It is no easy matter to determine the specific share of the poet in the work of Jean Toomer, for the whole process of his thinking, and his art as a narrator, obey the behests of his poetry. His poetic inspiration spreads far beyond his verse writings, and Jean Toomer could neither think, nor tell a tale, nor describe except as a poet. So any attempt to cling to the traditional distinctions between the literary genres would be vain in the case of a writer who, like many other creative artists of his generation, subjects form to ceaseless experimentation in his endeavors to forge a truly fitting instrument of expression for himself. (p. 259)
It would be easy enough to paint the portrait of Jean Toomer as a child of the "Lost Generation." But in so doing one must take care not to overdraw certain features. "The postwar writers, in their feeling that their experiences were unique, revealed their ignorance of the American past" [according to Malcolm Cowley in Exile's Return]. While Toomer to some extent shared their sense of unease, he in no way shared their misappreciation of the past. On the contrary, his ceaseless introspection and his clairvoyance in recognizing the sources of his anxiety helped him to reach an awareness, not only of his own uprootedness, but also of the values embodied in the past, and more particularly in the earth that is inseparable from it. Admittedly the time had arrived to shake off all subjection to the past, to put off the old man and enter fully into the light of a new age. But would it not be an adventurer's blind folly to commit oneself to the future without finding out, first of all, from where one came? (pp. 264-65)
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