Exposta atrás de um vidro à prova de balas no Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, em Madri, está Guernica, a obra que talvez seja a melhor expressão do horror e da brutalidade da guerra desde a série de águas-fortes Desastres da Guerra, de Francisco Goya (c.1810-1820).
Em 1936, quando a Guerra Civil Espanhola eclodiu, Picasso vivia na França. Leal à república, ele foi incumbido pelo governo espanhol de pintar uma tela para a Exposição Universal de 1937, em Paris. Em abril, contudo, a cidade basca de Guernica foi bombardeada durante um ataque nazista que matou 1.600 pessoas. Picasso se inspirou nesse evento para criar sua vigorosa obra de protesto contra os fascistas liderados pelo generalíssimo Francisco Franco.
A tela, com 3,5m por 7,8m, é pintada em cinza e branco. Seus tons monocromáticos refletem a tristeza do evento e conferem à pintura uma impressão de relato. Suas exuberantes imagens dão vazão a várias interpretações - um touro, um cavalo, uma lâmpada; pessoas correndo, atônitas, com a agonia e o horror estampados no rosto, uma arma com uma flor e uma espada partida. Picasso, contudo, se recusava a esclarecer o possível significado desses símbolos. Já o significado da famosa imagem da mulher chorando sobre o corpo do filho morto é obvio.
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston Hughes Place."
In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple's Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography(The Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston.
David Kresh, from Library Of Congress - Washington D. C., discusses Langston Hughes and His Poetry on the following video.
Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free."
The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!
Po' Boy Blues When I was home de, Sunshine seemed like gold. Since I come up North de Whole damn world's turned cold.I was a good boy, Never done no wrong. Yes, I was a good boy, Never done no wrong, But this world is weary An' de road is hard an' long.
Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961) Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994) Dear Lovely Death (1931) Fields of Wonder (1947) Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927) Freedom's Plow (1943) Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) One-Way Ticket (1949) Scottsboro Limited (1932) Selected Poems (1959) Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932) The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times (1967) The Weary Blues (1926) Prose
Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (1973) I Wonder as I Wander (1956) Laughing to Keep From Crying (1952) Not Without Laughter (1930) Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964 (2001) Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) Simple Stakes a Claim (1957) Simple Takes a Wife (1953) Simple's Uncle Sam (1965) Something in Common and Other Stories (1963) Tambourines to Glory (1958) The Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters (1980) The Big Sea (1940) The Langston Hughes Reader (1958) The Ways of White Folks (1934) Drama
Black Nativity (1961) Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 5: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move (2000) Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938) Five Plays by Langston Hughes (1963) Little Ham (1935) Mulatto (1935) Mule Bone (1930) Simply Heavenly (1957) Soul Gone Home (1937) The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (2000) Poetry in Translation
Cuba Libre (1948) Gypsy Ballads (1951) Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957) Translation
Synopsis from the video that you can see at the link above, by
Bio.channel.
Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He left Columbia University after one year, traveling and supporting himself with odd jobs. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He wrote poetry, stories, and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died May 22, 1967.
Quotes
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
Poet, writer, playwright. Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After publishing his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, traveling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–9), and while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer.
As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).
A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.
In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humor and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African-Americans.
