Vom Gospel Train zum Roten Stern
Die literarische Adaption der Spiritualsymbolik im narrativen Frühwerk Richard Wrights
The stories of "Uncle Tom's Children" were written during Richard Wright's Marxist period. They represent the writer's attempt to make use of oral Afro-American cultural tradition in the production of a specifically Black socialist literature. By employing the traditional ambiguous linguistic significance of the Negro spirituals, Wright provides historical continuity between the secular aspects of liberation in Black Christianity and the concrete utopia of a classless society. This re-interpretation of the spirituals is developed step by step, throughout the stories. It becomes increasingly explicit and corresponds with a continuous development and awareness by the main characters.
The spiritual symbols and topics used are the Gospel train, the river, Moses, and the morning star. With ever increasing clarity, Wright transformed the traditional aspect of worldly liberation inherent in these images, into the Marxist conception of a society in which the rule of man over man does not exist. Although deeply rooted in religious belief, the images are based on real social conditions. Their metaphysical eschatology is brought "down to earth". At the same time, their original religious meaning is preserved as a cultural heritage. In "Long Black Song", furthermore, the traditional ecstatic reception of the spirituals is radically criticized. The social role of ecstasy evoked by religious song is unmasked, and it is shown to what degree religious trance tends to become unrealistic abstraction from actual social antagonisms, thereby distracting (black) people from concrete socially motivated action.
On the whole, Wright adapts the social functions of the spirituals, as well as the biblical mythology provided by their images, for the sake of de-mythologizing, i. e. for the sake of enlightenment concerning social conditions, tendencies, and possibilites. Even the concept of a classless society is shown as a possibility to be put into practice, rather than solely being considered as the final objective of the laws of history. Under the social conditions prevailing in the USA during the late 1930's, according to Wright, this can only be achieved by unified action based upon social and cultural traditions.
Through his particular descriptive style of the spirituals, Wright, therefore, succeeds in avoiding mere historical determinism. His stories achieve a quality of popular and realistic narration, coming close to those criteria expounded by Georg Lukacs.This popular and realistic approach is supported by means of stylistic device. Throughout the stories, the narration is based upon a formulaic basis meter, typical of the Chantefable-Blues, as well as of the performing practices of the black folk preacher. At times, there are also topical and poetic features of the Blues which may be recognized as another contribution to Wright's secularisation of spiritual imagery. They prove to be further evidence of the writer's deep and strong foundation in various traditions of the Black American oral idiom.