Dutchman by Amiri Baraka is a difficult read. Full of rage and violence. I read this first in the mid 1970s when I was young and idealistic. As I recall, I was horrified and also fascinated.
So much anger.
So little hope.
Now as then I recognize the overt religious imagery. Eve with the apple. Lula, calling Clay My Christ-
Sex masking violence. I reread the character descriptions. Lula with long red hair. Clay, 3 button suit and striped tie.
Summer heat. The entrails of the city.
Lines capture and hold me as if they are in bold:
Lula: And we'll pretend the people cannot see you. That is, the citizens. And that you are free of your own history. And I am free of my history...
We are none of us free of our history, personal or national. Also echoes of Ellison's Invisible Man?
Lula taunting Clay with Uncle Tom. Clay warning her to "Let me be who I feel like being. Uncle Tom. Thomas. Whoever. It's none of your business. You don't know anything except what's there for you to see. An act. Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart..."
Lula is the one who lies. She said so from the beginning.
Clay: Bird would've played not a note of music if he just walked up to East Sixty-Seventh Street and killed the first ten white people he saw. Not a note!
Does art come only from pain and rage? Or is it only art that can capture and use the pain and rage to create rather than destroy, kill, maim?
Am I, as a white person, even allowed to ask?
Once Clay has broken open and poured out the lava of his rage, Lula's tone changes: Business like. She goes on to the business of the ending.
The old Negro conductor. He knows Lula. And he calls out to the new young man. Tips his hat to Lula as he continues on.
His may be the most disturbing moment of all.
