volumes to resilience in the face of horrendous injustices, which continue to plague us today. In fact, with an unrelenting sense of determination, she drew upon the collective strength of her community to triumph over tremendous adversity and traumatic life events during an era of social unrest and turmoil. Shining a beaming light of hope for the future in a time of darkness, which characterizes the atrocities of her time as much as ours, Maya Angelou concludes the poem "Still I Rise" with a set of momentous verses, through which her thunderous voice resounds.

Out of the huts
of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past
that’s rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean,
leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling
I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights
of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak
that’s wondrously clear
I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou. "Still I Rise," And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. 1978.

An Inescapable Network of Mutuality - Martin Luther King Jr. on the Interwoven Fabric of Justice

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail

An Inescapable Network of Mutuality

With contagious disease and an outrageous political season rippling over society, seemingly tearing apart its foundations by sewing the seeds of disharmony, it may appear a bit cliché to invoke these lines from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on "an inescapable network of mutuality."

If, however, we can actually appreciate their immense relevance, their deeply pragmatic and realistic message, then we may stand a chance at collective, scalable, regenerative organizing at the micro- and macro- ecological, economic, and epidemiological levels.

Arrested for violating an injunction against unauthorized demonstrations during tensions over Birmingham, Alabama's segregation laws, King spent eight days in jail, during which he authored this letter to his fellow clergymen. Here we interweave a few strands of contemplative reflection around one of its most salient themes.

The Interwoven Fabric of Justice

Written while incarcerated at the Birmingham city jail, dated April 16, 1963, the letter details King's vision of justice. Contextually, it was penned in response to an initial open letter signed by eight local white clergymen, published by the Birmingham News, criticizing King's direct action campaign as untimely and unwise, instead urging black residents of Birmingham to obey the law and cease their support for the demonstrations. King supposedly scrawled much of his reply on scraps of paper available to him in prison.

In the letter, King emphasizes the sentiment, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Refusing to submit to status quo, he defends his choice to protest.

Most tellingly, rather than distance himself from these conservative opponents or pit himself and his supporters against the opposition, King consistently highlights the interwoven fabric of justice, declaring, "I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham...Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

Radicals and Revolutionaries

Accused of extremism, King responds by reframing the question of extremism as a choice between acting as extremists for love and justice, or extremists for hate and injustice. Standing between those who would rather acquiesce and those who instead resort to violence and vitriole, King occupies a liminal space characterized by persistent non-violent protest. Invoking the likes of Jesus Christ and other so-called radicals and revolutionaries of their time, he calls upon others to unite in their differences, prioritizing justice for all.



Presently, we face a similar set of concerns over what have been deemed radical and revolutionary politics, striking fear and panic into those who associate such terms with violent authoritarianism and ruthless dictatorship. Radical and revolutionary terminology has been corrupted and tainted, but with wisdom and compassion, they may still be reclaimed and reframed in reference to a radically and revolutionarily inclusive movement, the first to fully acknowledge and embrace that we are each and all embedded in an inescapable network of mutuality, a single garment of destiny. Perhaps there is more freedom to be gained than lost if we transcend the deeply ingrained tendency to view ourselves as separate entities operating in the mindlessly self-serving ways that characterize individualism.

Threads of Synergy that Support and Sustain

Given the increasing complexity of our environments, we face a set of uniquely complex challenges, whether epidemiologically, climatologically, or otherwise. Unfortunately, when it comes to interrelatedness, we too often focus on the networks that spread disease and panic instead of those threads of synergy that support and sustain us.

Rather than let a pandemic of pandemonium ensue through the contagion of division, a disease gone viral as it spreads across networks, let us envision ways in which the inescapable network of mutuality may work to the advantage of all, the health and well-being of each part of the whole.

Repairing and regenerating the network, ensuring that its routes of transmission are open and clear and, importantly, that what is transmitted is medicinal and not pathological will be how we transcend outdated modes of being and transform the system from the inside out into a sustainable society for all.



Source:

King, Martin Luther. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]" 16 April 1963.