Sailing from Western Myth to Black Modernism:
The Role of Epic Narrative Structure in Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage”
Danyal Rahman
In perhaps his most influential piece of literary criticism, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot contemplates the Western literary canon’s relationship with the modern poet, famously stating “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is altered by the past.” In his formulation, Eliot (quite controversially) argues in favor of the “self-sacrifice” of the poet’s personality, stating that “poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape of emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.” To Eliot, poetry was a method of demonstrating the artist’s aggregate knowledge of the established literary canon and antiquity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eliot’s magnum opus, “The Wasteland,” reflects on the disillusionment of the West post-WWI by appropriating the most exalted elements of the Western literary canon, such as epic form and references to both Shakespeare and the Arthurian knights. Eliot demonstrates the decay of Western civilization by conflating these canonical texts with Modernist elements of free verse/meter/stanza structures, grotesque depictions of sexuality, and phrases and moral teachings from non-Western sources.
However, Robert Hayden demonstrates the Eurocentric biases present in Eliot’s idealism in “Middle Passage,” arguing that black America has no romanticized history to hearken back to. To once again quote Eliot, “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.” Hayden’s “Middle Passage” essentially rewrites “The Wasteland,” “stealing” Eliot’s use of the Western canon, and particularly the use of the Western epic’s literary components and characteristics. However, Hayden appropriates and alters these elements, modifying the most extolled form of Western literature to fit his own agenda and criticisms. In doing so, Hayden criticizes Eliot’s notion of the poet’s “self-sacrifice”—the ability of the European poet to draw from the “tradition” is the product of privilege. Through Hayden’s appropriation of epic form, he demonstrates that the expression of black artists cannot be separated from their putative lack of “tradition” and is therefore intrinsically linked to black America’s history of oppression and slavery.
Immediately at the outset of “Middle Passage,” Hayden twists literary tropes that are characteristic of the beginnings of traditional epics, intertwining them with his own elements of horrific irony and the grotesque. Hayden utilizes the epic form’s invocation of the Muse(s), as he calls upon elements of power and inspiration in “Jesus, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy, Desire, and Adventure” (1-14). While the literal connotations of these words are indicative of elements of poetic expression in the Western canon’s epics, they are also the historical names of slave ships—purveyors and beacons of the monstrosity of the Middle Passage. Hayden utilizes the irony in this duality to demonstrate the intrinsically oppressive nature of Western history and privileges of Western individualistic expression. While the Western poetic muse is one of adventure, hope, and God, the source of black expression is fundamentally linked to a history of horror, and therefore personal strife. Furthermore, “Middle Passage,” like the epics of old, utilizes techniques of synoptic exposition in “Middle Passage: / voyage through death / to life upon these shores” (5-7) and in medias res in the letter stating “10 April 1800—…to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under” (8-13). Traditional epics are structured in this way such that the methods of explanation are prized over the events themselves—essentially weighing the “how” more so than the “what.” However, Hayden’s use of these elements of pre-exposition is quite clearly sardonic, as the “how” is biased through the white, European lense. While this voyage may seem a glorified “voyage through death” in the eyes of the white slavers such as the author of the letter, it is the literal opposite for those black slaves involved—they are stripped of their human identity and forced to make a perilous journey to the greater dehumanization of slavery. Hayden’s argument lies within this ironic dignification of the grotesque. While white artists, such as Eliot, are able to reach back to a history of glorification and adventure to separate themselves from their art, black artists are robbed of the same privilege due to a history of oppression and the stifling of creative agency.
Hayden uses epic characteristics in his employment of the motif of blindness throughout the text. Western and Classical tradition often associates blindness with prophetic clairvoyance in the poet. This trope of the “blind bard” is present in famous traditional poets such as Tiresias and Milton, but is popularized mainly through Homer, whose name is taken from the word “homêrus,” translating to “blind” in many Greek and Roman dialects. While blindness is pervasive in the “Middle Passage,” it holds the strongest connotation of epic inversion in the presence of the slave ship captain, as he writes “writing eases fear a little since still my eyes can see these words take shape upon the page & so I write, as one would turn to exorcism” (27-30). While the tradition links blindness with a connection to the divine, the blindness of “Middle Passage” is a means of channeling the supernatural and the profane. Unlike the blind bard of the literary tradition, the blind writer of “Middle Passage” is a purveyor of exploitation and evil. Furthermore, as this ophthalmia manifests in the slaves of the ship, they are jettisoned to stop the spread of this disease. In the metaphor of blindness, Hayden demonstrates the injustices of the past. Historically, white establishment and social hierarchical systems suppressed the literacy and creative inspiration of the black population, damning any chances of development and throwing black society to the proverbial sharks. Through his conception of blindness in the text, Hayden is demonstrating the contradictory standards of Eliot’s supposition. European conquests and institutionalized despotism denied blacks the same medium that whites were allowed. However, history allowed for European artists and writers to engage in dialogue with the tradition, regardless of how white art may have been ghastly and morally perverse.
