[ PMLA little-known documents Four Poems from Langston Hughes’s Spanish Civil War Verse Introduction introduction by anne donlon LANGSTON HUGHES TRAVELED TO SPAIN IN 1937, DURING THAT COUN- and evelyn scaramella TRY’S CIVIL WAR. HE SAW THE REPUBLIC’S FIGHT AGAINST FRANCO AS AN international fight against fascism, racism, and colonialism and for the rights of workers and minorities. Throughout the 1930s, Hughes organized for justice, at home and abroad, often engaging with communist and other left political organizations, like the Communist Party USA’s John Reed Club, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and the International Workers’ Or- ANNE DONLON , project manager for digi- der (Rampersad, Life 236, 286, 355; Scott). When the war in Spain began, in tal initiatives at the Modern Language 1936, workers and intellectuals who were engaged on the left came from Association, holds a doctorate in En glish from the Graduate Center, City University around the world to fight against Franco’s forces; these volunteers, the In- of New York. She edited Langston Hughes, ternational Brigades, included approximately 2,800 Americans known as Nancy Cunard, and Louise Thompson: Po- the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, of which about ninety were African American etry, Politics, and Friendship in the Spanish (Carroll vii; “African Americans”). Hughes went to Spain to interview black Civil War (Center for the Humanities, CUNY, antifascist volunteers in the International Brigades and write about their 2012), and her essay on Thyra Ed wards’s experiences for the Baltimore Afro- American, Volunteer for Liberty, and other Spanish Civil War scrapbook appears in To publications. Much of Hughes’s writing from Spain sought to explain to peo- Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women ple at home why men and women, and African diasporic people especially, and Internationalism (U of Illinois P, 2019). had risked their lives to fight in Spain. Hughes profiled African Americans EVELYN SCARAMELLA , associate professor fighting for the first time alongside white comrades in the International of Spanish at Manhattan College, is the Brigades, including Ralph Thornton, Thaddeus Battle, and Milton Herndon editor, with Regina Galasso, of Avenues of (“Pittsburgh Soldier Hero,” “Howard Man,” “Milt Herndon”). In addition to Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing (Bucknell UP, 2019). writing articles, he wrote poetry, gave radio speeches, and translated poems Her scholarly writing has appeared in and plays from Spanish into En glish. Much of Hughes’s work from the Span- The Massachusetts Review, Translation ish Civil War has been collected in anthologies.¹ However, so prolific was Review, and Revista canadiense de estu- Hughes, and so fastidious was he in saving drafts and ensuring they reach dios hispánicos, among other journals. his collection at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Li- She is working on a book manuscript, brary, that many unpublished works exist in archives. The four poems here “Translating the Spanish Civil War: The represent different poetic registers and levels of polish, and they illuminate Avant- Garde, Antifascism, and Literary the dynamic range of Hughes’s literary production during his time in Spain. History,” that explores the solidarity and collaboration between hispanophone Like many wartime poems, these four were written with urgency and and anglophone avant- garde writers and political purpose, and under difficult conditions. In some cases, Hughes translators during the Spanish Civil War. scribbled drafts of them in notebooks on the war front—the page on which © 2019 anne Donlon and Evelyn scaramella 562 PMLA 134.3 (2019), published by the Modern Language Association of America 134.3 ] Langston Hughes 563 FIG. 1 little-known documents Cover and pages of a notebook contain- ing an early draft of “Girl” that Hughes wrote while report- ing from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. Repro- duced courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Litera- ture, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. he wrote “Girl (She looks like a gypsy)” is now frayed and torn in half (fig. 1)—and he typed one of them, an untitled poem that concludes “MADRID CELEBRATES RUSSIA’S TWENTY YEARS,” on a piece of scrap paper. These drafts, which have been pre- served among the Beinecke’s Langston Hughes Papers, contribute to a growing corpus of Hughes’s Spanish Civil War writing. The literary response to the Spanish Civil War was so deeply international that we cannot read Hughes’s poems from the war in isolation; rather, we must read them as part of a dense web of col- laboration with Spanish, Latin American, and Ca- ribbean poets who were writing in defense of the Spanish Republic (Nelson 190). In July 1937, the Second International Writers’ Congress in Defense of Culture took place