Heritage

“Heritage” immediately establishes the kind of heritage it addresses: African heritage of someone who lives far away from Africa, which represents not merely a geographical entity but a cultural concept with specific associations that may or may not accurately reflect current or past African life. The Africa described in the poem is a personal vison of the individual speaker who explicitly acknowledges being far removed from it. They have sub-Saharan Africa in mind, distinguished by its natural beauty (Lines 2-3) and dark-skinned inhabitants, whom the speaker endows with admirable physical characteristics: “Strong bronzed men” (Line 4) and “regal Black / Women” (Lines 4-5). They are the speaker’s distant ancestors; they metaphorically sprang from the loins of these Black African women (Line 5) “When the birds of Eden sang” (Line 6), indicative of a faraway, even mythological, past. From a more historical point of view, the speaker is “three centuries removed / From the scenes his fathers loved” (Lines 7-8). In other words, they are a descendant of Black Africans forced from their land in the 17th century and sold into slavery on the American continent. The speaker, a 20th-century African American, wishes to reflect on a question important to their own identity: “What is Africa to me?” (Line 10)

The second stanza consists of three sentences, each beginning with the phrase “So I lie” (Lines 11, 19, and 23), which on the literal level implies the speaker is prostrate and passive, awash with visions and sensations. (For more about the repetition of this phrase and the ambiguity of the word “lie,” see Anaphora in Literary Devices.) The first sentence reports that, in the speaker’s mind, they constantly hear jungle birds and see large animals running through the forest, in which two young humans make love (Lines 11-18). The word choices emphasize the untamed power of the forms of life depicted in this vision. There are “wild barbaric birds” (Line 13) and “massive jungle herds” (Line 14). These land animals, perhaps elephants, are “juggernauts of flesh” (Line 15), implying an overwhelmingly power physical force; however, this potential destructiveness is balanced by the resilience of other life forms in this ecosystem. The animals are “[t]rampling” the grass, but the grass is “defiant” (Line 16) and will rise again after the herd passes.

Significantly, there are people in this untamed jungle, but they belong to it. The context implies that the passion of the “young forest lovers” (Line 17) is as exuberant as its surroundings. They pledge loyalty to each other (“troth-plight” is an antiquated term for “betrothal”) “beneath the sky” (Line 18). This ceremony of love requires no church; it is uncivilized like everything else in the speaker’s vision, which is the very source of their fascination with it.

The following sequence (Lines 19-22) reveals the speaker’s ambivalence about these sounds and images in their mind. They “always hear” (Line 19) “drums throbbing through the air” (Line 22)—probably the drums of native tribes. Something inside the speaker responds to that sound, but something else resists it: “I cram against my ear / Both my thumbs, and keep them there” (Lines 20-21). They are torn between yielding to this call of the wild and guarding against it. The third and final sentence in the second stanza (Lines 23-30) reinforces that conflict and clarifies that the speaker’s anxiety relates to their African American identity. Since one meaning of the word “somber” is “dark,” the references to “somber flash and skin” (Line 25) and “dark blood” (Line 26) are clearly meant to be reminders of the speaker’s Blackness toward which they have complicated feelings. It is their “fount of pride, / Dear distress, and joy allied” (Lines 23-24). In addition to being a source of pride and joy, the speaker’s Blackness has also been a source of distress—no doubt because of society’s racism—but even that is dear since it is part of who they are. Yet there is something about that Blackness they also fear. The final metaphor in the stanza describes their dark blood as “dammed within” (Line 26) and about to “burst” (Line 28) through the net that contains it. If the speaker’s blood signals their deep identification with Blackness and Africa, then the net must stand for the life they have established for themself in America—their ethnic heritage clashing against the strictures and pressures of a predominantly white culture. Their dilemma appears to be this: What would happen with their life as a Black person in America if they allowed their Blackness to more decisively define them?