Another element of the epic that Hayden appropriates is the inclusion of divine, omnipotent entities that operate in favor of or against the epic hero. Divine assistance in the traditional epic is a commonplace occurrence—Odysseus was continually aided by Zeus and even Satan operated under the permission and protection of God’s dominion in Paradise Lost. However, “Middle Passage” has no gods in the traditional sense. They are entirely detached and distant. Hayden substitutes omnipotent powers with carnal, sadistic beings in the “grinning tutelary gods” (32-33) that trail the slave ship in the form of sharks. While the gods act as the driving force in the Classical epics, white colonization and exploitation is the force of agency in “Middle Passage,” while the “gods” are opportunistic, mocking demons that prey on suicidal slaves. Hayden derides the God of the Christian epic form as well through the inclusion of the sailor’s hymn, “Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me” as the sailors ask the Lord for “safe passage to our vessels bringing / heathen souls unto Thy chastening” (22-24). Hayden’s derisive irony on the hypocrisy of Christian, Western conquest and colonization is readily apparent in this instance, as sailors ask God for the permission to antagonize and exploit the black population rather than for sanctity. Hayden demonstrates that, unlike the European tradition, black history has no romanticized deus ex machina that affords them asylum. Rather, black history and tradition was at the mercy of white men. While Eliot may argue for the poet to act as a medium for the divine forces of tradition, Hayden argues that black writers are absolved of the same privilege, and so must carve out a tradition for themselves which subverts the white canon.
The final and perhaps greatest epic inversion present in “Middle Passage” is in the case of the poem’s epic hero, Cinquez, the leader of the historic mutiny of The Amistad. Looking at the tradition’s protagonists in the cases of Odysseus and Aeneas, the archetype of the epic hero is one of monarchic lineage, morally just, courageous, and capable of great feats of physical and martial prowess. “Middle Passage” ascribes the same characteristics to Cinquez, describing him as a “prince” and constructing him as the the embodiment of “the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will” (173-174) such that Cinquez is the epitomization of the poem’s central theme of the heroic struggle for freedom. Though Cinquez is a traditional epic protagonist, Hayden’s irony lies in the fact that he is a tragic hero. While he is described as a “prince” (172), historical evidence contradicts this—Cinquez was a slave and a rice farmer. Furthermore, Cinquez’s struggle is denounced as barbarism by those testifying against him, calling him “a surly brute who calls himself a prince” (138) and an “ape” (143). Cinquez’s epic heroism is discounted as a “hero’s garland weaved with Roman rhetoric” (167). Hayden again demonstrates the inability of the literary canon’s heroism to be applied to black history and culture. The bravery and machismo that is afforded to the martial prowess of the tradition’s heroes in Odysseus and Aeneas is instead labeled as a grand display of incivility and brutality in the case of Cinquez, the embodiment of the “deep immortal human wish” (173-174).
Ultimately, it is important to note that the flesh and blood of Modernism is its comparative nature. Whether it be the self against the forces of the universe or the artist against the sociopolitical dogma, opposition is embraced through an expression of disillusionment rather than an overt polemic. For this reason, “The Wasteland” is well-deserving of the firestorm of critical praise it received. It channeled the strife and uncertainty of the Western world through an element of familiarity and nostalgia in its invocation of the epic form. “The Wasteland” demonstrated a powerful embodiment of Eliot’s notion of “self-sacrifice,” as the poem exalts the tradition of old to criticize the state of Western society. However, Hayden’s derisive irony and perversion of the Western tradition depicts an inarguable truth—a history of Eurocentric conquests allows for the existence of an archetype for the West to hearken back to, while black America is left without an ideal to romanticize. Eliot’s “self-sacrifice” is not applicable to a black artist because the black artist’s antiquity is one that was denied greatness by the white artistic canon. The black artist cannot sacrifice his selfhood because a history of apartheid, slavery, and robbery of human expression has denied him of a self. By way of history, the black artist must find the self through an inversion of the tropes used in the Western literary canon rather than an espousal of them.
Works Cited
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” (1919)
http://people.unica.it/fiorenzoiuliano/files/2017/05/tradition-and-the-individual-talent.pdf
———. “The Wasteland.” (1922)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
Hayden, Robert. “Middle Passage.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43076/middle-passage
*All internal line numbers refer to “Middle Passage.”