in several Spanish cities— Valencia, 4 July; Madrid, 5–8 July; and Barcelona, 11 July—and in Paris, 16–17 July (Soler). Writers such as Chile’s Pablo Neruda, Mexico’s Octavio Paz, and Peru’s César Vallejo flocked to Spain to take part in the congress, which Neruda helped to 564 Four Poems from Langston Hughes’s Spanish Civil War Verse [ PMLA organize. Hughes delivered his speech “Too Much A famous line from a flamenco song—“Soy de of Race” to the conference in Paris before travel- la raza calé” (“I am of the gypsy race”)—is one of ing to Spain with Cuba’s Nicolás Guillén, who also several voices woven together in “Untitled (Madrid spoke at the Paris congress. Celebrates Russia’s Twenty Years).” The poem’s next When he arrived in Madrid, Hughes worked and final line marks a radical shift, to a headline with Ra fael Alberti, Manuel Altolaguirre, and other reporting the October 1937 commemoration of members of the Spanish literary avant- garde at the Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. While earlier in the Alliance of Anti- Fascist Intellectuals to translate poem Hughes implies that poetry follows a linear Federico García Lorca’s celebrated collection of po- path when he describes it as something he could Romancero gi tano Gypsy Ballads little-known documents ems (1928; ). The act “ride . down the muddy road,” the collage- like of translating Lorca was meant to honor his life and form of the poem suggests that readers must legacy after he had been assassinated by national- take a less straightforward route to integrate its ist troops at the start of the civil war (Scaramella disparate voices. The poem prompts its reader to 179). Hughes’s translation work, as well as his own “[make] a story” out of its distinct lines, connecting poetry, grew out of conversation and collaboration poetry, performance, and communist revolution in with the hispanophone writers he met, or whose the fight against fascism in Spain. work he read, in Spain.² Hughes’s Spanish Civil War “Boy” presents a mother at home in Iowa poetry therefore shows traces of intertextuality examining a map, trying to understand the death with the cancioneros written in defense of the Re- of her son at the Fuentes de Ebro front, which public at the same time: Guillén’s España: Poema Hughes visited in October 1937 to report on the en cuatro angustias y una esperanza (1937; Spain: A death of Milton Herndon, a black volunteer and Poem in Four Anguishes and One Hope), Neruda’s Es- brother of the persecuted labor organizer Angelo paña en el corazón (1937; Spain in Our Hearts), Paz’s Herndon (Rampersad 353; Hughes, “Milt Herndon” “Bajo tu clara sombra” y otros poemas sobre España 181). This poem recalls the imagery of a poem by (1937; “Under Your Clear Shadow” and Other Poems Guillén in which Mussolini examines a map while about Spain), and Vallejo’s España, aparta de mí este his soldiers suffer during the Italo- Ethiopian War.3 cáliz (Spain, Take This Cup from Me, written in 1937 The map in “Boy,” like the letter in the four epis- and published in 1939, after his death). tolary ballads Hughes wrote in Spain,4 becomes a Hughes explores gitano (“Roma,” or “Gypsy”) symbol of the effort to bridge geographic and ide- culture through the Spanish popular musical tra- ological distances. For Hughes, the International ditions of cante jondo and flamenco in the short, Brigades soldiers’ commitment to the antifascist impressionistic “Girl” (fig. 2). Hughes, like Lorca, cause created a new map of solidarity among dis- explored the connections between the Gypsy cante enfranchised groups. jondo and the African American blues tradition. “Note to the Democracies” condemns inac- “Girl” suggests the influence of Lorca’s ideas and tion and complacency—in particular, the refusal shows Hughes’s interest in linking the emotional of Western governments to provide military and FIG. 2 histories of diasporic communities. humanitarian aid to Republican Spain. The poem’s The typescript draft use of direct address, verses in capital letters, and of “Girl” by Lang- repeated questions and exclamations resonates ston Hughes. Repro- with other “call to action” poems by Hughes that duced courtesy of provoke the reader to act in times of political crisis. the Yale Collection These four Spanish Civil War poems enrich of American Litera- ture, the Beinecke our understanding of Hughes’s deep commitment Rare Book and to the Republican cause. Manuscript Library, Yale University. 134.3 ] Langston Huges 565 NOTES Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston little-known documents Hughes. Edited by Arnold Rampersad, Vintage Special thanks go to Craig Tenney of Harold Ober As- Books, 1994. sociates Incorporated and the Langston Hughes Estate ——— . Te Collected Works of Langston Hughes. U of Mis- for granting permission to publish these poems. We are souri P, 2001–03. 16 vols. also grateful to the archivists, curators, and staf mem- ———.