The third stanza elaborates on the contrast between the speaker’s actual life and the Africa of their mind. The one-word question at its beginning, “Africa?” (Line 31) is a shorthand version of the poem’s central question repeated at the end of the stanza: “What is Africa to me?” (Line 63, italicized in the original). At this point, the speaker admits that, in one sense, Africa is merely something in a “book one thumbs / Listlessly, till slumber comes” (Lines 31-32), that is, a set of facts and descriptions detached from their life, about which they read at idle moments. What is “[u]nremembered” (Line 33) in such a book, absent from it, are the darker aspects of African jungles, predatory animals and poisonous flowers, or the untamed impulses and forces jungle fauna and flora represent (for more on that, see Symbols & Motifs). Here, the speaker distances themself from such images, as if to deny their power, which they acknowledged in the previous stanza. They hear “no more” (Line 37) the “bugle-throated roar” (Line 38) of the lion (“monarch” or king of the jungle) when its “claws have leapt / From the scabbards where they slept” (Lines 39-40). The lion jumps into ambush like a warrior might suddenly pull a sword from its sheath. In this instance, the speaker shows no affection or admiration for such wild behavior. Similarly, they tell “silver snakes” (Line 41)—who annually change their skin—not to look for cover in fear that “mortal eyes” (Line 44) would see them since allegedly, the speaker does not care: “What’s your nakedness to me?” (Line 45). In contrast to Africa, “[h]ere”—in the civilized society where the speaker lives—there are “no leprous flowers” (Line 45) or strong sexual passion of “bodies sleek and wet, / Dripping mingled rain and sweat” (Lines 48-49), like those of the jungle lovers. In other words, the speaker insists that their life is free from “the savage measures” (Line 49) of such passion. Africa, they claim, is irrelevant past, like “last year’s snow” (Line 52). One must leave the old behind for the new to flourish, just like a tree “budding yearly must forget / How its past arose or set / Bough and blossom, flower, fruit” (Lines 54-56) so that it would bloom again in the spring. The stanza ends (Lines 60-63) with the same words as the first stanza (Lines 7-10), but this time they are italicized, signaling the growing urgency of the question: What is Africa to me? (Line 63)

The fourth stanza makes it clear that the speaker’s effort to distance themself from their internal Africa has faltered. They revert to the phrase from the second stanza—“So I lie” (Lines 64 and 71)—and confirms they still have “no slight release” (Line 65) from sounds and images that, consciously or unconsciously, invade their peace. It is particularly difficult when it rains because they feel in the rain’s steady drip some “primal measures” (Line 79) which they “must match” (Line 76). The rain calls on the speaker to “[s]trip!” (Line 80) and “dance the Lover’s Dance!” (Line 82), in passionate abandon, like the jungle lovers. (For more about the unconscious, see Themes; for more about the rain symbolism, see Symbols & Motifs.)

The last three stanzas of the poem focus on religious themes. The speaker invokes “heathen gods” (Line 85), which Black Africans made from simple materials in their own image (Lines 86-88). As a Black person, the speaker might relate to them, but since they are a Christian, these “heathen gods are naught to [them]” (Line 92). Nevertheless, they fear their faith might be disingenuous, and that they play “a double part” (Line 98) because even as they worship Jesus Christ, their “heart grow[s] sick and falter[s], / Wishing He I served were Black” (Lines 100-01). The speaker is unhappy about the fact that in American Christian tradition Christ is imagined as a white man, but this frustration is not limited to assumptions about Christ’s skin tone. It has even more to do with the idea that the proper Christian attitude is to meekly and forgivingly accept suffering. Christ is “Preacher of humility” (Line 91) and “Jesus of the twice-turned cheek” (Lines 95). The speaker imagines a Black Christ whose patience allows for occasional bursts of anger (Lines 111-13). Such Christ would be more in accordance with the speaker’s personal “need” (Line 115).

The last stanza, fully italicized, concludes that the speaker must “quench [their] pride and cool my blood / Lest [they] perish in the flood” (Lines 119-20). Dangerous feelings lurk inside them; “a hidden ember” (Line 121) could ignite into a fire, which could lead to “the grave restor[ing] its dead” (Line 125). In other words, the speaker’s buried grief and resentment caused by the long history of Black suffering could resurface. The last three lines of the poem suggest that these barely repressed feelings might prove stronger than the veneer of civilized manners and cause anguish—and perhaps destructive behavior—the speaker hopes to avert.