The Congo

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1914

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Ceremony and Ritual

Each section of “The Congo” constitutes its own ritual: The speaker undergoes a transporting vision, one that he interprets as a correspondence between the behaviors of Black Americans and their forbears in the Congo. A series of magic words, the repeated “boomlay” and “boom,” invoke and reinforce the transformation. Lindsay’s speaker stops short of true transformation, choosing instead to interpret his vision as a victory of a colonizing religion—a set of rituals ratified by his culture. The speaker believes this victory to be a moral and spiritual one, judging the rituals and ceremonies of the Congo as “savage” and less valuable. While the speaker celebrates Christian supremacy, he focuses on lush descriptions of the Congo and its people to entertain his audience with a fanciful tableau. His own descriptions, however, do not stop him from describing the “savagery” (Section I, title) of Black people. After his sweeping sensory descriptions in the dance sequence of Section II, the speaker says, “rare was the revel” (Section II, Line 67), pronouncing it “well worth while” (Section II, Line 67). But in Section III, the first strophe describes a Christian ritual, a “jubilee revival” (Section III, Line 8). At best, the speaker portrays Black American Christianity as strengthened by its connection to African traditions and rituals. But the sounds of harps defeat the sounds of drums in this poem, and the speaker casts the “hoo-doo” rituals of the Congo as demonic and terrifying, even in the poem’s final lines (Section III, Lines 54-57).

Music

Hearing Lindsay’s “The Congo” performance, a reader can immediately recognize the significance of music, both voice and instrument, to the sense of the poem. Lindsay uses repeated syllables the way a DJ mixes beats, creating a tidal movement and undertow throughout the poem. The words “boom,” “boomlay,” “hoo-doo,” and “mumbo jumbo” all repeat past literal sense, becoming sounds only. Lindsay admired jazz and blues performance and improvisation; while he lacked the cultural experience to participate directly and authentically in these forms, he created a music of his own, experimental performance verse meant to move people physically with sounds. It follows that the events of “The Congo” never stray far from a musical context. Black Americans populate the bar, the gambling hall, and the church in the three sections of “The Congo,” all locations where music provides a context. While the men in the opening lines improvise their instruments (or the speaker imagines they do), the Congo musicians play “on a tin-pan gong” and “the whistles and the fifes” (Section I, Lines 21-22). The second section unveils elaborate, celebratory dancing, but the third section uses the music theme to illustrate the superiority of Christian music to tribal, replacing percussion with the jubilee chorus and angel harps.

Physical Movement and the Body

The subtitle of “The Congo,” “A Study of the Negro Race,” promises a chronicle of a people. But the speaker in Lindsay’s “The Congo” maintains a remove from the Black people in the poem, both American and African. Their true nature remains a mystery throughout the poem, a tactic that worked well for a dramatic performance, but one that allows for no understanding or transcendence for the speaker or for the reader. Rather than sympathizing or speculating on Black perspective, the speaker describes their physical movements and their bodies. This distancing keeps the subject of the poem, Black Americans, as “other” in the audience’s eyes. “Men” and “women” are never mentioned. “Bucks” (Section I, Line 1), “feet” (Section I, Line 2), “cannibals” (Section I, Line 18), “warriors” (Section I, Line 22), and “witch-doctors” (Section I, Line 23) populate the poem. Body parts like feet, hands, and hair stand in for whole people; faces are only described when the “skull-faced” (Section I, Line 23) witch-doctors appear. The speaker even comments on weight, calling figures “fat” (Section I, Line 1) or “lean” (Section I, line 23) in multiple lines. Speaking of his subjects as bodies objectifies them and denies their autonomy and intelligence, exacerbating the poem’s racist aspects.